English lesson nr 3: Other effects of obesity

Last week, my writing task was to fill a page with 'Effects of obesity' or, if I would like 'Effects of childhood obesity'.  Now, we see the effects of obesity on every night on various tv channels, with or without stomach reduction surgery, peer pressure or fanatical fitness instructors. And to be honest: I never had any problems with my weight, so I can't speak from experience about it. But suddenly I realised that our family has a lot to do with it, but in a completely different way than I think this writing task wanted me to go. So I wrote this.

Other effects of obesity

Our nanny is probably the sweetest woman I know. She really loves our three daughters and they love her. Our nanny has been with us from the moment our youngest was born, for three years now and she’s at our home three days a week.  

Needless to say that the subject nanny is discussed a lot at home. But one aspect of our nanny will never be spoken of. We all pretend not to notice that she’s extremely obese. That’s peculiar, because we are used to make fun of all kinds of shapes; thin, tiny, short, long, bony, with fat arses or heavy bosom. But we’re silent about this aspect. I think that’s because we don’t want to put any ideas into the children’s  minds. I cannot imagine what would happen if one of them asks her: ‘Tell me, why are you so fat anyway, did you eat too many chocolates?’ Or even worse: ‘Maybe you shouldn’t eat so much, you’re fat already.’ She might quit her job. So we consistently avoid the subject. 

That’s not always easy. Last year, we bought a new couch. The purple colossus was delivered and that evening we were a happy family, watching television all together, inaugurating our new centre of the household. One day later, in the evening, I sat down on the couch again. But it didn’t feel comfortable at all. Strange, because the day before I had almost fallen asleep due to all its comfort. So I got up and inspected  the right side of the couch. While I was doing that, my eight year old daughter walked into the living room and said, in passing: ‘You shouldn’t use that part any more. That’s the spot the nanny likes to sit.’ 

It’s absolutely marvellous how our children picked up the code of not talking about it. They are always asking the most embarrassing things to anyone anywhere in the street but they never ask the nanny anything about her size. To be quite frank, I would like to know. How come she’s so obese? Was she like this when she got married? What happened? How does she feel about it herself? I even spied on her when she was eating. But I could never bust her on bulimic excesses. She never even eats candy. It’s a big mystery, literally. There was a time that I secretly hoped that one of the girls would ask her thé question, just out of curiosity. But they are never going to, programmed as they are by their parents. 

One day, we came home and one of the dinner chairs was broken. We asked the nanny what happened and immediately bit our tongues of because we put her in a compromising position. She explained that the chair had broken; she felt awful and asked her husband to come over to glue the parts together, in vain. In the week after that, another chair broke.  We hurried to a furniture store and bought new ones, heavy quality, to withhold another embarrassing situation from her. The next day, when she arrived, we ate our breakfast while we were all sitting on our new chairs and we felt a little awkward. Our ten year old - a girl that weighs not even 30 kilo - apparently felt our tension and said to the nanny: ‘Look, we bought new chairs, the others ones were of such bad quality. Yesterday I  sat down on one and I broke it completely.’ 

The same tall 30 kilo weighing ten year old might have a little problem with her weight herself. Sometimes, she stands in front of the mirror, counting the bones in the chest and it worries us that she seems to be proud of it. I’m encouraging her to eat more, but it is a struggle. One day, when we had an argument again over dinner, I was angry and  I broke the code. I asked her: ‘Why don’t you eat? Are you afraid that you are going to look like our nanny?’ She looked at me and said, furiously: ‘Are you suggesting our nanny is fat? Well, she’s not. She’s only curvaceous.’