Big ol Rodney

Mr. Rodney was a 500lbs 5ft 7in, thick beard man who loved food. He was the

biggest person in the village and lived with his wife and two daughters. He stayed home all day

while his wife worked to provide for the family. It was believed that he ate twice every hour and

drank a two litre bottle of Pepsi in two hours. “Doh aks fi when mango does be inna full swing.

Him haffi eat a whole basin all by he self,” his neighbour wouldn’t hesitate to say to anyone who

asked about the size of Mr. Rodney.

“Babe I ave warned you for this excessive eating of yours buh you doh listen and

you hardly walk,” his wife would lecture him every day. But that didn’t stop his bad habit.

Although his beard added some roughness to his facial features, Mr. Rodney was a “softie” at

heart. He greeted everyone “good day sir or good day mam” and went out of his way to help

anyone in need in any way that he could. Even that, however, didn’t stop him from being teased

mercilessly by strangers and the people in the village. He was called a pregnant duck because of

the size of his belly and the way he walked. His stomach was flabby and twice the size of 1/4

sack of sugar. It hang over his genitals restricting leg movement.

“What are your feet, a pair of tectonic plates? Why are you moving so slowly?”

they would tease him about the way he waddled. He was also called fatty, fatty boom boom and

fatta and made fun of the fact that when he sat on a public bus he had to pay for the price of two

seats.

It was one of those chilly, foggy afternoons and the wind could be heard as it

whipped across the usually rowdy village. Mr Rodney sat on his living room couch after

consuming of his hefty meals. He was watching television and he felt drowsy. Within minutes he

fell into a deep sleep. He could see himself being wheeled out of the ambulance and into the

automatic sliding doors of the hospital clutching his chest. He was greeted with the coughs,

whisperings and cries of the suffering patients. He was wheeled into the emergency room where

doctors in scrubs, white coats and medical apparatus could be seen with concerned faces.

“Hurry we’re losing him! I think he is having a heart attack get the defibrillator.”

He could hear voices saying urgently around him but he knew it was too late. He could feel

himself drifting away into this peaceful place where he could hear the voices of his deceased

mother and grandmother. “We’ve lost him, there’s no pulse,” He could barely now hear the

voices of the doctors. From this place he could see the crowded hospital emergency waiting

room. Clean but cheerless. In the midst of the crowd he saw his two daughters and wife sitting in

the waiting room with tear stained faces and puffy eyes staring intently at the doors of the

emergency room, waiting anxiously for news. Then he saw a middle aged doctor, he

remembered from the emergency room emerge and approach his family. They bolted out of the

chair and hurried toward him. “I’m sorry we did everything possible” the doctors informed his

family apologetically. The horrified looks on the faces of his loved ones alone said that they

understood what that meant. All eyes in the waiting room turned to his family as they began

screaming and crying helplessly. They knew they had lost him.

It was the banging of a door that woke Rodney up from sleep and this terrifying

dream. He struggled off the chair and went to stand in front of the mirror which was not very far

from him. He slapped his face and squeezed his cheeks to see if he was really alive. At this

moment the only thing that he could think of was this family. His beautiful wife and his two

girls. He had technically seen death, envisioned his future if he didn’t change his life. He knew

if he didn’t lose some weight and change his lifestyle he was going to die.