I wasn’t a particularly fat kid, but I was always slightly larger than average. I was heavier, and a little taller, than most of the kids my age (until they caught up with me, height-wise, later on — then I was just heavier.)

And though I’m a naturally pretty strong person (HULK SMASH), and have always had a freakish ability to do sit-ups, I have never been athletically gifted. There are lots of reasons for that, biomechanically and personally, but I’ll just leave it at that to avoid the million-word rant on growing up a flat-footed, bookish girl in contemporary America.

Nevertheless, the memories of my childhood are filled with movement, with gleeful sweat and breathlessness. I was terrified to learn to ride my first bike, but I did it, goddammit, because there is pretty much nothing better than the feeling of being on two wheels, of that flexible, dynamic balance that depends entirely on speed.

Before we were old enough to know better, my girlfriends and I spent large chunks of our adolescence doing insane shit on bicycles. Unfinished construction sites, vacant lots, empty meadows, random kid-created trails through the forest tracing the precipices of ravines that would’ve made our parents shit their pants if they’d known what we were up to — that’s where we spent our time as girls, just average girls, none of us particularly athletic — on mountain bikes in Oregon.

Then there were the summers spent in pools, developing underwater sunburns, learning to hold our breath for a solid two minutes, sinking to the bottom of the pool and screaming to each other in a cataclysm of bubbles. My dad would hide quarters on the bottom of the pool, and this chubby, short-sighted kid would surface dive eight or ten feet to retrieve them, sans glasses or goggles, with absolutely no problem at all.

And then there was the issue of gym class.

It started off well enough, in elementary school, when it was just glorified indoor recess, with floor hockey sticks, pillow-soft dodgeballs, and the occasional “slightly irregular but for-reals” parachute donated for the purpose of making little kids pee themselves with joy — and, once a year, the climbing rope that only one strangely monkeyish kid would ever be able to climb. (Thank you, Mr. Jukkala, for the memories.)

At the end of the school year, we’d have a field day, where everyone ran in goofy obstacle courses and sack races, just for the excellent ridiculous fun of it, and — God’s honest truth — I even once did a charity run when I was ten, because I had two secret weapons: Fleetwood Mac on my dad’s cassette Walkman, and I skipped the entire way. Because I sucked at running even then.

In short, I had a pretty happily active childhood, despite being the unathletic and slightly fat child of two decidedly unathletic and slightly fat parents. Until gym class became a “thing,” that is. A graded, micromanaged academic requirement, starting in junior high — unhappily coinciding with the absolute social, emotional, and physical nadir of human existence. Or at least of mine.

If you want to destroy all the inherent joy in something, slap a grade on it. Go ahead; I’ll wait. Put a grade on your bleary, early-morning coffee-making skills, or set a number of minutes of daily television-watching required to achieve aptitude, or hell, challenge yourself to finish peeing in record time, and watch as the fun (or even the absolute neutrality) of these things is eroded, little by little, until it becomes a chore to drink coffee, watch TV, or take a leak.

Then compare how well you do on those chores compared to your peers, and watch your self-respect begin to circle down that little, demoralizing drain shaped like a “C” — a statistically average mark — written in red ink.

Now, this isn’t something I’ve made up for the benefit of a bunch of lazy icky fatties who want an excuse to feel like they’re not total losers. It’s a phenomenon confirmed by behavioural research — and one of many reasons why I hate school in general, though I’m naturally a good student.

But it’s one thing to destroy the intrinsic joy of doing, say, a set of math problems or memorizing the names of the presidents of the United States — and if a kid has a good enough teacher, or naturally enjoys a subject enough, they might even make it through school without having their spirit crushed in a particular topic.

It is another thing entirely to interfere with a person’s joy in one of the basic requirements of biological life.

When you put a hamster in a cage, you’re preparing to give it a pretty bare-bones existence. And what do you provide it? Food, of course, and definitely water. A place to poop and a place to sleep. And a hamster wheel.

It’s considered cruel to keep a dog tethered to one spot without a place to run, or cooped up in a tiny apartment unless the owner is really dedicated to going on walks. Even my cats, the most indolent creatures ever to occupy the earth, need strings and foam balls and random, crumpled up pieces of paper to bat inconveniently beneath furniture. They sleep, eat, and poop for twenty-three-and-a-half hours of the day…but for the remaining thirty minutes? They are tearing shit up like it is their mission in life.

Animals need movement, and even have an appetite for it, just as they do food and sleep. Also, humans are animals. We need to move. All of us — even those of us who are not physically gifted. But, just as with eating, external pressures and expectations get in the way of our ability to negotiate this very primal urge.

People say we need gym class because OMGCHILDHOODOBESITY!!! People say that this generation of children is hopelessly addicted to screens of every variety, that they will be the first generation to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.

People, in short, say a lot of stupid shit.

You want to help fat kids move? Help them enjoy moving. Help all kids to enjoy moving. And how do you do that? Well, I can tell you how you don’t — by throwing a bunch of them together like army recruits to do bootcamp calisthenics, and then give them mostly-arbitrary grades for it.

Just like with eating, helping kids to move well requires a division of responsibility — which, strangely enough, is pretty much what happens when you turn kids loose on a playground: the adults choose when and where and what to make available, and the kids take it from there. They get to decide how much, and whether, and which. And, unless you’re a disgusting misanthrope, you’ll trust the kids to work to their own level, to their own strengths and capacities.

You won’t interfere, you won’t get heavy-handed, you won’t suck all the natural joy out of it. And you’ll leave the red pen in the classroom.

Fucking artificial pancreas, my friends. This is the natural evolution of the insulin pump. I am wondering if eventually they’ll be creating an artifical pancreas that also secretes glucagon. I used to have these conversations with people at work, because do you know how many people we saw suffering from diabetes? And not just the high blood sugar, no no no, but more often, the low blood sugar. Which can kill you right away, at worst, or just make your life fucking miserable at best. Which the artifical pancreas seems to have reduced by half.

The not-awesome

Let’s define more Canadian kids as fat! Based on WHO standards that are not always appropriate for North Americans. And not at all in response to recent stats showing that the “obesity epidemic” among children has probably leveled off, thus causing people with a major financial stake in treating childhood obesity to probably shit themselves during their tortured night sweats. Nope, not at all.

Let’s use surgery to combat social stigma! Because reducing stigma itself wouldn’t actually, you know, make money for anyone. Because that would involve making physical objects more universally accessible and teaching people not to be so fucking cruel to people who don’t look like them. Instead, kids who’ve already survived brain tumours should probably just suck it up and have some more surgery.

Let’s pretend that sugary drinks cause pancreatic cancer! Except the researchers go on to say that the association only existed among people who drank soda pop, and likely because people who drink that amount of soda pop probably have other, not-so-great health things going on. People who drank other sugary drinks (i.e. fruit juice) didn’t have the same risk. Also? The study didn’t control for smoking. In case you hadn’t heard, smoking probably causes cancer. Lots of types of cancer. One of which is pancreatic cancer.

That sound you just heard was me smacking myself in the face and falling off my chair.

Do you think, perhaps, drinking soda pop could be associated with smoking? I don’t know. What I do know is, if I were researching the link between pancreatic cancer and sugary drinks, I’d probably fucking look into it.

A study just published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry found that adults who were bullied as children were more likely than others to suffer from depression and anxiety, as well as a host of physical ills, including fatigue, pain and a greater susceptibility to colds.

Parents also need to remember to help repair the damage that bullying does to a child’s self-esteem, says Pollack. “You need to tell the child that this isn’t happening because there’s something wrong with him.”

In short, if your kid is getting bullied for being fat, putting him on a diet probably isn’t the best way to handle it.

I don’t know about you all, but I’ve often picked up on this kind of cultural attitude that says, “Well, I was bullied at school, and it sucked, but that’s just the way it is and you have to learn to deal with it.” And that bothers me.

Why? Well, not discounting the fact that sometimes people can turn horrid experiences into valuable lessons for themselves later in life, I don’t think bullying accomplishes anything. I don’t think anyone needs to be bullied in order to grow into a productive adult.

And it’s hell to go through.

So, to me, the idea that because kids have always been bullied, they should therefore continue to be bullied and just put up with it, is bullshittery of the highest order.

Just…no.

Kids benefit from being with other kids, yes. And, yes, using the public school system is a necessity for most families.

But putting kids together in great enough numbers that they can’t be properly supervised? That’s asking for all sorts of Lord of the Flies shit to go down in the margins.

And not because kids are naturally evil, but because kids aren’t born civil and socialized. Just like puppies aren’t born knowing not to eat your couch, or not to pee in your shoes. It takes years and years of learning.

If you want kids to grow up to be well-socialized, to be good citizens and adults, then they need to have enough contact with well-socialized good citizens and adults. Meaning, I believe there needs to be a higher ratio of adults to children than there currently is in places where kids are cared for, whether it’s school or daycare or maybe even home.