Guilty Pleasures

Have any guilty pleasures? Something you really enjoy but are embarrassed to admit to people?

Mine's Howard Stern. I've been a fan of his since my college days, and over the years he's always been not only a guilty pleasure, but also a rare commodity for me. When I left my college town and returned to the boonies, trying to hear Howard on the radio often required scientific calculations to try to pull the signal in from the nearest metropolitan radio station that carried him. Watching him on E! was okay, but they tended to feature my least favorite part of the show -- him and the guys drooling over the dime-a-dozen blonde strippers, centerfolds and porn stars.
So it was with great delight last year that I discovered Howard was moving to Sirius satellite radio, and I signed up as soon as I could. Now I could hear my favorite stuff: the gang relating their personal lives with each other, discussing current events, and of course Robin Quivers' news at the end of the show.

Today Howard said something that caught my attention. He was commenting how he went to an auction and was thinking to himself how he couldn't afford anything he saw. Robin laughed at him -- the man is worth mega-millions thanks to his satellite deal, yet he's still in the middle class mind set. "You're like one of those anorexics who looks in the mirror and sees herself as fat."

"Yeah," Howard replied, "I'm like one of those fat girls who loses a lot of weight and still thinks she's fat."

Count me in on that club. I hope I don't have a lifetime membership, though, because it's hard on the self-esteem. Just today I was uploading the new web site for my church, and I clicked on a photo of myself. I didn't really want to include any photos of myself, but I didn't want to be one of those people who erased themselves from history by leaving out all photographic evidence of my existence. Anyway, I continue to be startled at my size relative to other people. I'm by no means petite, but I still truly think of myself as the largest person in the room. So when I see myself in a group of people and I blend right in, it's weird.

The funniest thing was, my picture is in a photo gallery. When I moved on from the picture of myself to the next in line, the picture went short and wide to prepare for the next photo. As my body got stretched out and looked much, well, wider, I thought to myself that that was how I pictured myself. My head's as distorted as a fun house mirror!

Hopefully someday that perception will change. I don't want to delude myself that I'm thinner than I am, because I've been there and done that. It would be nice if one day the image in my head will match reality, and most importantly, that I'm okay with that. There would be no guilt in that pleasure.