We're sorry, but eCampus.com doesn't work properly without JavaScript.
Either your device does not support JavaScript or you do not have JavaScript enabled.
How to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Need help? Call 1-855-252-4222
The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
July 2001
My father had been at Memorial Sloan-Kettering hospital in New York City for about aweek, battling his final stages of lung cancer. Although he had been a smoker early in hislife, he had given up cigarettes cold turkey some thirty-five years prior to his cancerdiagnosis. So when he was told that he had stage four lung cancer, I wasn’t emotionallyprepared. Our entire family was shaken up and took his diagnosis very hard.
Al Roker Sr. was the rock of our family. Even though he was a talented artist, in themid-1950s, it was difficult for a young African-American male to get a job in thecommercial art industry. After a short stint at a low-paying apprentice job with no chancefor advancement, with a young wife and a new baby to feed, Dad got a job driving a NewYork city bus.
He would do that for almost twenty years, always looking for the next step up.Eventually he made dispatcher, then chief dispatcher, and then he was promoted up and intomanagement with the Metropolitan Transit Authority, reaching the rank of Inspector.
We were all so proud of him. His drive and determination rubbed off on his children. Wewould strive to make him and our mother as proud of us as we were of them.
When he retired, he was excited and determined to enjoy life. My dad found pleasure inbeing with his wife and his grandchildren, and in his lifelong hobby of deep-sea fishing.He cultivated a newfound love of jazz, started a mentoring program for middle schoolers ata local public school and walked with a group of fellow retirees at the local mall.
But all of that was now behind him. His entire future had now collapsed into beingmeasured by weeks, if not days.
Every day I made it a point to stop in, first thing in the morning, before heading tothe studio to do theTodayshow. We’d visit, and then about six twenty a.m., I’dhead on to Studio 1-A in Rockefeller Plaza, where the show goes live at seven a.m. On myway home in the afternoon, I’d head straight back to the hospital to spend more time withhimtime, something I had all but taken for granted until my father got sick.
Time.
Why hadn’t I gone fishing with him more than a handful of times, and why didn’t I comeby the house more often? I always thought I would have plenty oftime.
My father was always healthy as a horse. Mom was the one who had beaten lung cancer andbreast cancer and survived two heart valve replacements! Dad almost never got sick. Now hewas dying and I had just about run out of time with the man I cherished most in life.
There was nowhere near enough time.
Son,” my dad said one day, I’d do anything for more time. I wanted to make fiftyyears of marriage with your mom so, yeah, I’m pissed about that.”
It was kind of funny, actually. My father always liked things well-ordered and tidy. Hewas sixty-nine years old and had been married forty-nine years. To him, seventy and fiftyfelt neatermore complete.
I knew my dad was going to die. There was no hope that he could possibly recover. I didmy best to hold myself together until one morning I simply couldn’t hide my grief aboutlosing him. I started crying, and being the incredible father he was, he comforted me.
He said he was proud of the life he had livedthat he’d had a good run. He told me hewas proud of his children and he loved his grandchildren more than life itself. Hearing myfather speak that way was simply more than I could bear; it was all so final. My tearskept coming. I could tell that my father had something important he wanted to say.
Look, we both know that I’m not going to be here to help you raise my grandkids, sothat means it is up to you to make sure you will be there for your kids.”
I could feel my heart begin beating faster with every word he uttered because I knewwhat he was driving at. My father and I had been around the horn too many times to counton the subject of my weight and overall health. For whatever reason, no matter how manytimes I said I’d lose the weight, I couldn’tor wouldn’t, or did only to gain it backagain.
Promise me that you are going to lose the weight.”
I tried to play it off like it was no big deal. Who, me? I’m fine! Don’t worry aboutme, Dad.”
I could tell he was really struggling to get the words out now. No, not good enough. Iwant you to swear to God that you’re going to lose the weight.”
I realized there was really only one respectable thing to dopromise him I would losethe weight.
Ugh.
Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever had to make a deathbed promise to someone you love,but if you have, you know the kind of guilt and massive responsibility I felt in thatmoment. And if you haven’t, let me assure you, it was heavyheavier than me, and I wasdamn big. I couldn’t say a word. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, because I did, but I washesitant. Nothing I could say would mean all that; I had said it all before, without everdoing the work to permanently change my mind-set and lose the weight for good.
So, I promised him I would lose the weight. Still, that wasn’t good enough for him. Hewanted me to swear to God that I was going to lose the weightand so I did.
Dad, I swear to God I am going to lose this weight.”
I am going to hold you to that son. You don’t want to make me angry.”
Trust me, Ididn’twant to get him angry.
I remember when I was twelve years old and my folks had gotten me a brand-new Sting-Raybicycle for my birthday. It had a banana seat and a metallic blue paint job. I loved thatbike!
Well, one Saturday afternoon, some young thugs from outside our neighborhood camecruising through. They surrounded me, punched me a few times, knocked me off the bike andtook it. My pride was hurt more than anything else, but when I got home and told my dadwhat happened, I saw a look come over him that I had never seen. Get in the car. Let’s golook for your bike,” he said through clenched teeth. He got behind the wheel and I got inon the passenger’s side and we went looking for these guys and my bike.
After around fifteen minutes of driving around, I noticed a dishtowel wrapped aroundsomething sitting on the seat between the two of us. I unwrapped an edge of the towel andsaw a steak knife! Dad was going tofind that bikeand was prepared to fight anyonewho got in his way. That’s who my dad was. We never actually found the bike but Idiscovered I loved my father that day even more than I knew because of his willingness toprotect who and what he loved.
He was also the same man who cried when he deposited his firstborn son at the dorm onmy first day of college. Everything he was made me who I am.
And now that was all about to go away.
So on the morning I made that promise to my dad, I left the hospital thinking aboutwhat he had saida lot. I don’t usually get distracted when I am on the air, but his wordsechoed in my mind the entire show. I was so upset about my promise to lose weight, infact, that I had two grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches for lunch. My mantra at the timewas When in doubt, eat.”
When I returned to the hospital that afternoon, Dad was out of his bed, sitting up in achair.
Hey, old man, how you doing?” I said, but there was no response. He was just lookingoff into space. One of the nurses came in and told me he’d suddenly stopped talkingearlier that day.
Why?” I asked. The nurse said she would get one of his doctors to explain what wasgoing on. You know it’s always bad news when someone says they want to get someone else toexplain things to you. In other words: Here comes bad news and they don’t pay me enoughto put up with the grief you will probably give me!”
When the doctor arrived, he said that my dad’s cancer had spread to his brain. It wasaffecting his ability to speak and would likely impair his motor functions very soon.
As I helped the doctor and the nurse transfer my father back into bed, he lost controlof his bowels. He couldn’t say anything, but the look on his face was heartbreaking. Myfather, the strongest man I knew, both physically and emotionally, was leaving. And therewas nothing I could do about it.
A couple of weeks earlier, planning for this moment, my family had made the decision tomove dad, when the time came, to Calvary Hospital in the Bronx. It is the world leader inpalliative care, run by the Archdiocese of New York.
Two days later we transferred him to Calvary, where angels do heaven’s work on earthand where he would spend his final days. My brother and sisters all came to say good-byeto their father. Our spouses sat by his bed. His grandchildren were there. And we allhugged and held my mother as she watched her husband slip away.
That week was a blur, but I can tell you just about the entire menu at the Calvarycafeteria. I was aware that I was using food to ease the pain, but I didn’t care. As weall kept vigil by my dad’s side, I kept thinking about the promise I had made to him andwondering, How the hell am I going to do this?”
Chapter One
A Portly Kid from Queens
I was born in Queens, New York, in 1954. I am the oldest of six kids, three boys andthree girls. Three of us are the biological children of my parents and three were adoptedthrough foster care. I am one of the biological kids, along with a sister who’s six yearsyounger and a baby” brother, who is seventeen years younger than me. Although I was apremature baby, weighing in at four pounds, ten ounces, at a certain point very early inmy life, I just started eating and never stopped. I suppose my family heritage added to mygenetic lot in life. Both of my parents came from families who loved to eat. My mom,Isabel, also known as Izzy,” was Jamaican, and my dad was from the Bahamas. Dad lookedlike a young Sidney Poitier, who happened to be from Exuma, the same island in the Bahamaswhere my father’s family was from. When my dad was younger, people often did a double takewhen they saw him driving his white Plymouth Valiant station wagonthe same car SidneyPoitier drove inLilies of the Field.
My parents met at John Adams High School in Queens. My mother was one of the firstAfrican-American cheerleaders at the schoolat the time, a very big deal. She must haveloved being a cheerleader because I grew up hearing a constant chant of Rickity, rackity,shanty town. Who can knock John Adams down? Nobody. Nobody. Absolutely nobody! Yeah,team!” Honestly, I can’t believe I still remember her saying that, but I do!
My dad was an affable guy and a really sharp dresser. He was a very good storytellerwho enjoyed sharing tales from his younger days. Turns out, my dad was a stone-cold thug!He had friends with names like Deadeye and Jelly Roll. He had a walking stick that had aknife in it.
Yeah, growing up, he was a tough guy. But by the time his children came along, he was ashort, stocky teddy bear. (I like to say I come from stocky people, low to the ground,with one leg shorter than the other, the better to lean into the wind and survivehurricanes.) Of my parents, Dad was definitely the gentler one. If you fell and skinned aknee, you went right to Dad. He’d comfort you and give you a big bear hug, whereas Mom wasmore likely to tell us to stop crying. Her approach was the early version of man up.”
You might say Izzy was theoriginalTiger Mom. She was tough as nails and,unlike a lot of women of her generation, she enjoyed confrontation. To her, it was sport.I knew I was loved by her, but she knew exactly how to needle me, and what drove me crazy.
Whenever she’d come to my house for dinner, just as I was serving the meal, she’d ask,Is this any good?”
No, I just spent an hour making you something that tastes like crap!” I’d respond.
Mom loved to banter and was a real jokester. She was also honest to a fault and didn’tbelieve in coddling. She taught my younger daughter, Leila, to play checkers as a kid.Most grandparents let the kids winbut not my mom. No way. To her, losing is how youlearn. And now I call Leila little Izzy” because she is so much like my mom. I onceoverheard her playing Monopoly with some of her friends. She wiped the board. Then one ofher friends asked, Where’d you learn how to play Monopoly?”
My nana,” Leila said with great pride. I couldn’t help but smile.
I was what you might call a late bloomer. As hard as this might be to believe today, Ididn’t talk until I was three and a half years old. Of course, as a family friend pointedout later, I could never get a word in edgewise anyway! My mom did all the talking for me.She was like my PR agent.
Although I was born premature, I think my lack of development was a combination ofbeing extremely shysomething I never really outgrew and what today might be labeled as alearning disorder. And I might have had one. The only thing I had no problems learning waseating. Well, maybe I had one issue I didn’t learn, and that was when to stop.
Although my siblings and I have the same father, he was really two different guys overthe years.Mydad drove a bus and was a blue-collar worker. He hustled every day toprovide for his family. When I was a young boy, he and a couple of buddies from NYCTransit, as it was then known, opened up a luncheonette in the depot. They made and soldsandwiches in addition to working their regular shifts. My dad was the kind of man who didwhatever it took to make sure his family had everything we needed. In a Caribbean family,if you only had two jobs, you were obviously slacking off.
But the driversallhad their rackets going to supplement their incomes. Forexample, there was always someone selling hot merchandiseyou know, things they claimedfell off the back of a truck somewhere. In fact, I bought my first movie camera, whichsparked my initial interest in animation and television, from one of the guys at thedepot.
Unlike a lot of men from that era, my father was very demonstrative; he was a bighugger and kisser. When I saw my uncles and cousins, my impulse was to greet them with abear hug and a kiss, while they usually held out their hands waiting for a handshake.There was a lot of PDA in my parents’ household. And I remember coming home from collegeto find my mother in the kitchen doing dishes.
How would you feel about another brother or sister?” she asked.
Are you going to adopt again?”
No.”
Oh, then we’re taking in another foster kid?”
No . . .” she replied, and then paused.
Not adopting. No foster kid. . . . Oh for the love of . . . I didn’t want to thinkaboutthat! They’re my parents, for Pete’s sake!
Mom always wanted a big family. She was the second youngest of nine kids, so a bigfamily is all she knew. After she had me and my sister, she had trouble getting pregnant,so she and my dad decided to adopt and open their home to numerous foster children overthe years. While sometimes people refer to foster or adopted children as half brothers andhalf sisters, to me they are my siblings. Needless to say, it came as something of asurprise when she got pregnant seventeen years after having me.
By the time my baby brother was born, Dad had transitioned from blue-collar worker towhite-collar executive. He had been promoted and was working in management for the NewYork Transit Authority. He had an office and a secretary and wore a suit to work everyday. I always maintain that I had the more fun dad because I got to do more than my kidbrother. When my brother went to work with executive” dad, he got to play with the Xeroxmachines. When I went to work with bus driver” dad, I got to play with change machines,pretend to steer the bus and hang with the guys in the depot. Those were some of myfavorite days as a kid.
We’d start the day off by going to Goody’s for breakfast. Goody’s was a luncheonettenear where we lived in Rockaway. He always ordered a bacon and egg sandwich on a hardroll. Wanting to be just like him, I’d do the same. We took our breakfast with us and ateit on the way to the depot.
The NYC Transit Authority Fifth Avenue Depot was a combination of train yard and busgarage. To a seven-year-old boy, it was a magical combination. At the start of his shift,Dad would take me into the locker room where he’d change into his uniform. When other busdrivers opened their lockers, GREAT LAND OF PLENTY . . .Playboypinups!! Don’tchange into that uniform too quickly, Pop.
After boarding his bus, we’d stop at the corner deli. He’d buy me a stack of comicbooks and a bag of candy to keep me occupied.
I loved playing with the change machines on the busesremember, this was at a time,looong before MetroCards, when drivers actually made change for passengers. I’d ride onthe bus with him for the entire eight-hour shift all along Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn.I’d see the same people going to work and then coming home at the end of the day.Somewhere around noon, we took our lunch break, and ate whatever my mom packed for us inthe two brown paper bags she sent us out the door with early that morning. When we wentback to the depot at the end of his shift, there was always a driver tossing a quarter myway so I could buy a candy bar from the vending machine or get an ice cream. Hey, littleAl, here ya go! Go buy something to eat!” Sometimes I’d just get a Yoo-hoo chocolate milkand throw it back at the end of the day like a tall, cold beer.
Because there were six kids, the vibe in my parents’ home was mostly controlled chaos.I have no idea how my mother handled six kids without any help. I have three kids and lotsof help and sometimes my wife and Istillhave a hard time doing it all! Whenever Iasked Mom what her secret was, she always said, You kids took care of yourselves.” Isuppose fear was our great motivator because I, for one, never wanted to be on thereceiving end of dad’s spankings. It was a different era, but I knew I’d get my buttwhupped good if I got out of line or didn’t do what I was told. Back then, if someone inthe neighborhood saw me do somethinganything I shouldn’t be doing, they’d discipline mefirst and then tell my parents. Oh yeah, it takes a village, and back in the Rockawayprojects of Queens, New York, our fifth floor apartment was in the heart of that village.
As our family grew, my parents needed more space than our old two-bedroom apartment, sowhen I was eleven, they bought a three-bedroom house in a new development we found duringone of our weekend family drives to Elmont, Long Island to visit Gouz Dairy Farm. (Theirslogan? GOUZ RHYMES WITH COWS. Okay, it wasn’tMad Men, but hey, I’ve remembered itall these years!) We loved going to Gouz. There’s nothing like the taste of fresh milkstraight from the farm. But the best part was their petting zoo. All the parents woulddrop their kids off to look at the cows, rabbits and chickens while they went to get freshmilk from the dairy counter. And did I mention the limitless free samples of full-fatchocolate milk? Gouz was a magical place for a growing boy with a growing waistline.
Anyway, we’d usually take the Belt Parkway to get to Long Island, but one day theparkway was so backed up that my dad got off to take a short cut. That’s when he spottedthe development of semiattached homes. We stopped to look at the model home and it waslove at first sight. My folks scraped together two hundred dollars for a down payment onthe spot, and six months later, we all moved in. Even though both of my parents are gone,I still own that house. Whenever my kids go back to look at the house, they can’t believethat eight of us fit into three rooms and a single bath! I always joke with my kids andtell them that in order to use the bathroom, we had to take a number like we were at adeli counter waiting to place an order.
Although my parents had a lot of mouths to feed. I never went hungry; I just didn’t goback for second or third helpings very often. We always made sure that everyone had a fairportion of whatever Mom made to eat. Mom’s cooking was heartyanother word for heavy”soit was fillingandfattening. She was a good cook . . . though breakfast reallywasn’t her strong suityou know, the oatmeal was always a little too thick and herpancakes were never light and fluffy.” We ate a lot of cereal! Unfortunately, my dadwouldn’t buy the brands of cereals I really wanted as a boy, which was pretty muchanything with loads of sugarSugar Pops, Frosted Flakes and Sugar Smacks. At least thecereal makers were up-front about their products back thenthey may as well have put Yup,you are pouring sugar” on every box!
My dad’s philosophy was one box of corn flakes fits all.
You want Frosted Flakes?
Pour some sugar on those Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and voilà! You’ve got your own frostedcereal.
Oh yeah? Well, this cereal box doesn’t have a tiger on it. Just some freaky-lookingrooster. Where’s Tony the Tiger? I loved Tony the Tiger. I thought he was so cool,especially when I watched my morning cartoons and saw him riding in a car with HuckleberryHound. It didn’t get any cooler than that. Neither Sugar Bear nor Snap, Crackle and Pophad a thing on Tony the Tiger! He was. . . .GRRRRREAT!!!!!
When it came to lunch and dinner, mom never made anything fancy, but her food wasalways good. She made a great Velveeta and tomato grilled cheese with Campbell’s tomatosoup. I don’t know anyone whodidn’tgrow up eating that grilled cheese and tomatosoup combination, but something about my mom’s version was specialat least to me.
Lunch also brought the first convergence of food and my eventual career, via SoupySales, a comedian I grew up watching on TV. He had a kids show on at noon on ABC. Therewas a segment called What’s for Lunch?”
Mom, Soupy is having a tuna patty melt . . .” I’d shout across the kitchen so my momwould make me one, too. Since this was before I started kindergarten, I had a standinglunch date every day with Soupy. I’d eat my lunch glued to his show, wondering what itwould be like to be just like him someday.
I gained an early interest in cooking from both of my parents, but my mom was my trueinspiration. Whenever she was cooking, I liked helping her out. I enjoyed the process ofgathering the food and ingredients, putting it all together and voilà! Like magic therewas a delicious meal on the table. The meals in our house were never fancy but they werealways delicious.
Sundays were either a pot roast with potatoes or a roasted chicken with green beans. Onoccasion, Mom might make pork chops or oxtail stew with dumplings. As I’ve gotten older, Ithought about those meals many times over the years, trying to recall the tastes andflavors I enjoyed so much as a kid. I really loved my mother’s cooking. To this day Istill crave her macaroni and cheese, her Jamaican black-eyed peas and rice and her amazingcorn bread.
It was an unwritten rule in our house to never bother her while she was cooking. Theonly exception was when she was making her Sweet Potato Poon for the holidays. This was acrustless piewell, more like a soufflé than a traditional piewith marshmallows all overthe top, which she would finish by putting in the oven to brown. Every year, one of uskids would do something to distract her from opening the oven door so that themarshmallows would catch fire. Then she would yell at us to get out as the smoke detectorblared overhead. It wasn’t Thanksgiving until that old smoke detector went off.
I am amazed to think she created our huge holiday feasts in our tiny kitchen, using asingle oven and a four-burner stove. Thanksgiving brought fourteen or sixteen people intoour home. We’d put every leaf in our expandable wooden dining room table, and we’d stillneed a card table for the extra people who just stopped by.
When it came to food, my mother and I were perfectly simpatico. She used it as a rewardand I liked to eat. My rewards ranged from a bag of M&Ms to smoked salmon with creamcheese. I didn’t have a particularly sophisticated or discriminating palate back then. Infact, one of my favorite snacks was sliced bananas with sour cream, sprinkled with sugarand cinnamon on top.
By the time I was seven or eight years old, I’d gone from being a solid boy to a prettychubby kid. It seemed as though all of the sudden I was shopping in the husky boys’section of the local department store.
Husky.
Like I was going to be strapped to a dog sled and forced to run the Iditarod.
When I first started gaining weight, I thought it was normal. Lots of other kids in ourneighborhood looked just like me, so I didn’t have anything else to compare myself to. Bythe time I was in the seventh grade, I had a real weight problembut no one ever talkedabout it. My parents never gave me a hard time or pushed me to get out of the house and dosomething active. I was one of those kids who liked sitting around reading comic books,tinkering with old TVs or making my own movies. Today, I’d be a video game geek.Thankfully, they didn’t have those kinds of devices when I was a kid, so at least I had tofocus my creativity on other things.
I went to St. Catherine of Sienna, a Catholic school in St. Albans, Queens. In betweenseventh grade and eighth grade, I was chosen to take part in a summer program run by theJesuits for underprivileged” kids, called the Higher Achievement Program or HAP. Kids whodid well in that summer program were offered a full scholarship at a Jesuit high school.
Make no mistake, for a lower-middle-class family, paying for six kids in Catholicschool was no joke. But my parents felt it was a better education and worth the sacrifice.Besides offering a great opportunity for a Jesuit education, HAP had a kick-ass freelunch. I was in!
I did well, but because I wasn’t the most physically active kid (and did I mention thereally, reallykick-ass free lunch?), I gained a little more weight. Sure, I playedsome basketball, but lacking height, speed, any dribbling skills, a hook shot or a jumper,I was mostly used to clog the lane.
I was offered a scholarship to Xavier High School in Manhattan. This was a Big Deal.Xavier High School was and is one of the best high schools, public or private, in New YorkCity. It was also, at the time, a military academy, with full military uniforms.
I became painfully aware that I was having a weight issue when I had to get my schooluniform and they didn’t have any that fit me. The uniforms were very expensive, sograduating students often donated their uniforms to hand down to incoming students likeme. But since none of those fit, my parents had to scrape up about three hundred bucks tobuy me a new set.
I started high school in the fall of 1968 and I fell right into a routine. When I wentto school in Queens, I took a city bus or could walk to school. Now I had to take a busand a subway into Manhattan, to Sixteenth Street and Sixth Avenue. I would get up aroundsix a.m. and have breakfast, sometimes with my dad, then head into Manhattan to get toschool by seven forty-five. Sometimes I would get in early enough to grab a candy bar atthe deli down the street from school. For the long trip home I usually had a candy bar ortwo to fortify me, then a snack during homework and then dinner. Hey, Mom, did the drycleaner’s shrink this uniform? It’s feeling a little snug.
As I entered my sophomore year, my parents were concerned I was putting on too muchweight. Always a stocky kid, I was moving into the actual heavy category. It was rightaround this time that my mother received a flyer in the mail from my dad’s healthinsurance company. Like a lot of municipal workers, he belonged to the Health InsurancePlan of Greater New York or HIP, a precursor to the dreaded health maintenanceorganization or HMO. In exchange for free or low-cost health care, you went to clinics.Well, our local HIP office was offering a weight-loss clinic just for teens. Damn you,HIP. You and your outreach to ever-expanding teens.
This program” was my first organized diet and consisted mainly of celery sticks,cottage cheese and rye crackers. It was basically a rip-off of Weight Watchers. You camein once a week, weighed in and talked about your challenges with a counselor and a groupof your peers.
There were two problems.
Sure, I lost five pounds initially, but it was so stressful, I began stopping at thecandy store by the bus stop on my way home from the meetings and I put the weight rightback on.
Now this was just about the time that Bill Cosby introduced his character Fat Albert.As a kid, I was a huge fan of Bill Cosby. The second album I ever bought was his classicWhy Is There Air?(Just in case you’re wondering, the first album I bought wasAlvin and the Chipmunks Sing the Beatles. . . .but that’s another story!)
Fat Albert first appeared in Cosby’s stand-up routine, then in 1969, he showcased thecharacter in a half hour prime-time special entitled Hey, Hey, Hey, It’s Fat Albert. Iremember watching it and being enamored with the animation, before a horrible rush fellover me.
In a split second, I realized thatI was Fat Albert.
Oh God.
I was black, fat and named . . . gulp. . . Albert!
My life was over.
This was the worst thing that could have happened to me.
My head was spinning from the thought of having to go to school the next day. Ipanicked, knowing every one of my schoolmates was home watching this special like I was. Itried to come up with a good excuse to avoid going to school the next morning, but nonecame to mind. My mom would never believe I was suddenly sick.”
The next day, I went into the cafeteria at Xavier, terrified to be there. Of course,not so terrified that I couldn’t stop to buy something to eat. Much to my surprise, no onesaid a word at first. Well, maybe nobody saw the show,” I thought. But within fiveseconds of that wishful thinking, I heard eight or ten guys shout out, Hey, hey,hey!”
I could feel my heart hit my toes as I lowered my head in shame.
I spent the rest of that week enduring everyone’s imitations of Fat Albert. I did mybest to hide my true feelings by laughing along with everyone else, but on the inside, Iwas dying. I am sure I had been teased before about my weight, but it had never been thesubject of a national television show before. This was much worse. I knew I was chunky butI never felt bad about my weight because I wasn’t unusual. I had friends in school whowere the same size I was, so I didn’t give it a lot of thought. It’s not like peoplestopped and pointed at me for being so fat. My focus wasn’t really on my weight so much asit was on the things that were of interest to meespecially as I got older.
Xavier High School fed my love of media. I did all kinds of extracurricular activities.Athletics, not so much. But I joined the newspaper staff and the yearbook. I was on theAudio Visual Squad. (If there was a projector that lost its loop, I could rethread it at amoment’s notice!) We even had a closed-circuit TV channel that I worked on. To support myburgeoning love of film and photography, which needed a steady supply of cameras andaccessories, I knew I needed to augment my allowance, so I got an after school job.
This was not just any job. For a food-obsessed teenager, this was a dream job. It wasliterally right across the street from Xavier’s back door. It was a place called A to ZVending. It was a small vending machine company, and it was my job to fill the boxes thatthe guys would take to the vending machines in offices across Manhattan.
Can you comprehend the magnitude of this job? Every day I went up and down the manylong aisles that were lined with every conceivable snack and candy bar known to man in1969. Vending-machine sizes of Lorna Doones and Oreos, 3 Musketeers and M&Ms. Packs ofcrackers with cheddar cheese and Fritos Corn Chips.
I was making minimum wage, but maximum snackage. I never had to stop at a deli or candystore for the remainder of my high school years. Of course, I did. But I didn’t have to! Iliterally was like a kid in a candy store. What, I gained more weight through high school?To paraphrase Captain Renault, I am shocked. Shocked to find that uncontrolled eating isgoing on here!”
By the time I got to college at SUNY Oswego in 1972, I had very little self-esteem andabsolutely no self-control. I hadn’t had any luck with girls in high school, I didn’t feellike I looked all that good and now I was six hours from home in rural upstate New York.But then I found an old, trusted friend.
The cafeteria.
When I found out that I was allowed to eat as much as I wanted at every meal, it waslike hitting the lottery! There was unlimited food and I could take whatever Iwanted . . . seconds . . . thirds . . . or more. They even had something I’d never seenbefore: small individual boxes of cereal in a dispenserall of the cereals I never got toeat as a kid! Hello, my old pal, Tony the Tiger. Yo, Dig ’Em Frog, whassup? Tell ToucanSam to meet us at my dorm room for a par-tay!!!
To be clear, it wasn’t just my poor food choices making me fat. I didn’t realize thequantity of food I was consuming either. If I went to McDonald’s, it was impossible for meto order a plain cheeseburger and small fries. I had to get two Quarter Pounders withcheese, two orders of large fries and a large vanilla shake.
I know what you’re thinking. But at the time, I had no clue. When I got to college Iweighed somewhere around two hundred poundslooking back at it, not ahorribleweight for a guy my size. Unfortunately, by the end of freshman year, I had gained atleast twenty-five pounds. But I always wore loose clothing, primarily flannel shirts andoveralls, so despite my weight gain throughout the year, my clothes still fit. Snugger,perhaps, but still wearable. By my sophomore year, I had ballooned to nearly two hundredforty pounds. But something was about to change the course of my weight gain and futurecareer, kicking off what would become a never-ending struggle of yo-yo dieting and thebattle of the bulge.