I've discovered the best kind of loss

I have found a new way to lose weight. It is called gastroenteritis. Simply bring this little virus home (it will love your children, too!) and you too can lose eight pounds in a week. And make it stay off, too!This happened to me a few weeks ago, and I can't say I'm displeased. Sure, it was a bitch that Friday night when I was alternately sitting on the toilet or hugging it. Wasn't all that great the following week, either, when all I could manage was a bite of toast or a little bit of broth. But look out, baby! You should have seen me when I stepped on the scale and saw I was three pounds lighter than on my wedding day!Hey, no pain, no gain -- or, no loss, in my instance.Now I don't know about you, but weight has always been something of a sore spot for me. I suspect it has something to do with Carolyn and Patty and Jane and the rest of the bratty girls at St. Joe's Elementary School, some of whom were none too thin themselves but couldn't resist picking on the chubby girl. Well, memories linger. Even though my weight has been normal since I turned 14 and moved away from those creeps, in the back of my head I can still hear the taunts every time I get a little water weight.And the voices were getting uglier, too, since a couple of years ago when I started carrying around a few extra pounds that I just couldn't seem to get rid of.Why does our cortex do this to us? I know there is scientific evidence about it, how the most emotional and traumatic events are the ones we remember best. Heck, do you have any memories of hanging up your coat at school? You did it, what, a hundred thousand times, but chances are you don't remember it unless it was the time Tommy Johnson pulled your bra strap from behind, or Carolyn or Patty or Jane whispered that your coat was ugly.And I don't know about you, but the negative memories outnumber the positive ones by a count of about five to one. Maybe I just had a traumatic childhood, but there is evidence that this is true, at least among the young (http://www.apa.org/releases/aging_memory.html).Unfortunately, the "why" of it doesn't help us figure out what to do about it. How to forget about Carolyn and Tommy or how badly it hurt when someone called you "Chubs." This is the real work, and I've found that for me, the results are uneven so far. I may not care what Carolyn thinks about my coats, and I laugh about the bra strap now. But I still hear the voices when my stomach flabs out.I don't really have anything profound to suggest. Perhaps the mere understanding that for all our work, it is awfully hard to put away the past. It's not a sweater or a high school yearbook, something to be given to charity or stored in the garage. Luckily, we do learn to reconcile and sometimes we mature enough to not really care anymore. I guess that's the best we can hope for.Or a little gastroenteritis. As I've just discovered, sometimes it's easier just to lose the extra pounds. If only the positive events made for more vivid memories!