The Perks of Being Normal-Sized

This past weekend, I spent 19 hours sitting either on a plane or in a seat at a baseball stadium.  Those two scenarios used to be really tough on me — in order for me to only take up one seat, I had to sit in really uncomfortable positions, generally with my arms crossed tightly.  Between the contortion and the arms of seats digging into me, I’d end up with sore shoulders and sore hips.  Not to mention the people who had to sit next to me, for whom it couldn’t have been very comfortable because I wasn’t very successful at only occupying one seat.

Well, I was about 15 hours into the Weekend of Sitting before I even thought about it, and even then, the thought was, “Wow, this would have been really uncomfortable a year ago.”

I still have a hard time thinking of myself as being somewhat normal-sized.  I look in the mirror, and while I can see that I look better, my natural instinct is still to see the 40 pounds that needs to come off.  So it still catches me by surprise a little bit when I discover that I’m not huge anymore.

It used to be that when I got on an airplane, the first thing I’d do is ask a flight attendant for a seatbelt extender.  Or, if I was flying alone, that’s the second thing I’d do, after making a lighthearted apology to the poor soul who got the seat next to me.  This weekend, there were no seatbelt extenders — in fact, there was almost 10 inches of extra seatbelt length.  (I didn’t have a tape measure, but it was the height of my iPhone 5 times two.  I also didn’t take a picture of it, because no matter what angle you try, it always ends up just looking like a guy taking a picture of his own crotch.)

This trip was amazing for a lot of reasons, mostly the fun of going to three baseball games in 26 hours.  But realizing that I can do things normal people can do was pretty great, too.