Learning to Make the Best of Life -- and Herself

Growing up, Johnnie Tyson was always larger than her peers -- she weighed more than 100 pounds when she was six. But years after she lost much of that weight, Tyson has never lost the lessons she learned from being different.

Time again for StoryCorps. This project has been recording conversations between Americans across the country. Today we are listening to Johnnie Tyson and her niece Sandra Fleming. The two of them sat down together during a StoryCorps stop in Little Rock, Arkansas. Johnnie Tyson who is 82 explains to her niece what was like to grow up obese.

"I was a 13-pound baby at birth. By the time I was 6 years old, I was weighing over 100 pounds. When I was 9, I weighed 250 pounds. When I was 15, I weighed 329 pounds. And the only place I could weigh would be to go to the Old Baptist Hospital and then weigh on those freight scales. And I didn’t know how to work the scales I always had to get somebody help, and they go and rush to tell everybody come and look, you know. It was a sight when you see a 300-pound teenager, ah.. particularly when I came along, because I am a child of great depression."

"How do you think your size affected your personality, too?"

"Oh, yes. It's hard to describe how you feel. You feel so insecure. Everybody, for most part, is laughing. And then I tried to grin and bear. But it was just such a painful experience .And in the elementary grades, I don't think I had a thing that teaches but I could truthfully say was just unkind but you could tell how they felt when there were little things to be done like ..maybe going to another teacher’s room or getting a glass of water, you were just kind of left alone. And you have to be extremely heavy before you understand what a painful situation it is. And I really believe it helps me to establish an empathy with most any problem that people have, that keeps them from being able to accept themselves as they’d like to.

"Well, can I ask you what are you most proud of in your life?"

"Let me put it like this. If you are wise, you accept life whatever it presents and make the best of it unless you want to go nuts. I accepted it whatever came. Some of it was pleasant, some of it was not. But I think the fact that I was able to accept it and move on and do as well as I did is the thing that I’m proudest of."

Johnnie Tyson went on to work as an educator for nearly 3 decades. She was interviewed by her niece, Sandra Fleming. These StoryCorp conversations are all archived at the Library of Congress. Learn how to record your story at npr.org.

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