two friendly encounters (lyn)

On Yom Kippur of last year (September 28) I meet a woman at the place where I get my weekly manicures.  I even write about her.  At the time, she weighed 111 pounds and I weighed 155 pounds.  We meet initially over a shared interest in books.  Our conversation later moved to Weight Watchers as I had just joined and she was a Lifetime Member.

Today, I’m having my nails done (at my usual place) and a woman is sitting next to me.  She looks familiar, and when she interrupts my reading to ask me how I like my book, I remember her. It’s Debbie from Yom Kippur.  I remind her of our conversation last fall and she tells me that because I’ve lost so much weight she doesn’t recognize me (though I think that’s a cover and has nothing at all to do with why I’m not familiar to her).  Since September, Debbie has lost 12 pounds (she wanted to lose 5) and is now below 100 pounds.  But because she’s only 5’ tall, she looks fine.  We talk for a while and I go back to my reading.

It’s a warm summery day, and I’m not wearing a coat-just jeans and a T.  The doorman sees me walk in and looks surprised.  He likely hasn’t seen me unbundled in a while.  “Wow.  You’ve lost a lot of weight,” he observes.  I beam proudly.  “You’re skinny.”  Hearing that makes my day.  It doesn’t take much.