Robert Lopez
I have a friend who every time she sees me asks if I've lost weight and the answer is maybe one day or wouldn't that be nice or I don't see it happening. I can tell her I don't own a scale so I can't say one way or the other. I never say this out loud to my friend because why bother with something like the truth during polite conversation. I never tell her I have other friends who if I haven't seen them in a while tell me I look good, which might mean the same thing. It never occurs to me to say that to someone, that they look good, but I always wish it did. I think I told my friend that when I meet students for the first time in a class setting I go around the room and ask what they had for breakfast. Someone might say oatmeal and I'll ask if it was steel cut or instant or whatever. Then I'll ask what they put in the oatmeal and if the answer doesn't include fruit or berries and maple syrup or honey and either almond, walnut, or pecan, then I will admonish them. Once someone said they had a tuna sandwich and there was a bell pepper in it and I asked them to leave the room. Almost always someone asks what I've had for breakfast and I tell them yogurt with granola and blueberries whether it's true or not. My friend doesn't know that breakfast was always my favorite growing up and there was nothing better than breakfast for dinner. Years later I ordered pancakes at a diner and my girlfriend at the time said I should order an adult's breakfast. She was having some sort of frittata or eggs benedict and apparently this was more adult-like. This was someone who once, no lie, stomped her feet during an argument and stormed off into another room. I didn't know this particular friend back then and so she doesn't know this about me, that I was in this kind of relationship, that pancakes are somehow juvenile according to at least one person on this planet. For years I skipped breakfast and would eat what I'd term a lunch, usually a sandwich, sometime after noon. This is when I was my trimmest as an adult, but I didn't play tennis back then. I forgot to mention that this friend is someone I play tennis with, so maybe that somehow makes a difference. Before tennis I eat oatmeal or some kind of oat cereal with either soy or almond milk or the aforementioned yogurt with granola and fruit and it's enjoyable but never satisfying. Ever since I started playing tennis at 40 my appetite has spiked and I've put on some extra weight. People would describe me as solid or stocky. I'm thick, muscular except for the gut, which protrudes like the typical middle-aged American. Some of my tennis shirts might be larger than others so this could be the reason my friend thinks I've always lost weight. The next time I see my friend after a long interim I'm going to tell her she looks good, whether it's true or not. I'm going to tell her that the fundamental problem with breakfast is simple. As soon as it's finished there's a decision to make about lunch and what to do about it. So even though there's currently a tropical storm blowing through the streets of Brooklyn replete with a teeming downpour and howling winds there's probably an intrepid delivery man who will starve if no one orders Thai food today. I can't let this happen not because I want the pad-see ew with chicken or shrimp dumplings but because I am a humanitarian and care about other people, which brings me back to my friend and how I've never, not once, asked if she's lost weight because is that an appropriate question to ask someone you haven't seen in months.