Fat by James Keene

unsolicited consult from the peanut gallery will surely crack the case.  I also once had a cousin that got wasted on Jim Beam and punched a clown at a circus, so maybe Xander is drunk right now?  Everyone likes to play armchair doctor, thinking their secondhand medical knowledge is fact, but most need to just sit quiet in that armchair and realize they are uninformed.  This is the type of guy that would Google some symptoms and read some website for an hour and then fight a doctor’s reasoned diagnosis with his own dim brainstorm by claiming he had done his research -- that is not research.  Research is done by multiply degreed scientists that devote their lives to advancing knowledge meticulously; research is done by committees of scientists reviewing hundreds of studies on their scientific robustness to come to an evidence based conclusion; research is done by physicians, who were trained for over a decade to have a skeptical eye, then reviewing committee conclusions and medical journals for skepticism-quashing robustness to reach a threshold to apply evidence based recommendations to clinical practice.  Scrolling a random blog for an hour is not research.  Don’t read a placemat then try to convince me that it’s The New England Journal of Medicine .  Don’t solve the kiddy word jumble on the placemat then claim to have cracked some far reaching scientific mystery.  Knowing someone who had something at sometime for some reason is not a basis for diagnosis.   
         “Xander’s all right, he’s good to go.”
         The teacher grabbed Xander’s arm, leaned closer to him and got serious.  “Xander, this is your third fight this month.  You’re going to be suspended for sure.  And why are you beating on little Sam, he’s half your size.”
        Kids should only tremble in fear of Xander if they were shipwrecked on a food-less island and were covered in butter, not here in school where there are dozens of vending machines to pump out seemingly unlimited amounts of Doritos and Snickers for Xander to feed his sour moods.  But food must’ve not been enough to fill all of Xander’s holes.  “What did little Sam do to deserve such a beating?”  
         The teacher gave Xander’s arm a squeeze.  “Tell him.”
         Xander just shrugged.
         “Tell Dr. Grant that you didn’t like Sam’s cardigan with Snoopy and Woodstock on it, and how you beat him down so you could rip it off him.”
         Fat people are supposed to be jolly.  Santa is Jolly Ol’ Saint Nick.  The Kool-Aid Man bursts through brick walls and offers cool refreshment with a bellowing chuckle.  Imagine a stereotypical cheery grandmother baking cookies; she is, in the least, generously overweight.  Are fat people all just gentle souls whose become sullied by society’s harsh mocking?  But then there’s Jabba the Hut.  Or Rush Limbaugh.  Or Tony Soprano.   Turns out, jerks come in all sizes.  The jerk gene does not discriminate.  Fat people always spout that they want to one day have their outsides be as beautiful as their insides, as if being overweight automatically qualifies a person as being internally good with a dyssynchrony of physique and personality. It is easy to hide personality failings behind the theoretical effects of the perceived slights of others onto the voluntary elections of outward appearance, but the fact is that no one wants to admit that their outsides may be just as bloated and disfigured as their insides.  Obesity could just as easily be a symptom of self-absorption, selfishness and stinginess.  Hell, neither Xander nor Brian would share even one damn purple Skittle with me. 
         Bullying is about power, and most, no matter their size, will happily take power given its therapeutic effects on some internal ill.  In particular, grade school bullies are usually the fat kid that just uses his weight advantage to pound kids.  The bully just started out eating