Looking at me through a window, you would know nothing about my life - my feelings, my personality, or anything that I cared about. However, I knew that people did judge you from your outward appearance. I was a living testament of this.
My name is Tracy Turnblad, I am seventeen years old, and this is my story.
I had always been larger than most (okay, all) girls in my class. I can't tell you why I ate so much and never stopped, but my weight was just a part of me. I guess when you live that many years lugging around tons of extra weight, you get used to it. It is no longer the burden that it once was.
My mother was the same way. She ate when she was hungry, bored, tired, happy, and every other emotion in between. She taught me this well. My father, however, was as skinny as a bean-pole. I guess you could say that he was also to blame for my weight. He never acted like anything was wrong when I was eating even more than he was, as a young child. My father was always telling me how I was perfectly normal and perfect in every way. I believed this for a time… And then I entered school.
If you are a five year old that weighs as much as your father, school is hell for you. Kids would mock me and make fun of me. Through both the first and the second grades, I had no friends. I would sit in my father's joke shop every day, eating to numb the pain and crying. My father would tell me that I had to dream big and my mother would help in the only way that she could: providing more food for me.
The third grade was a better time of my life for me. A young girl, Penny Pingleton, moved into my neighborhood. She was instantly made fun of for not having a father and the two of us became the best of friends. It was with her that I realized the one thing, besides eating, that I had skill in. I could dance.
In the middle of the third grade, Penny came over to my house and we began to watch the television set. My mother puttered around behind us, ironing my clothes for the next day. After the show that we had been watching ending, we were about to turn off the television when some bright music started. There were dancing teenagers on the screen.
Penny and I stood up and began to dance. "Tracy," she said with a smile on her face. "Tracy, you dance so much better then those girls on the screen!"
I didn't say anything and we continued to dance. We giggled and twirled around some more. Finally, it came to the commercial break and exhausted, we plopped ourselves down on the coach that my mother spent most of her time.
"Tracy," she said again. I looked at her and noticed how earnest she looked as spoke words that would repeat over and over in my mind for years to come. "Tracy, when we are older, like in high school, you have to be on the Corny Collins show. You just have to be. You dance much better then those girls and I am sure that you are a ton nicer than them, too." I looked at her and a smile formed on my face.
"Penny Pingleton, I promise you that one day I will be on the Corny Collins show!" I swore as music introduced the next dance on the television.
"I'm going to hold you to that promise, Tracy." She said in her stern little voice as we got up to continue our dance.
In dancing, I found relief from the pressures and taunts of school. I even found myself eating less, so that soon I was not quite so heavy. My mother didn't know how to handle this. I could tell that she wanted me to chase my dreams, but she also didn't want me to get hurt, which was something she saw as inevitable if I continued this fantasy.
In the seventh grade, however, I found even more reason to be on the Corny Collins Show and his name was Link.
Link was a grade ahead of me and wildly popular. As soon as I noticed him, I wondered what had taken me so long. He had the most handsome face of our school and could dance like an angel (at least in my mind). I wanted him to notice me. I not only wanted him to notice me, but I also wanted him to like me, to love me.
Once, during an assembly that he had arrived late to, he had been forced to sit in the row in front of me. I couldn't pay any attention to what the principal was saying. I could only think about how great it would be if Link could see how well I danced.