Occasionally, as a driver working for a mid-sized company, I am asked to transport another driver, in my truck, from one location to another. There can be any number of reasons why this may be necessary. In the particular case discussed here a driver had quit, and he needed a ride to his home south of Cincinnati from the company’s main terminal in Pittsburgh where he had dropped off his truck. Going that way, I got the assignment.
As is usually the case, the conversation got started on the topic of the tools of the trade. Excerpt #1:
TD: You have many mechanical problems with your Freightliner? [make of our trucks]
Me: No. It’s been reliable.
TD: Lucky you. Mine’s broken down at least once a month.
Me: Really? What sort of problems have you had?
TD: Oh, it’s just been a myriad of things.
Me: “Myriad?!” They’ll kick your ass in the truck-stop for trying to pass off a word like “myriad.”
TD: Well I do this work for the money. But I am an educated man.
As the conversation proceeded, it became clear that he was unlike any trucker I’d previously met–similar to me in his attitudes, politics, and worldview, but, despite his education and progressive sympathies, still very much a native to the blue-collar, hyper-masculine world of trucking (whereas I am ever the obvious interloper).
One thing that distinguished him from the majority of truckers I’d met over the previous four years was his optimistic attitude. My comment about this sets off excerpt #2, which I further preface by noting, for purposes which will become clear, that he was a very heavy man–probably tipping the scales at 280-300 pounds:
Me: You’re much more upbeat and cheerful than most of the guys I meet out on the road–they’re always bitching and moaning about something or other.
TD: Well, I’m fat. Society doesn’t let you be grumpy if you’re fat. If you choose to be fat, you have to be cheerful: it’s a requirement.
Me: [After a two-beat pause, and with some hesitancy] I, uh, well I assume you’re being a bit… well, a bit facetious.
TD: No. What do you mean? I’m serious.
Me: ‘Choose to be fat?” I don’t think anyone… well, apart from sumo wrestlers and actors preparing for specific roles, “chooses” to be fat. In what sense do you “choose” it?
TD: I know what I need to do to lose weight, and I don’t do it. That’s my choice. By my lack of discipline, I’m choosing fatness.
Me: OK, well, some might say that you live in a toxic food culture, and work in a highly sedentary and unhealthy trade, and that you’ve been manipulated by advertisers and food scientists–that all these factors and more have conspired to shape and constrain the “choices,” as you say, that have resulted in your obesity. At the very least, it’s not a discrete choice, but the result of many small choices made in many circumstances over a great deal of time.
TD: There may be something to all that, I don’t know. But I still say it’s my choice. It’s especially clear to me because I *did* lose all this weight–I got down to 180 lbs. over 8 months. Then over the following two years I put it all back on. I chose to let myself get fat again. It’s my fault and my responsibility. [This last was said with some obvious degree of self-loathing.]
Me: Wow, that’s an impressive amount of weight to lose over such a short time. [pause] How did you lose the weight?
TD: Lots of vegetables, portion control, exercise.
Me: OK. Well. Let me ask you this: when things turned around and you started to gain the weight back, how did that work? Were you, one day, just like “Fuck it, I’m going to go back to eating poorly and let myself get fat again” or was it more like sliding down a slippery slope where you drifted back towards comfortable, long-ingrained habits?
[Very long pause]
TD: To be honest, in my case, I’m depressive. Life got hard and I started to stress eat and binge for comfort.
[Brief pause]
Me: I’m sorry to hear that. In light of that, I wonder whether you might have a little more self-compassion when you think about your weight.
TD: I don’t know. Maybe.
Later, after listening to some NPR, the conversation turned to my unlikely membership in the trucking brotherhood. We discussed how that came about (grist for future blogging), and then I asked him about how he got his start. Excerpt #3:
TD: My father was a truck driver, and his father before him.
Me: Did your father teach you how to drive?
TD: Yes. I started out team driving with him for a couple of years. [Note: team driving is where two drivers share a truck, and generally keep it rolling most of a 24-hour period, with one driver sleeping while the other drives. I did this my first six months as a trucker, also grist for future posts.] Then I went out on my own for many years. Then two years ago he got sick. As his condition deteriorated, he stopped being able to do the physical aspects of the job, but he could still drive. So I went back on the road with him again. So he could keep working. I did all the coupling and uncoupling of trailers and opening doors, and moving freight for his shifts and mine. We had those last few months together out on the road. And then he got too sick. And then he died.
Me: I’m sorry to hear that. It’s nice that you had that time together at the end, doing the thing he taught you to do years before. I’m sure he very much appreciated that.
TD: It was never a question. He would have done the same for me. In a heartbeat. I loved him so much.
[pause]
He was my best friend.
[pause]
I miss him every single day.