The Autobiography Of Meatball Finkelstein

1 Dear Diana Capriotti: I got the letter. You're right, that's a generous offer. What can I say but yes? Yes, I'll tell you about my secret. I'll tell you the truth about principals and about the principal principal and his principle, the Principal Principal's Principle, as you may have seen it in the papers. I'll tell you about the FV, the PWO, the PPP, and the PTA. Basically, I'll tell you about every single thing that happened to me last week. But first, I'm going to tell you about my name, because everyone's always interested in that. Besides, it's the beginning of my story. 2 Thirteen years ago from two weeks from last Tuesday, Babs Finkelstein spent most of the morning and all of the afternoon and evening lying on a delivery room table screaming her head off. Her husband, on the other hand, didn't make a sound. Harvey Finkelstein could barely breathe. This was only the second time he had been through childbirth, the third if you count his own. Either way, this wasn't how he remembered it. Two years earlier, Harvey and Babs's first child, Precious Finkelstein, quietly popped into the world in the middle of the afternoon. Six pounds and nine ounces of perfect baby girl. Precious's arrival was as uneventful and painless as any mother could hope for. Nothing like the trauma Babs was experiencing now. Helpless, Harvey did what he was best at. He paced back and forth with his two-year-old daughter in his arms. Hours later, after Harvey wore a hole in the sole of his left loafer, Babs pushed out the Finkelsteins' new baby--the biggest, roundest, fattest baby the world had ever seen. A twenty-seven-pound, four-ounce freak of nature. Me. My mom and dad burst into tears. Of joy? I've never been dumb enough to ask. And though they sobbed, my precious sister, whom I had not even been introduced to yet, giggled, pointed and said her first word ever. Not "Mommy." Not "Daddy." "Meatball." How precious is that? 3 Precious is perfect. She's a straight-A student, she's fluent in three languages, she's popular, she's president of two million extracurricular activities, she's a poet, she's a French horn player, and she's even something of a chef. She has perfectly straight blond hair with a perfect flip right above her shoulders. And, as my mom is always quick to point out to anyone who'll listen, Precious's perfect curl perfectly complements her perfectly adorable freckles on her perfect button nose, which sits beneath the most perfectly clear blue eyes ever created. I, on the other hand, look like a meatball. My face is round. My body's round. Basically, I'm round. Which, of course, means fat. My mom prefers big boned, while my dad wants me to believe that I'm still growing into myself. And though they and my sister are all tall, thin, blue-eyed blonds, I ended up with marinara-red hair and seared-beef-brown eyes. It's hard to believe I'm even related to these people. But I am, which gives me the distinguished honor of being the only imperfect thing in Precious's otherwise perfect life--and if there's one thing my sister can't handle, it's imperfection. Poor Precious could never figure out what to do with me. Part my hair to the left or to the right, put me in a hooded sweatshirt or put me in a sweater vest, give me glasses or give me contacts, and I'm still a fat kid named Meatball. There's just no escaping it. So it was only a matter of time before Precious had to face the simple truth: I would never be perfect. And as far as Precious was concerned, if I couldn't be perfect, I couldn't be. Period. So she started to pretend that I didn't exist. The silent treatment began when I was in kindergarten. It was a Monday morning. My sister kept up her Meatball Acknowledgment Embargo until the maple bookshelf fell off the wall and pinned her leg to the ground. We both knew that Precious had only one choice. Actually, she could have wVenokur, Ross is the author of 'The Autobiography Of Meatball Finkelstein', published 1902 under ISBN 9780440417095 and ISBN 0440417090.