Jock Girl VS Chubette.

I was a fat kid. I also wore glasses and and was a dorky nerd before the words "dork" and "nerd" had been invented. You can only imagine the teasing I got, although teasing is too tame a word. Unmercifully and cruelly taunted would be a better description for what happened.

Fatty, four eyes, teacher's pet.

These are but a few of the witty names thrown my way in grades one through five.

Good times, good times.

It wasn't until I reached the sixth grade that I lost a bunch of weight and no longer had to buy my clothes in the Chubette department. And yes, that is what they actually called it- The Chubette Department. The way I lost weight was somewhat unique. Being a southern child, I got a sort of hookworm parasite in my foot called ground itch, or, to be more medical about it, cutaneous larva migrans. I would show you a picture but you don't want to see it. For some reason, my ground itch did not get successfully treated and spread all over my foot causing agonizing itching, a bacterial infection which oozed pus and serum, and the need to get from one place to another by hopping on the unaffected foot.

The combination of these things resulted in a rather large weight loss, which of course made it all worthwhile.

I spent my high school years doing every thing I could not to become fat again and mostly, I succeeded. This involved flirting with (although never entirely falling into) eating disorders because in those days, that's what a girl had to work with. I don't think the concept of fitness had really been invented back in those days and only athletes were expected to play sports and girls were definitely not supposed to be athletes.

It wasn't until my twenties and I was trying to lose baby weight that I started independently doing anything physical beyond digging ditches and chopping down trees. I read Jim Fixx's book on running, which was a huge revolutionary book in those days, and began to force myself to run three miles a day. I hated it, so it was good for me.

After a while, though, I realized that hating something wasn't exactly a great reason to do it, so I started walking instead of running and I have been walking ever since. I walk fast and I do it regularly, which works for me.

It's harder to enjoy walking in the summer than it is in the winter, I have to admit. Summer has found us and it feels like she's squatting over us with her powerful hot thighs, so walking has become more of a test of my endurance than of anything else, but I am glad, at the age of fifty-three, to be able to endure it.

I am not, let's face it, an athlete, although besides walking I lift some weights, do some exercises, and go to yoga three times a week.

And I do these things religiously. Not only because if I didn't, I would be as big as, well, someone who has to shop in the Chubette Department, but also because when I was in my forties, I realized that inside of this body there lives a jock girl.

Yep. That's what I call her.

Jock Girl.

She looks a little like me and a lot like Jackie Warner (see above) and instead of groaning when it's time to lift those weights, she cheers. When it's time to go walk, she's so happy. And when I finally learned that I could do real, big boy push-ups, she was ecstatic. She wishes I could do more, but that's another story.

The funny thing is, is that I feel like Jock Girl has been inside of me my entire life. I've always known I had a strong body, especially after giving birth to my babies without the aid of drugs or medical interventions, even the one who weighed over ten pounds. And it feels right to appreciate it by pushing it some, by letting it be strong.

I will never have a body like Jackie Warner's and I grieve that.

But it's okay. I may not even look as good as I could, but I take Jock Girl out for exercise regularly and I know she's making sure I don't get osteoporosis, she's watching my cholesterol and weight, she's helping me keep on a more even keel, emotionally, and she's keeping me as strong and flexible as I need to be.

I think that I'm actually going to have to get up and go walk a lot earlier now that it's so hot and I hope I have the self-discipline to do that because it can't be healthy to turn as red and sweat as much as I do, walking in the heat of the mid-morning. Honestly, sometimes I'm so hot I'm not even aware of having a hot flash except for the fact that instead of the sweat dripping off my face, it begins to run in rivulets.

I don't really want to get up earlier and I really don't want to have to stop wasting a bunch of time before I walk by reading the paper and checking out any new blogs that might have appeared overnight, but Jock Girl says I must.

And what I've learned is that when Jock Girl makes demands, I should listen because her demands are far less cruel than being called fatty.

And because I never, ever want to have to buy my clothes in any department resembling the Chubette section again in my entire life. I'll always wear glasses, I'll always be a dorky nerd, but dammit, I refuse, I simply and absolutely refuse to be a Chubette.

Truth be told, there's still one of those who lives inside me too, right alongside Jock Girl. She tells me to eat more peanut better, she tells me to go lie on the couch and read, and she always tells me that I don't have to walk today; I can do it tomorrow.

I'll never entirely get rid of her, that Chubette Girl. But I don't have to listen to her. Not if I don't want to.

And I don't. It's as simple as that.

I don't.