Saturday 20 June 2009

Chubby Chops – a life in pictures. Part 1

Perhaps this is more for me than for you. Sometimes it helps to sort out where it all started. If you feel a yawn coming on you can just look at the pictures…
.
<< Picture № 1: 1956, aged 2 ½
Probably the one time in one’s life when it’s OK to have a double chin! I (um) grew into my ears later on….
.
(I've just noticed when uploading the post that this picture has a lot of similarities with the 2009 blog profile picture over on the right - look at the fringe and double chin!! Hey, the gap is only 53 years...)
Picture № 2: 1957, aged 4 >>.
I don’t remember this picture being taken, and yet I can tell you the dress was blue and white and – er – clearly not my best one. Summers are hot in Argentina, and so was my grandmother’s patio. Cruel haircut!
.
This was my last summer before I followed my older sister to boarding school for three years. It was 200 km SW of Buenos Aires along a dirt road that was a permanent, rut-filled, sticky mud bath and took my parents several stressful hours each way to make their permitted monthly “Parents Day” visit, and was managed by a British couple who understood very little about running a school for children under 11. There were 36 of us in the school, and only two classrooms, so the forms were separated by being put at different tables. Consequently I learned little, and only understood this many years later when I struggled in vain to keep up with my contemporaries at new schools, and finally recovered at 13 when I repeated a year. Bullying was unchecked, and in my first year I was 5 years old and knew little about defending myself. One particularly sharp memory is of being chased up a tree by some boys, and being held prisoner there for a very long time (a couple of hours perhaps) during which I shook with terror and tried not to whimper. My sister left at the end of that year to return to Buenos Aires and go to a senior school. I had to toughen up quickly after that...
.
However the main problem with the school was the food – or the lack of it. They didn’t believe in mollycoddling us, and clearly thought they were feeding us enough to live on but nothing extra. Food brought by families on Parents Day sometimes got shared out later, sometimes not. I used to dream about mash potato dripping with butter – great mountains of it, which I would try to climb…
.

<< Picture № 3: 1960, aged 7
.
Two years into my time there and this picture was taken for an ID card to enable me to travel to Uruguay for a winter holiday. I was overjoyed to be out with my father having my fingerprints taken, and couldn’t stop grinning. My weight was right down from three years earlier, the skin drawn tight over my cheekbones, and I remember I used to lose a lot of hair. The untidy and severe looking alice band I wore was to stay in place for many years…
.
During the winter and summer holidays (1 and 3 months respectively) I’d return to Buenos Aires deliriously happy to be home, and Mum would comment that I looked peaky, and would feed me up and deny me nothing. It wasn’t until three years had gone by that a doctor told her that my ailments were caused by malnutrition, and that I should be removed from the school straight away.
.

Picture № 4: 1963, aged 10, at my new school back in Buenos Aires
.
A set-up shot, where I’m supposed to be pointing at Argentina, but actually I’ve got my finger on Brazil….
The stoking up after the malnourished years has taken its toll: three heaped spoonfuls of sugar in hot drinks, many repeat helpings of mash potato later, and I’m fast turning into a little butter ball with a proper double chin. The good old alice band brings out the chubby face even further.
.
<< Picture № 5: 1967, aged 14, wearing the school uniform of my secondary school
.
The four intervening years were a constant battle to be as slim as my school friends, (it’s so important not to stand out when you’re that age, isn’t it?) and I was a bit on the chunky side and painfully self-conscious, hence the look into the middle distance. I was under the impression that long hair would make me look slimmer, so I was forever pulling it forward to cover my face, as you can see.
.
I'll carry on next time.
.
(To be continued)

.

-oOo-

Go to Part 2                                      Return to most recent post

13 comments:

Tracey said...

I really enjoyed that walk down memory lane. [yours I mean of course, I'm not a stalker from your past...lol]

I can't beleive you had to live through malnutrition!

I look forward to the next installment.

Oh, and once you are done, you should print it all off and put it in a mini scrapbook for future prosperity. [Can you tell I owned a scrapbook store for 5 years?}

Lonicera said...

Thanks Tracey (and welcome back to the land of the living!!). I like the idea of a scrapbook...
Caroline

Reddirt Woman said...

Caroline,I know that it wasn't so fun for you sometimes, that trip through memory lane. It always is intriguing to me to read about people going away from home to go to school. I understand about uniforms. We had neighbors that went to private school and wore uniforms, but in Oklahoma in my day if you went away to school it was, in the case of the fellows, a military school to teach them to shape up. I don't recall knowing any girls that went away to school, but we are talking a different century with me. I would love to be able to talk about going to different countries, but I've had to settle for doing a lot of reading to get my travels in a vicarious way. I'm looking forward to your next installment to get some more of my traveling 'fix'.

Helen

Diz said...

Wow...that's totally cool! I don't care how you slice it...you were a cute kid...a pretty girl no matter what your weight. Thank you for sharing.

Dawn said...

I also enjoyed your trip...interesting, very poignant, and a little sad. You say you were a bit on the chunky side at 14, yet you look the picture of health. Schools can be cruel, teachers and other children can be cruel. I look forward to the next instalment.

:o)
xx

DocSly said...

Caroline, you are wonderful story teller. The pictures are so much more interesting when you back them with your details. Thanks for sharing. You motivate me to do the same.

Nola said...

I found that all extemely interesting and can't wait for the rest! I can't get over the fact you had malnutrition!!! I also think you look like a gorgeous "normal" sized child in all of the photos. School age children can be so cruel.

Tina said...

So did you feel chubby when you looked at these pictures from your knew place in life or did you think-wow I felt chubby and really wan't that bad? As an outsider looking in I think you look great in the pictures. The malnutrition part is something else though. Were the school masters just trying to make money?

This also makes me curious-How did you get from South America to the UK? or if your parents were transplants why? ;) I get to travel quite a bit but I have always wanted to live in another country. Thus far i haven't managed it.

Tina said...

Oh geez-just looked at all of my misspellings and typos-I really need to be more careful with the comments!

Tina

Lonicera said...

I really appreciate all the comments, and think what I'd like to do is note them and do a post at the end about them. Thinking about future posts, I've forced myself today to go through all the dusty photos in the attic (about most of which I've been in denial for many years)and have been so surprised at how differently I see them now. I've scanned them onto my computer and will show some of the representative ones (don't worry, not all of them!!) as I go along.
Hence the delay in Part 2. More will follow shortly.
And thank you again - mostly for your kindness.
Caroline

Reddirt Woman said...

Just checking up on you. That last post was hard on you and I wanted to make sure you are doing okay.

Helen

Lonicera said...

Helen- you're right in a sense: what's hard is that I've trawled through dozens of photos of myself for the first time in 25 years (I couldn't bear to before) and discovered things about myself I never truly realized - good and bad. So what's difficult is not so much this post, as the ones to come. But it's helping me, so I fully intend to do it properly.
I'm so touched by the kind comments.
Caroline

Shahzad said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...