Children can be cruel to their peers - especially if there is a child that is a little different from the majority. Children go through many stages as they grow up. There is the gangly period when the girls physically outpace the boys. The boys then endure the lanky stage where they deal with two left feet while trying to come to terms with the newly discovered rib Adam had lost in the Garden of Eden. Each growth spurt carried it's own pain for most certainly - if not for all children.
Compound the normal growing pressures by adding something like being obese, and a child can find himself or herself lost in a hell from which he or she can see no escape. Many of us spend a lifetime battling our childhood insecurities. Those of us of a certain age remember cruel jokes and poems. Poems like: "fatty fatty two by four, can't get through the kitchen door". As adults we all too often find that the cruelties were not left behind at the school ground doors. They tend follow man through adulthood fed by an ever increasingly judgmental society.
It happened to Two Hundred and Sixty Five (265) pound Ricky Labit and his wife's cousin, weighing in at Two Hundred and Seventy Seven (277) pounds, on Dec. 21, 2007, when they told FOX News they were overcharged and banned by an all you can eat buffet in Houma, La. Why? Because the owners apparently believed them to eat too much. They said before finishing their meal, they were presented with a bill for $46.40, roughly double the normal buffet price. The waitress explained, "Y'all fat, and y'all eat too much." And, finally the two men were barred from the restaurant before leaving the facility.
Who knew the people of the Sportsman's Paradise could be so cruel? Certainly not yours truly. Having lived in the great State of Louisiana for five (5) years we fell in love with it. The Tennessee Mountain Man not being a light weight himself can see both sides. In younger years he certainly got his money's worth when eating at such places.
Computer man owned a restaurant at one time. Sundays were an open buffet and there was a husband and wife couple weighing in around four hundred (400) pounds each who drove over an hour to get to the facility every Sunday. They were dreaded because they were the first to arrive - usually before the doors were unlocked, and they were the last to leave. And, incredibly they were able to eat the entire time. Then you never saw them for a week when the buffet was once again open. They were a site to behold as they waddled about the place and had to turn sideways to get through the door. Unlike the skinny customers, they always had a smile on their faces. They were apparently happy and they were always treated with respect.
The treatment the two Louisiana men received at the restaurant was appalling enough. The State of Mississippi decided it should pile on. The big brother component of the legislature wants to make sure if one is of a certain BMI he or she cannot get service in a public restaurant. Mississippi is quick to say the bill is dead and will not become law. But, it has been the experience of the American people that once such a dumb move gets started it grows legs and keeps crawling along until the state manages to subdue another liberty.
Are the food police about to strike again? Back off people!
Have we found yet another way to assure that only the beautiful people dare be seen in public? Do we really want big brother regulating such things? First, the airlines started charging over weight people for two seats (explainable - see picture above), and now the government wants to bar them from even getting through the kitchen door.
Would you super size that and... give me a bag of chips and... a... diet coke, please?
Publication of Burk Pendergrass, J.D., a Cherokee Indian and Viet Nam Vet specializing in website design at computermanwebsitedesign.bravehost.com/ and remotehelpdesk1.com/ specializing in online computer repair. Reprint authorized with credits. |
