I Will Always Be the Fat Kid

Yep. I will always be the fat kid. No, I know that term may not be PC. But I own my truth.

Sometimes we just can’t shake who we were. And I’ll be honest, I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

When I was younger, I struggled with my weight, or, as my mom called it, “baby fat.” But I don’t think the term applies when you're in your teens.

Admittedly, I was a terrible eater. Instead of enjoying my mother’s amazing cooking of Spanish and Cuban delicacies, I preferred pizza over paella.

My mom tried her best, but as any parent will admit, there’s only so much you can do to modify your children’s bad habits.

Combine that with my love for my Commodore 64 and Sega Genesis. I wasn’t exactly making up for my poor diet with exercise.

Now this may come as a shock to you, but children can be cruel, or, as Taylor Swift says, “casually cruel.” Being a chubby kid in school was not easy. I was picked on, and some may say even bullied.

It sucked. I really struggled trying to find my place in the world.

I wasn’t smart enough to hang with the nerds and hated cigarettes, so I couldn’t loiter in parking lots with the burnouts or be athletic enough to keep up with the jocks.

I don’t know if I had thoughts of suicide, but looking back, I had no idea what my future would look like.

I had a loving family and a so-good-it-was-boring home life, and I didn’t have a clue who I was.

I did know one thing. I loved to make people laugh.

Yes, I was that annoying kid who put on shows, did magic tricks, and did anything it took to entertain people.

And I used my sense of humor as a shield. Who could laugh at me when I was laughing at myself first?

It got slightly easier later in high school when I shed my “baby fat” thanks to my stint on the football team, but it didn’t make me more confident. I didn’t go to my prom because I was too scared to ask someone to go with me, thinking that rejection would make me feel even less confident if that was possible.

My mindset—even though I didn’t know that word at the time—was just to make it through high school, which I did in spectacularly mediocre fashion. It turns out that thinking about clever one-liners to make other kids laugh in biology class was not the gateway to the Ivy League.

"Being funny" is not exactly a career. So I just focused on getting through school in one piece, partially sane, and then finding my path after graduating.

Luckily, I did. As I’ve written in my book Good, I pursued my dreams of becoming the next David Letterman and ended up having a pretty good career that I’m extremely proud of.

If you've ever met me, you might think I'm annoyingly enthusiastic about life. I get it. But I am because I know who I was and who I am.

I still use self-deprecation to connect with others. Because we’re all too tough on ourselves. Whether I’m podcasting or grocery shopping, being able to point out my flaws to the world is a handshake, a hug, and a way of showing others that it’s ok to not be perfect too.

So if there’s one thing I want you to take away from reading this, it's to recognize your one thing. Embrace it. Mine was humor, but we all have a power within us that makes us special.

This fat kid knows all about it.

I had a chance to connect with another member of the ‘former fat kid club"—yes, there’s a handshake. Check out the latest episode of Good Listen with former MTV star turned fitness influencer, Kenny Santucci .

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