My love affair with cheese.

I love cheese. I love everything about cheese. I couldn't imagine a life without it. My love of cheese has only grown in the past years.

I can't remember the first time I had cheese (or anytime when I didn't love it), but I know I must have been around the age of three. I loved everything about it then and I love everything about it now. I love the texture, I love the way it melts, I loved the way it tastes with almost everything.

Cheese is simply the best.

When I was a little girl, I would drag my sister and her little walking table thing and stand on it just to reach the cheese. Seriously, there is proof.

As I mentioned, my fondness of cheese has only grown with age. Back then I only limited my cheese consumption to mostly American cheese and string cheese. I would eat it alone, I would melt it on a plate, I would eat it with bread.

Now that I'm older, I have grown to love several different varieties of cheese. I even learned how to eat cheese with grapes (Uvas con queso saben a beso). I have cheese parties with one of my best friends. We buy an expensive cheese (last time we went with a delicious smoked cheddar) and we buy some Triscuits and have it with some bottled sangria on the side. I'm making myself hungry just thinking about it.

Anyway, everyone always made fun of me for loving cheese so much. They'd say "That's why you're the way you are, you can't stop eating cheese". They'd tease me about this love affair and gawk at me for always asking for more cheese on my plate or eating just the cheesy parts. Don't even get me started on Mac and Cheese. It was death. In a good way.

So because I was so obsessed with cheese and my mother was so concerned about my growing weight, she'd stop buying normal cheese (much to the dismay of my siblings who couldn't enjoy cheese with their sandwiches). Instead, she'd buy some of the fat free stuff which is gross and just plain mean.

She hoped that my fondness of this milky food product would die down (along with my giant ass), but it didn't and it won't. The fact that I couldn't have it regularly made me love it even more. She eventually gave up not buying cheese, because I had it anyway. If I didn't have any at home, I'd go over to friend's houses and have their cheese. I was unstoppable.

Picking a favorite cheese is like asking me to pick just one favorite Radiohead song: It's impossible. I can't pick just one. I love the way sharp cheddar tastes, but I also love the way some softened Brie tastes like with some fruit spread. I love the texture of Munster and I LOVE provolone on my Subway sandwiches. I love the way Monterrey Jack with pepper tastes, ESPECIALLY on a Triscuit cracker.

Man, I love cheese.

Love in the world of a fat kid.

When I was six, my celebrity crush was Sylvester Stallone. I had the hots for the most random guy ever. Seriously, do kids even know who he is?

NO!

Most girls my age were in love with other people, like Elijah Wood or Jonathan Taylor Thomas (Who can forget JTT?!). I had my eyes set on this much older gent. I was in love with Sylvester Stallone and that was that. You might ask yourself "How is that even possible?". Well, I'll tell you how.

It all happened one evening when I was sitting in the living room with my family watching HBO. There was nothing special about this, except for the fact that we were watching Demolition Man. For some reason, this terrible film captivated me. I thought Sylvester Stallone kicked so much ass and looked amazing. Everything about the movie made me happy. I thought it was hilarious that Taco Bell became an uber fancy restaurant and I didn't even mind the naked lady that appears for all of two seconds. Everything about that movie tickled my pickle in the good way. For some reason I was smitten by Stallone. His big manly arms and pecks seemed amazing to me at the tender age of six.

My brothers would tease me about being in love with such a weird person. I mean, really, who can blame them? What kind of child has a crush on Stallone? He has a crooked mouth and a speech impediment for crying out loud!

This crush lasted for almost two years, when I moved on to someone even more random: Speed Racer, but alas this is a tale for another day.

BFF: Best Fat Friend.

It seems that most fat kids can't have enough with just being fat. Almost always the child has to have big geeky glasses, or nasty teeth. Or both. This was the case in my childhood obesity.

I was the token fat kid with giant glasses that were perpetually dirty and a face only a mother could love. Seriously. Talk about an ugly duckling. Not only was I fat and dorky, I was hairy too. Thank you, Mexican genes. I wasn't made fun of too much though, I was what my brother calls "Cugly" or "Uglute", which means I was so ugly it was kind of cute.

I never really felt ridiculed in elementary school (not at the ripe age of 7 at least), mostly because I hung around with a much smaller boy that looked like a toddler. We were the bestest friends EVER. We would do everything together. He was my only real friend back in the day. Anyway, as I was saying, they didn't really ridicule me per se, but us. They made fun of us being such good friends. Adults found it hilarious that such a fat, hairy girl would become friends with a kid her same age that looked like he escaped a nearby day care.

Both our parents would joke around that we would one day marry each other because we were always together! We would play with my Barbie's and his Ninja Turtles without a care in the world. To us, there was nothing funny about our friendship. We became friends the day we met. I was four and he was three (He's a couple of months younger) and even though there was a slight age difference we would tell everyone that we were born the same day together. We were such good friends in fact, that after I was done eating my lunch, he would give me his. No questions asked.

That was love, man.

We stuck together all the way through High School, even. If anyone made fun of my dear friend, I, the fat kid, would stand up for him and defended him with tooth and nail. No one messed with my buddy. He was the only real friend I had back in elementary and no one was going to tease him in my presence.

I don't talk to him as much, which kind of sucks, but what can you do? People grow up and we move on.

Either way, every fat kid needs their side kick, and Hector, you were mine. This is for you, for sticking with me through all those tough times at lunch where I'd eat your food and those days we'd play with your ninja turtles and talk about how the Green Ranger was better than the Red Ranger.

You were the best friend a fat kid could have.

I can has blog?

Memoirs of a Fat Kid was an idea I was tossing around with a friend of mine one boring afternoon. We were in my room listening to the my favorite playlist on my iPod called "Vagina Music", and we were recounting our horror stories as fat children.

"Oh, you think you had it bad? I had to start wearing junior sized clothing at the age of 10."
"Yeah? Well I got caught eating everybody's lunch in Pre-K."

After we laughed about it for what seemed like hours, I thought I should write a book one day. A collection of horrible memories I had as a fat kid. I wanted to write about how I used to beg my mom to let me stay home because I was too embarrassed to go to birthday parties and show up in the ugliest clothes available only to plus sized children. I also wanted to write about how my nick name at home, to this day, is "Gorda" which is fatty in Spanish.

I decided I will go through with this book, but I have to start somewhere.

This is it.

On a side note, I'm not only going to use this blog to talk about fat kid memories that are hilarious. I'm will write about bad movies, bad music and shitty people and society.

Enjoy!