Fat Pants Won't Diet

Let's get something straight

I am not going on a diet

I don't care about childhood obesity
I don't care about early onset diabetes
I don't care about the fact
That I am the weakest link
On the third grade dodge-ball team

I do not want to diet

I have few joys in life
And all of those joys
Involve frosting

I'm eight years old
For crying out loud

Why diet now?

I haven't gone through puberty yet
And neither have any of my classmates
So what's the point in looking good now?

And it's not like it's going to be hard to lose weight

My sister Rissy was fat
Until she turned thirteen
Then she gave up eating everything
But iceberg lettuce and Dentyne gum
And now she looks like flagpole with boobs

People try to get me to diet all the time

My mom made me a cake made out of arugula
And thought I wouldn't notice

My entire family was sitting around the table
Smiling at me
Hoping I wouldn't notice

'Doesn't it look delicious,' my mom said

'I'm confused,' I said, 'Do you want me to eat it or water it?'

That was the end of the arugula cake episode

Look, I'm the fat kid
It's part of my identity

Don't you know what it's like in third grade?

It wouldn't matter if I got skinnier
I would still be Fat Pants

My friend Tony Hooper sneezed on himself once last year
And people still call him Booger Shirt

So as long as they're going to call me fat
I might as well be fat

I used to get upset about it a lot
But then Gabriel the janitor told me
How all the greatest people in history were fat

Like Winston Churchill
And President Taft
And Dom Deluise

I don't know who that last guy is
But apparently he was very big
In Gabriel's home country

Gabriel's not around anymore
And that makes me sad

I heard a rumor that he got eaten by lions
On the school field trip to the zoo
While trying to protect
The kindergarten class

My friend Skippy saw it
And said that if it were up to him
He would have let the lions get at least two kinderkids
Before he would have given up Gabriel
Because he was the coolest guy in the world

...And I kind of agree with him

But the important thing is that Gabriel's spirit lives on
In my refusal to lose weight

You know, everybody worries about fat kids
But nobody worries about mean kids
Or spoiled kids, or selfish kids
Or kids who make fun of fat kids

Everyone says they're worried about me being happy
But nobody ever asks me if I'm happy either

I wouldn't even think about being fat
If everybody else didn't make such a big deal about it

I know I'm not the healthiest kid
But I can add fractions
And I have nice penmanship
And I won the costume contest at Halloween

That's still cool, right?

You know, it's pretty sad when you figure out
That you can disappoint people
Just by being yourself

But I never disappointed Gabriel

He used to call me 'Superman'
Because one time I wore a superman t-shirt to school

'Superman!'

He'd yell it across the playground
At recess when we'd all be playing freeze tag

'Go get 'em, Superman!'

Everybody else calls me Fat Pants
My family calls me 'husky'
My doctor calls me 'overweight'

But Gabriel?

He called me 'Superman'

And that's the name
I like the best