I'll be honest. I was just rooting for blending in.

When a person is morbidly obese, they never really look at themselves in the mirror. Just the head part.

I have many overweight friends. They all agreed with me on that point.

You put on an outfit and the best you hope for is "do I look fat in this??" or which outfit makes me look less fat??"

Frankly, I got so sick and tired of trying to find outfits that hid my hips, etc, and after a while, well, things just clicked.

I really just hoped to BLEND IN!!!

Never in all my dreams would I think a person would come up to me and say "wow, look at you, hot pink and a bag to match, you look great".

I laughed my head off. You see, when you reach a certain age, you learn not to sweat the small stuff.

And it's completely different when an overweight person marches up to you and says: 'you think you're hot stuff don't you??"??

People do this, believe it.

I've had to practice retorts until I got it straight in my head.

So now if a person SAYS anything inappropriate FOR ANY REASON WHATSOEVER, I look them dead in the eye and say "Why on earth would you say such a thing to me". Stops them dead in their tracks.

I have a friend who has a mom, who well, to be kind, this woman would embarass a flea in a circus. Whatever is in her mind, is on her lips.

My friend and her husband took the mom out to dinner with some friends. I said to her "are you nuts, you know what will happen" And she goes, "well, I'll just watch her and head her off at the pass". I said "YOUR MOTHER???" not gonna happen".

So they come home from the dinner and my friend is crying and she goes "Oh my god you won't believe what my mother did to me in front of my husband and his friends, I'm so mortified".

It seems that her mother was sitting at the table in the restaurant and said out loud "you people think my daughter is so nice and sweet, well let me tell you , blah blah blah". My friend just looked at her mother and "Thanks a lot Mom". the other people just sat there looking embarassed.

I then told her what to do the next time her mom does this.

I said: "The next time you are out to dinner with your your mom and she blurts out something in front of your friends,(she's 77 by the way, she is NO old lady, she knows exactly what she is doing), I said , Simply look the other way, not at your mom, turn to the other people and say "you must excuse my mother, she is obviously off of her meds".

She burst out laughing. She said she will do this if it happens again. And it WILL happen again.

And no offense to anyone ON meds. But somebody has to put this person in her place.

My mother used to do this to me all the time when I was overweight. She once knocked a french fry out of my hand in front of other people and said "you need this french fry like you need a hole in the head". I was 30 at the time.

Oh, how I wish I could go back in time and say what I have learned to say all these years later.

Remember, practice makes perfect. And anytime someone says something nice to you, simply say "Thank you". and pass on the compliment to another person. I do this every day. Makes me smile.

Melody