on wednesdays i try to eat lunch with bella and alex. unfortunately for my time efficiency, bella and alex have different lunch and recess times. how this plays out is that i have lunch with alex, and then recess with his class, and then i have lunch with bella and then recess with her class. it is worth noting that at their recesses i play ogre. ogre in this scenario entails one 41 year old dude chasing thirty plus running, climbing, sliding and screaming elementary age children around a wood-chipped playground for twenty break-free minutes.
this last wednesday while having lunch with bella's class, bella's best friend, a girl named fautou, saw me walking to the table and called to me. when i leaned down to her she said the following in a stumbling and hesitant manner:
i'm not saying you were fat before but you look less fat than you used to. i mean you look skinnier than you used to. but i'm not saying you looked fat before.
smiling at her struggle to get the observation out, i told her that that was the nicest thing anyone had said to me all week and i appreciated her taking the time to share it. and i do believe her compliment put a little extra bounce in me for that days round of ogre with her and bella's class.
