Let me tell you some of the things I hate….

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Egotistical old people that cut in line all the time, egotistical 17 year olds that work for the school newspaper, Christmas shopping, those doilies people throw on the arms of their couches, tartan couches with doilies…

And shopping for clothes.

Gods do I hate shopping for clothing.

Why you ask… let me enlighten you.

Let's get one thing straight, I'm not the type of person that politely gets up in an Italian restaurant go to the bathroom and puke it all out to retain my pencil stick figure form that heaven forbid should I walk over a sewer grate and fall in.

I like food. I love food. Bring me more food, I'll eat it too. Well not all of it. I won't eat *shite* wrapped in batter tossed in the fryer if you get my drift. And I do not like to eat pizza, cupcakes for breakfast I'm not a fast food connoisseur if you're thinking that route.

So I don't have a size 00 body, my body isn't hourglass its more like a digital clock at this point. Not grandfather. I'd be called 'fat' by today's standard. And frankly standard can go to the ocean and shite in it for all I care. I do not play burden to trends and slave myself to fashion. I don't dress in sweats or muffin pants either, my fat is nicely hidden thank you very much and if you are disgusted by such a fact you can just stop reading right now go to the bathroom and purge if it brings you pleasure.

I know it brings me great pleasure to see you become so miserable over something so fundamentally stupid that I sit here in bliss and laugh happily.

I'm in a sadistic mood by the way, pass it on.

I wear things that have X's by the numbers. If you don't know what that means then I don't care and I'm not going to explain it either. Unfortunately designers nowadays believe that once you cross over a size 10 all you should wear are Moo Moo's and kittens embroidered onto sweaters with collars playing with yarn.

Whoever invented the god forsaken 'happy grandmother' sweater should be shot, quartered and keel hauled and that's the nicer of the torture sessions I had in mind. OH and some clothing stores think that because you are larger than average than they can charge UP THE ASS and beyond.

50 bucks for a plain tee shirt?

Kiss my German ass it's plenty big enough!

As I stood in the ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />sea of Moo Moo's and grandmother knit sweaters I let out a sigh wondering what the hell am I doing here. I hate retail, I used to work retail and if you've read my earlier works you realize just how much I hate working retail. I'm standing in a sea of black, odd fluorescent oversized tiger print and just about every hand made knit sweater with cute embroidered scenes of spring on the front.

You know, why don't I just rent my chest to billboard companies, if its big enough for Christmas scenes and kittens to frolic in then its big enough for an 'Eat at Joe's' ad.

My eye spots something in the row of clothing and when I reached for it… it's a size SO super small that you'd have to barf out all three major food groups and that's even if you're a size small.

You know what, I swear to your god that it's a conspiracy. A lady who was shopping closeby became frustrated with finding misplaced cute clothing in our section. I told her it was a conspiracy of skinny people trying to make us feel bad.

Its hard enough being this size to warrant having skinny girls shop in our section because they want to wear baggy clothing or even worse… stick their clothing in our section because they are too damn lazy to go back to the purging sizes to put it back.

Oh this is war now.

I'm fighting for my right to shop through Moo Moo's and grandmother sweaters hating every minute of it. Inside the wheels of my mind were turning as I thought of ways to keep those half humans out of our section. I should barricade the plus sized area with walls of dollar menu hamburgers. The skinny girls would either run away repulsed by the offering or they would be too busy stuffing their faces before they would have to run to the bathroom.

Yes… yesss…. I'm liking this plan already.

Me and my new cohort who really liked the cute too small jacket were going to be generals in this army we were creating. First we'll bombard the double 00's with pasta since their figures sort of remind me of vermicelli.

This is war, and I intend to win.

• Crystal Echoes is a professional writer/author and public speaker working with various online organizations into helping young teens with self esteem issues. Living in an environment where image is paramount and the quality of the character of the individual is nothing more than a degradation of self esteem leading to juvenile suicide or masochistic thought. It is by intention to stop this shallow train of thought spreading like a cancer in the mind….