exercise — Blog — JESSICA ROSMAN

Believe it or not, there used to be a time when young children were allowed to walk to school by themselves. Thank goodness all the parents of the world came to their senses and stopped this highly dangerous activity.

When I say ‘highly dangerous’, I’m not talking about the risk that a child might be snatched while dawdling through the local park. I’m not even talking about the fact the poor kid might be flattened by a semi-trailer. No, there is something far more sinister that lurks in the local community: it’s called the ice cream shop.

It’s not just any ice cream shop either. Just like a kidnapper pretends to be your friend before they club you over the head, this ice cream shop tricks you into thinking that it is good for you, that it is healthier than all the other ice cream sellers. It pretends to be a chemist.

When I was little, a chemist was the place I went to get well. It was the place where things were made better. Whether it was scratches, punches or a brother’s bite to the neck, the chemist was the wonderful giant medicine cabinet that made all those ouchies go away. So it was only natural that when feeling sad, I would stop there on my way to school and scoff a triple choc sundae.

The problem is that whilst vitamins, medicines and Band-Aids do help you feel better, daily ice creams make your teeth rot. But when you are seven-years-old and losing a tooth is a daily occurrence, the last thing you're worried about are cavities.

My poor mum probably thought she was doing me a favour by encouraging me to walk to school. “Go out into the sunshine, get some fresh air,” she’d say. Little did she know that once outside, I’d make a beeline straight for the cavernous chemist, which had poor ventilation and smelt of old hand cream.

I’m sure that if the health experts tracked the obesity epidemic on a chart, they would find a sharp increase in numbers around the time doctors were encouraging families to walk more for their hearts.

Luckily, society has gone into overprotective mode since then, so that children don’t stand a chance at making themselves ill, the way I did. But still, it’s important to know that just because a chemist sells ice cream, doesn’t mean it’s good for you.

Text © Jessica Rosman 2015

When I was born, I was a very long baby. My mum, who is of average height and quite slim told me that she could wrap me around her tummy and have my feet and hands meet at each end. It wasn’t just a cool party trick, it was an early indication that the little baby who could be wrapped around any torso would be incredibly tall.

Sure enough, as the years progressed, I reached the ripe old age of five and the first thing my Kindergarten teacher said was, “My, you are very tall Jessica.” Those words, said in a loud-enough-to-humiliate Canadian accent, have rung in my ears ever since.

When I say tall, I’m not talking about Miranda Hart tall, where people actually mistake you for a man. But I am talking about a body that looks like it has been stretched using some kind of torture device.

People think it is a blessing to be tall and skinny. The trouble is, those who don’t go on to become super-models generally end up looking like The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in an attempt to fit in. The other problem with being a human pencil is that you think you will never get fat.

I know this because I did what every walking bookmark does: I stuffed myself with whatever I chose, be it cakes, candy, ice cream or biscuits and as a consequence my insides suffered. My outside suffered too. Where once I was able to walk the beach without my thighs touching, they soon began to grate together like bits of sandpaper. After years of happily frolicking in the water in just a bikini, I was forced to start wearing men’s extra-long board shorts to hide the hip extensions and jiggling thighs.

If you can imagine a two-metre long stick insect with zero body tone and a drooping stomach: that was me.

And then one day I discovered that my friend had what was known as a calf muscle. It was as if she had just shown me some fancy new brand of shoe – I wanted in. So I started to do something that I had managed to put off for most of my life: I started to exercise.

The calves didn’t come overnight but eventually I was able to wear my legs out in public. And after a few more years of daily jogs I actually developed what is known as self-respect.

But the best part of all was that I could stop dressing like a pre-pubescent male and just enjoy being a girl. A very tall girl, but a girl nonetheless.