RICE AND BEANS EVERY DAY MAKE CUBAN BOYS FAT

Dear Hispanic people of the universe,

If you fry up plantains and then encircle them on a mound of rice dressed heavily with oily beans that are just the side dish to heaving, smoking plate of crunchy, juicy pig parts...THEN...it should come as no surprise to you when little Ernesto, or Graciela, or Nelson (if you are P.R.) have some dulce de leche colored puddin squeezin out the top of their husky sized jeans.

When I was a child, I was not the smallest kid on the playground. There were bigger kids than me....but they were clearly meant to be obese. You know the type, they were so fat they looked Asian....It looked really painful for them to...walk. Then there was me.....not meant for future gastric bypass...

But....

If it were socially acceptable to hook up an iv drip of whole milk to my arm all day long, my mother would've done it. If it were possible to fry it...even better.

By high school, I shed the pudge because popularity became more important than stuffing my hole with guava and cream cheese.

My sister-cousin, Mayte, was force fed because she looked "too e-skinnie", which in white people terms would be "average". They succeeded because by the age of 10 when she was dressed in her latin people fluffy blue and white dress for my high school graduation...it looked like I was posing next to a wedding cake for a Greek family.

I remember watching Saturday morning cartoons once and realizing for the first time that I might be hispanifat. It was one of those commercials that informed kids on how to be better children....like the smoking is bad one.....or the reading is good one.....but this one showed a fat cartoon kid eating junk food and watching TV. He looked really tired and just like me but less fro-ey. The kid then turned off the tv...started eating fruit, he sat at a table and drew, he jumped rope, he sailed a toy boat, he rode his bicycle, and then he became skinny. I was only 10 or 11 but I knew it. I knew the inner Kirstie Alley in me had to do something....

So.....

I sat at my kitchen table, started drawing, and ate five bananas.

The moral of the story is....my dear Goya lovin peeps........If you're not gonna eat it...there's no need to fatten up the pig.