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fall, football in the snow. We could spend hours throwing rocks at a tree stump or playing Marco Polo in the pool at her house.  The only kids we didn’t know in the neighborhood were the pale, overweight home-schooled kids that got tired too quickly for any sport and always just wanted to bike to 7-Eleven to get Slurpees and Snickers.  We got those kids to stop hanging out with us real quick using the simplest of methods: “Beat it, lardbutt”.  Nowadays, kicking out the fat kid from play would mean dissolving whole neighborhoods. 
         “Dr. Grant, I think it’s because Xander is shy.”
         Shy of what, two hundred pounds?  How can she not see what’s going on here?  She must be too close to the fat.  Like when my fat grandmother would hug me when I was a kid and bury my face in her belly’s cavernous muffintop -- I could barely breathe much less know what the hell was going on around me.  I guess Kate needs to hear it straight out of Xander.
         “Xander, what’s going on at school, little buddy?”
         “Nothing.”
         “Are kids picking on you?”
         Silence.  Kate chimes in firmly, “Xander, Dr. Grant asked you a question.”
         “Yeah, kids are picking on me.”
          It’s no wonder.  Xander is big.   Kate is tall, slender and in a cashmere turtleneck, wool dress pants and leather boots today, and I am betting six year old Xander weighs as much as she does right now, even with all of her fall clothing. 
         “Kate, you and I both know kids can be cruel, so it’s just one more reason to get Xander in better shape before the kids really get mean.”
          “You’re so right, Dr. Grant, I guess Xander just got sucked into this national childhood obesity crisis.  Did you see Dateline last night?  It’s really a problem.”   
         So a growing collection of fat kids are what constitutes an epidemic nowadays, a national crisis?  It is an epidemic and crisis as much as credit card debt is an epidemic and two pack-a-day smokers dying of lung cancer is a crisis.  It has become common culture to be overweight and the minutiae of how and why or who’s responsible has become background noise.  The collective of obese has become its own entity, separate from the individual gluttons that comprise it, effectively shifting the mindset of responsibility from person to some sweeping crisis.  The Cuban Missile Crisis was a crisis, the beginnings of HIV was a crisis, kids going hungry is a crisis; kids eating double bacon cheeseburgers, large fries, and chocolate milkshakes every day is not a crisis.  It is just simple overconsumption.  The elephant in the room needs a bigger spotlight. 
         “What do you feed Xander, Kate?”
         “Oh, a pretty balanced diet.  He loves chicken and I always serve some vegetable with his meals.  He loves fruit.”
         She said it as if Xander was just eating three ounces of grilled chicken with a small side salad and an apple every meal.  As if he had grown wider because of a diet of lean protein, fresh vegetables and fruit.  No one has ever become morbidly obese eating a balanced diet in proper portions.  No one.  The evidence of poor dietary constitution is in the constitution of double chins, accordion folding bellies and an appearance of perpetual unisex pregnancy. Parents are always going to gloss over the bad reality, either with doublespeak or outright lies, to deflect any suggestion of their negligence or their child’s shortcomings.  
         “Chicken or chicken nuggets?”
         “Chicken nuggets, I guess.”
         “And potato for a vegetable most of the time, right?”
         “Oh, come on, Dr. Grant, it’s not only potatoes.  He likes corn too.”
         “French fries and creamed corn?”
         “Sometimes.”
         “And fruit cocktail or fruit roll-ups?”
         “I guess both usually.  I admit it, yes, he