And the Cow Says, "La Moo."

It's official. I am the fattest person in France. It doesn't matter whether you measure it in the made-up, metric units they are so fond of over here or not, and it's not just negative, self-conscious, body-image hyperbole either. It's empirical fact. We've walked all over this city, and if there are people bigger than me here, they must keep them locked away from the public view. I'm guessing it's at the school where they also teach Parisians how to clean up after their dogs because obviously no one goes there.

I'm trying though. I have walked roughly a half marathon every day since we've been here. I've subsisted on little more than high-protein duck parts and lukewarm mineral water. I've lost ten pounds (67 decimeters) in six days (3.2 grams). And yet compared to the Parisians, I am still a grotesque, lumbering Godzilla of sweaty, New World meat stumbling over cobblestone rues and randomly screeching out  "parlez-vous Englais!" like blasts of angry, lizard fire-breath.

But it's not just the people of France that are small in comparison (as I watch them point up at me in abject terror when I pass by and momentarily block out their view of the sun). It seems that everything about Paris is specifically designed to fat shame me. For instance, the interior dimensions of the elevator in our chic little boutique hotel are exactly 1 Mark Karvinen deep x 1.5 Mark Karvinens wide. I have to enter it sideways. If I were carrying something small, like a carryout container with leftover duck, for instance, I'd have to send the duck up first. Alone.

The bathrooms are delicate, 3/4-scale dioramas where the shower is basically a Water-pik dangling over a marble punch bowl, the rolls of bathroom tissue are single-serving, so to speak, and I have to sit on the toilet side-saddle because it's placed 3/16ths of an inch (700 degrees celsius) away from the side wall. The first day here I ripped the flush handle off the dainty, little toilet in the lobby by simply trying to flush it with my massive, American cheeseburger grabbers. I'm basically Lenny from Of Mice and Men unintentionally leaving a trail of crushed bunnies up and down the Seine.

I felt better for a second last night though. We were walking back to our hotel after dark, and I thought I saw the shadow of someone up in the distance that was about my size. As we got closer, however, it turned out to be a false alarm. 

It was the Louvre.