Walking from the second restaurant of the evening, picking up some to-go nuggets for one of my picky eaters back in our D.C. hotel room I enjoyed the quiet and the people watching. As I make it to the top of the hill and started across the overpass I was met by an interesting group of people. There were five or six of them and the men looked my age or maybe a bit older and the women were young, thin beautiful and dressed to show it off. I probably looked at them a little too long trying to figure out how they all fit together, but maybe I was giving off a judgmental vibe because one of the young women looked directly at me and said, “You are beautiful.”

I can’t tell you how I reacted. I might have said thank you. I might have looked away in embarrassment. I know what I looked like, what I look like all the time. My hair is going gray because I have given up on hiding it. During the past two years I have gained 30 lbs on my already firmly overweight frame. I have given up.

Why did she say that to me? I’ve been thinking about this for 3 months.