¶ "Look at Fatty," "get a truck," and other jibes greet the fat man on every hand. He knows he can not proceed a block without being the butt of several jokes, but he listens to them all with an amiability surprising to other types. And this good nature is so apparent that even those who make sport of him are thinking to themselves: "I believe I'd like that man."
The Fat Man's Habits
¶ "Never hurry and never worry" are the unconscious standards underlying many of the reactions of this type. If you will compile a list of the habits of any fat person you will find that they are mostly the outgrowths of one or both of these motives.
Won't Speed Up
¶ You would have a hard time getting an Alimentive to follow out any protracted line of action calling for strenuosity, speed or high tension. He will get as much done as the strenuous man when their mentalities are equal—and often more. The fat person keeps going in a straight line, with uniform and uninterrupted effort, and does not have the blow-outs common to more fidgety people. But hard, fast labor is not in his line.
Loves Comedy
¶ All forms of mental depression are foreign to fat people as long as they are in normal health. We have known a fat husband and wife to be ejected for rent and spend the evening at the movies laughing like four-year-olds at Charlie Chaplin or a Mack Sennett comedy. You have sometimes seen fat people whose financial condition was pretty serious and wondered how they could be so cheerful.
Inclined to Indolence
¶ Fat people's habits, being built around their points of strength and weakness, are necessarily of two kinds—the desirable and the undesirable.
The worst habits of this type are those inevitable to the ease-loving and the immature-minded.