Another day at the park

One of my patients took a good, long look at my eye and told me that purple is definitely my color for eye shadow. I haven't used makeup in years because everything I do involves sun block or insect repellent, so makeup is pointless. It would only run into my eyes and streak down my face, but maybe I'll get some for my very few evenings out.

When Freud wrote about psychosexual development and used the word "perversions" to describe certain phenomena, the word simply indicated a deviation from the statistical norm and had no negative implications as such. But the negative feelings people had about the phenomena themselves transferred itself to the word, and now a pervert is someone odious indeed.

The same thing has happened with the word "retarded", which simply means an arrest in one's intellectual development and a limitation of abilities. It's as if people could remove their own prejudices and negative feelings by loading the word with the negativity and then eliminating the word itself--thus we come to the increasingly absurd phrases such as "different abilities" when referring to an individual with a mental handicap. We all have different abilities. It isn't the word per se that is the insult, it is the feelings we try to deny by eliminating the word.

The reason I say all this is because two new types of exercisers showed up at the park today, and I'm going to use a word that everyone avoids like the plague: fat. You just don't say someone is fat, at least not out loud. There are atrocious reality shows that feature fat people competing to lose weight, dancing to lose weight, getting surgery to lose weight, etc. To use fat people as entertainment is infinitely worse than calling them fat, which is no more than a term to indicate the truth. They are referred to as "heavy"; "And how long have you been heavy?" some idiot will ask the victim of a reality show.

Four people, ranging from simply fat to obese, arrayed themselves across the running path so that no one could pass. They wouldn't move aside, either. You went off the path or pushed through them if you wanted to get by. I managed to squeeze around one of them on the edge of the path, almost twisting an ankle as one foot slipped off the path. The running culture doesn't include yelling insulting names at people, but the temptation was as fat as the individuals themselves.

I usually admire hugely anyone fat who is marching down the running path because I know that person is taking on a challenge. I've been fat myself and still feel my washboard fat jiggle while I run. But these four people were being passively aggressive and they made me want to give them a swift, sharp kick to their ample butts.

The other kind of runner I noticed today is the Scraper: it is a terrible thing to scrape expensive running shoes along the pavement. The sound itself gives one chills. It's like watching money burn. This older man ran by me, and as each foot came down, he scraped it across the cement with a noise you could hear from several yards away. Ouch! Not to mention the potential for tripping and falling.

But enough of this. I haven't had breakfast yet. Ciao, arrivederci, a domani.