One of the biggest — and most expensive — consequences of losing all this weight on the South Beach Diet was that I needed new pants and belts. I have dropped from a 34”-35” waist to a 31”-32”. I literally had nothing to wear for the holidays. So, I spent a good deal of time shopping for myself at Christmastime. They say it’s better to give than to receive; but when you’re both giving and receiving, that’s the best of all!
One day, I was at a store with Amy and Ray. My search for trousers had turned up empty, so I was in the kids’ section looking for stuff for the little guy when I overheard a woman and her young son discussing his size. She told the chubby young fellow that he needed a “10 H.”
A shiver went down my spine as my mind raced back 25 years to the first time I learned what the dreaded “H” stood for in boys’ pants.
[But first, an aside. As I’ve been writing more in this here blog, I’ve been having fun paying attention to which events in my life trigger my nostalgic thoughts and inspire me to write about them. I suppose Proust’s madeleine in “Du côté de chez Swann” is the ultimate example of autobiographical inspiration. Not that I’m comparing myself to Proust, of course. For one thing, he was more succinct than I am. And he wrote in French. Anyway, back to the story.]
In boys’ trousers parlance, “H” stands for “Husky,” which stands for “Fat”! Actually, I didn’t know they had abbreviated it to just “H.” Maybe the mother I overheard was just trying to avoid bruising the boy’s ego.
I first learned about the “H”-word on a shopping trip with my mother. I was probably about 8 and we were at Sears — where all my boyhood clothes came from — looking at, oh, some Toughskins® jeans, probably, when I asked her what “Husky” meant. I had read it on a label or seen it on a sign, and since, at the time, I was wearing “Slim”-sized clothes, I had no idea what the word “Husky” meant in this context.
My mother looked around, spotted something, and pulled me conspiratorily behind a clothing rack. “There,” she pointed at a chunky youngster in front of a mirror, also in Toughskins®, “that’s a Husky.”
“That’s a Husky?!” I shouted. My mortified mother quickly looked the other way as the other boy and his mother glared over our way. Not only was I skinny, I was indiscrete.
In junior high, I developed a bit of a paunch and, if I was still wearing boys’ clothes, probably would have moved up into the Husky sizes. But by my sophomore year in high school, I was back to being “Slim” again. That was probably the last time I had a 31” waist. I wish I had saved some of those clothes….
