(Write it quickly was the only parameter given me.)
The day after my 9th birthday, my father sat me down in the living room, heaved a leaden sigh, and began enumerating several points from a piece of paper:
1) that, unfortunately, it was now his job to tell me that over the last few months I had become “too chubby,”
2) that he and mom had agreed this was no longer simply baby fat, since I was, after all, nine,
3) that mother was deeply disappointed I no longer fit into “the proper size for my age,”
4) that, additionally, he’d seen how much chocolate mint monkey cake I’d eaten just the day before — my piece and my brother’s, with ice cream, and,
5) that, “therefore and in summary,” he was putting me on a supervised liquid diet and he was to be the supervisor and it was all because my parents loved me.