perspective

I was getting breakfast the other morning, and was in line behind a ballerina. You could just tell she was a ballerina – the tights, the slippers, the loose sweater over the bodysuit, the bun. You could also tell by how long her legs were, and her neck, and how slender and muscular and tiny she was. Teeny-tiny. A scrap of a slip of a wee bit of a thing half my size.

And I hated her a little bit, and completely automatically, a knee jerk skinny little bitch, especially when I saw that she was buying just a cup of tea and a bowl of fruit, and I was standing there with a chocolate croissant and a non-fat latte loaded with sugar.

But I got all rational, and I was kind of proud of myself. Self, I thought, she is a ballerina. She works to look like that. You see the fruit? She eats to look like that. She takes care of herself. Self, you do not take care of you. If you were eating fruit and doing calisthenics, you would – well, you wouldn't look like that, but you wouldn't look like this either. And thus, it is unfair to judge her unfairly. And lo, sanity and perspective was restored.

And then her friend, who was also a ballerina, bounded up all perfect and slender, holding two giant egg, cheese and croissant sandwiches, one of which she thrust at the girl before me. Then she said, "I need a muffin, too!" And she sashayed her tiny, perky ass back over to the pastries as ballerina number one licked the grease off the bones of her wrist.

And my god, did I hate them both.

I learned a lesson that day. And the lesson was – I want an egg, cheese and croissant sandwich, please.

This entry was posted by anne, on Tuesday, October 26, 2004. You can leave your response.