Your company is having its annual Halloween party tomorrow. Based on the e-mail flyers you’ve seen and previous parties you’ve attended, you know there is going to be the usual department group costume contest, individual costume contest, pumpkin decorating contest, some games, and lunch. You aren’t that big into Halloween necessarily, but the party is always a fun excuse to not work for a couple of hours. Plus, who doesn’t love free lunch? You hope the lunch is going to be good. Last year it was just a little sandwich and bag of chips with a cookie, but some years it’s pizza. 

You wonder if you should dress up. You usually do, just to get in the spirit of things. Your go-to Halloween costume every year ever since you got your first office job has been Indiana Jones. It started out because the costume was easy but recognizable. A pair of khakis and a light brown shirt you already had, a cool jacket and hat you found in a thrift shop, and a whip you ordered online rounded out the costume.

The problem this year was that you weren’t sure the costume would fit.

Since last Halloween, you had gained…well, actually, you weren’t sure how much you had gained. You hadn’t weighed yourself recently. It was probably a good 50 pounds though. The khakis wouldn’t be a problem. You had bought new ones that fit since you wore those most days for work. The shirt and jacket, though…those were going to be an issue.

You pushed yourself up out of your recliner with a little huff. That whole large pizza you’d eaten for dinner weighed heavily in your stomach still, and the handful of Reese’s cups you’d chased it with weren’t helping. Giving your stomach a little scratch, you wandered to the bedroom, bringing the bag of Reese’s cups with you, and pulled the pieces of your Indiana Jones costume out of your closet. You put on a pair of your newer khakis, settled the hat on your head, and brandished the whip at your full-length mirror.

“See? Still fits,” you told your reflection. “Some of it, anyway.”

It was time for the moment of truth. 

The light brown shirt felt a little more snug in the shoulders and upper arms than you remembered. The top two buttons fastened easily. The third button, which was situated just above the top of your ball shaped gut, also fastened without much issue, although perhaps not quite as easily as the first two. It was the fourth button down that really started to give you problems. You just had too much belly in the way, and the button did not want to meet the buttonhole. You sucked in as hard as you could and managed to get it fastened. The fifth button down required the same performance. The sixth button was below the widest part of your belly, and it fastened well enough.

You studied your reflection in the mirror, turning from side to side. It only confirmed what you already knew. You resembled a can of burst biscuits the way the buttons were gaping across your fat gut, the fabric straining. There was no way you could wear this shirt to work, even as part of a Halloween costume.

The bag of Reese’s cups you’d set on the bed caught your eye, and you unwrapped a couple more, dropping the wrappers onto the floor and popping the chocolate into your mouth as you experimented with sucking your belly in and out, amused by the way the gaps between the buttons grew and shrank as you did so.

After a few more Reese’s cups, you reached for the jacket. It too was a bit more snug around the shoulders and upper arms than it used to be, but it was not as comically tight as the shirt. Sucking in your belly again, you tried zipping it. The zipper got stuck on its track just below your belly button. You ate a few more Reese’s cups before sucking in again as hard as you could, trying to inch that zipper up. You managed to get it a little higher up, but you could not get it past your gut.

That was ok, though. You always wore the jacket open anyway.

Would people notice you were too fat to zip it? Maybe. Most probably wouldn’t, but some might. Did you care? You couldn’t decide.

A few more Reese’s wrappers drifted to the floor.

You were definitely going to need to wear a different shirt. With the party tomorrow, there wasn’t time to go buy a bigger light brown shirt. A plain white one should do, though, and you had a couple of those.

Well, that settled it, then. This year, you were going as Fat Indiana Jones. You popped the last Reese’s cup into your mouth and brandished the whip again.

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/words-to-eat-by/donations