Our family vacay consisted of a short trip to Chattanooga. While there we spent a good 5 hours at Lake Winnie’s water park. After the first 2 hours or so, I was done. I had went around the lazy river enough for a lifetime. After lunch, it was my husband’s turn to run behind the kids.

While sitting under an umbrella (large beach table umbrellas), I noticed a little girl sitting with her family or guardians enjoying an icee. She didn’t appear as if she was interested in swimming as she was fully dressed with tennis shoes on. She was a bit on the heavy side so I was sadden at the thought of her being insecure about her size. She was maybe 10, 11, or 12 years old.

After she got the last of icee out of the large cup, she immediately pulled out a grab bag of chips. I continued to enjoy this time people watching occasionally looking back her way. After the chips, she pulled out cookies.

I began to judge her.

You can roll your eyes elsewhere because you would’ve been doing this too. I judged her according to her size figuring she was doomed. Without self control now, it was bound to get worse. She would continue to watch life go on around her and not enjoy it but turn to food instead.

I began to feel bad for her. A little upset at her parents for watching her eat like this and not prevent it early on. Why not put her into sports or something. Anything except for allowing her to sit around and eat herself into oblivion.

Wait. Then that other side of my brain kicked in. How did I come up with this entire scenario from sitting across from this baby? And what makes me so different? Heck we both got big bellies and need to lose weight.

I love chips myself and indulge in them often so why take them away from her? Yeah I had no right to put a narrative on her that I know nothing about. And to be honest, I don’t eat the best at all times and as a result, this behavior is in my kids. They eat fast way too often and don’t drink enough water.

She is young and I’m much older. I think she should change before it gets too late and well hell I need to do the same. Her pediatrician may be warning her parents while my general practitioner is warning me. So to be quite frank, we are in the same boat if you ask me.

Honestly, too often we look at people and make up a crazy story about them; when in fact, it’s about us as well. But for some reason we never see our own flaws but can pick theirs out immediately. I wonder why. We can be doing the exact same things and nothing is wrong with it until…someone else does it and we don’t like it.

Us humans, we are funny at times. I pray for that little girl. Hope she is happy. Maybe her Aunt Flo was on and that’s why she wasn’t swimming. And maybe it was lunch time for her too but she decided to eat her snacks instead of the expensive water park mediocre processed foods.

I pray we all are better story tellers…of strangers.

Thank you for your attention. Remember you are your own competition.

Competitionof1