Zen Fat Kid

I walk my daughter back and forth to school every day, and every single day I see the same little boy. Out of a campus of 300-plus, I see him just about every day. Perhaps my reticular activating system is keyed in on him. I don’t know. But there’s something odd about him. At the risk of venturing into non-PC-land, I’ve mentally labeled him the “Zen Fat Kid.”

He’s probably twice the weight of the average boy in his grade, as wide as he is tall. He has no neck I can discern, and his head seems football-shaped, like Baby Stewie’s, although this could be a trick of the eye due to the fur-lined winter cap I always see him wearing. The thing that strikes me most when I walk past him is the look on his face. There’s a hint of a half-smile, like he’s reminiscing about the world’s funniest joke in a language that only he understands. And his eyes hold a perpetual far-away gaze, as if he’s looking down the corridors of time instead of the hallway outside the door of his classroom.

Always the same handful of questions pop into my mind rapid-fire when I see him.

1. Does he know he is dangerously unhealthy?
2. Is he ashamed?
3. Do the other children make fun of him?
4. Does he have some sort of medical condition causing extreme weight gain?
5. Or does he have über-enabler parents at home, a mother who constantly worries, perhaps, that he’s getting too skinny?
6. Is he the fifteenth reincarnation of the Dalai Lama?

Okay, not that last question, but certainly the others.

I said “Hey buddy” to him in passing once, and he just looked past me.

…

[By the way, isn’t Zen Fat Kid an awesome name for a rock band? Or one of their albums?]