They won't get us when we're skinny

“When I was young, I saw myself in a whole range of professions. Besides the very popular careers of astronaut or binman, I also considered a career at the Castle, but I soon realised that there was no point in planning so far ahead. However, my life took an unexpected turn. Due to poor health, I was very thin and sickly. My parents figured my head was fine, but my body needed toughening up, so they enrolled me in a sports class. But the sport didn't help, and all my relatives said, ‘Eat, eat!’ And so, I ate and ate. A few years later, the tables turned. Through dedicated gastronomic effort, I reached a truly enormous weight. Sport didn't help, and all my relatives said, ‘Stop eating!’ When I was eighteen and could only dream of girls, I was given a special book – How to Pick Up a Woman. I stared in amazement as I read through tips for unusual dates, manoeuvres guaranteed to lead to a kiss, and ways to make a girl or woman your permanent lover. However, I only discovered the core of the problem a few years later. The reason for my unattractiveness wasn't any mistake in ‘strategy’, no incorrect way of meeting people. It was all much simpler – there's just less interest in a person who lives by the motto ‘They won't get us skinny ones’!” All the short stories in this debut book by Brno author Richard Skolek are written in a similarly playful tone. The stories were published individually in the Brněnský and Blanenský deník newspapers and also in the weekly magazine Týden u nás.