I was about the glamorous occupation of taking in the trashcans and mildly wondering when it would be time to have my teeth cleaned when Gary our friendly neighbor stopped by.

“Can I help you with those?” he asked, as friendly neighbors will.

“Thank you,” I said. “That’s kind of you.” Gary is a kind man.

“How’s Helen doing?” he said as we began the haul. Helen is an elderly lady on the street who suffers from arthritis.

“She says the new medication’s helping,” I said. “And her health is good in general, which can only help too.”

“Health is very important,” he said. “At any age.”

I can’t claim this to have been a particularly new thought for me, but neither was it one with which I felt able to disagree.

“I feel very lucky to be healthy,” I said, because, knock on wood, I am, and, while it lasts, I do. “My body will never be a slim one, but I’ve long come to terms with that, and the important thing is, it works just fine.”

Gary set down the recycling bin, and looked at me thoughtfully.

“You know,” he said, slowly, after a moment, “there are foods you can eat that will help you lose weight if you want.”

There was a brief silence while I digested this revolutionary notion.

“Thank you, Gary,” I said at last. “I’ve actually figured out over the years that I’m OK with the weight I’m at.”

“People are having a lot of success,” said Gary, “with the Paleo diet.”

He paused while he humped the can over the buckled paving stone and into the driveway.

“The Keto diet is another good one,” he added then, and thought some more. “There’s also one called the Mediterranean. It’s a different sort of diet, but it’s supposed to be effective.”

Please remember that not only am I a woman. I am a woman who lives in Southern California.

“You know, Gary,” I said. “I have heard of all of these. And …”

“I know there are others, too,” said Gary. “You can look them up on the Internet.”

To be clear, I do not lumber through life under a mountain of wobbling flesh, the ground reverberating beneath my each thunderous footfall. I eat my vegetables, avoid fast food, and exercise religiously. I go to the doctor for regular checkups and am always informed there that I am healthy. But I am not, have never been, and have long given myself permission, here in this weary, thorny, strife-ridden world, to accept that it’s OK that I never will be, slim.

“Extraordinary as it may sound, Gary,” I said, “I’m really quite comfortable with the size I am now.”

Then I felt bad, because Gary is a nice man, and he was, after all, helping with my trashcans.

“It’s unfair how fashions come and go, though,” I sighed, thinking to lighten the mood with some mild levity. “I have exactly the same body type as my mother’s mother, and in her day she was called statuesque and everyone said what a fine figure of a woman she was. But these days, I’m just plain old large. I feel cheated! Hahahaha!”

“That’s it,” said Gary. “Your grandmother.”

“Yes, let’s blame Granny,” I laughed. Oh, good, I thought, I hadn’t hurt his feelings, then. “But you know, I got the body I got, and although obviously I’d rather have a slimmer one, there are some other parts of it that I’m very happy with, and I’m as strong as a horse, so I really can’t complain.”

“Something we tend to forget,” said Gary, “is that it’s not only our body types we inherit from our grandparents. It’s their eating habits too.”

My stately widowed grandmother had lived in the top portion of my childhood home, but had refused to enter our part of it because she so thoroughly disapproved of my mother’s housekeeping; she seemed quite to like my brothers, who fit her ideas of what boys should be, but I had confounded her notion of acceptable femininity by proving to be, not only as untidy as my mother, but, also like my mother – and, oh, the double generation of ignominy – not “good with my needle.” She did try to be kind to me in spite of all, and I was occasionally summoned to her fastness to play cards or watch the television quiz show University Challenge, on which she harbored a profound, if mysterious, admiration for the quizmaster, a genially magisterial young man with the improbable name of Bamber Gascoigne. Grandma kept on her occasional table a silver bowl filled with blue-wrapped hard mint candies called Glacier Mints, into which she would occasionally dip a large, manicured hand to dole out a lone mint with the air of one bestowing a Papal pardon; beyond that, I have not one solitary recollection of sharing any item of food with her ever.

“You know, Gary,” I said. “Thanks so much for helping with the trashcans, but I think I can take them from here.”

“Did your grandmother eat a lot of carbohydrates?” said Gary. “Carbs are really not good for weight loss.”

“Right,” I said. “Well, I’d better get indoors – I have a couple of emails to send, and I thought that when Mr. Los Angeles gets home we might go to see a movie.”

A conversation that no Angeleno can resist is what’s playing at the movie theatre.

“What have you seen that’s good lately?” I asked. “I hear interesting things about …”

Correction. A conversation that few Angelenos can resist.

“Carbs are a double whammy of bad,” said Gary. “Because they’re not only bad for you in themselves, but if you do eat them they make you want to eat even more.”

Since we were self-evidently still having this conversation, and since I am, in fact, quite interested in the effects of various foods on our bodies, I was reminded of an article I’d recently read.

“Apparently, they did a study,” I said, “of people who ate at McDonalds. And they found …”

“Carbs,” explained Gary. “That’s rice, bread, and potatoes. And pasta. Pasta is packed with carbohydrates. Spaghetti, fettucine, and lasagna are the foods you should be avoiding at all cost.”

“OK,” I said. “Thank you, Gary. I’ll bear that in mind.”

“Green vegetables are good,” he said. “Broccoli, spinach, green beans, and asparagus.”

“All of them green,” I noted. “Although I have heard that a variety of colors is sometimes …”

“Red meat is not good,” said Gary.

I suppressed a whimper.

“But fish is OK,” he allowed.

“Good to know,” I said. “I’ll eat fish.” I quite like fish.

“Salmon,” said Gary. “Swordfish. Tuna. Even shrimp.”

“Types of fish,” I agreed.

“Sea bass,” continued Gary. “Octopus. Or cod. But you can’t fry any of it,” he added, helpfully. “You have to steam it or broil it.”

“Useful advice,” I said. “I’ll refrain from frying it.”

“Because if you fry it ...” he said.

“Oh, my God, look at the time!” I said. “I have to email someone before she leaves her office! Bye, Gary, thanks for the help with the trashcans.”

“You’re welcome,” said Gary. He waved a cheery farewell and ambled off back down the street to his house.

Gary is attractive, good-natured, and gainfully employed.

Gary is also single, and on first meeting him, people sometimes wonder why.

THE MANLY ART OF DIETSPLAINING

The Immigrant Chronicles