I spent the weekend out of town with a friend I had not seen in a few months. He lives in Columbus, OH, a couple hours away from me, and we decided to spend the night bar hopping in the Short North. Since I have not really been to bars as a single man in quite some time, I naturally spent the majority of my evening looking at eye candy and realizing that I was way too old. But, during all of this, I happened to notice something.

We all know that no matter where they go, girls travel in packs. Even once they get to their destination, they still maintain that pack mentality, be it going to the restroom or purchasing a drink at the bar. What I noticed about all of the packs I saw, though, is that they invariably contain one fatty.

I am not trying to take a dig at fatties here. I used to be around 230 pounds, or over 16 stone for those of you that care (my car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and I’m happy!! – Abraham Simpson), and have since dropped to around 195 and have the desire to lose more. I don’t care about whatever your reason for being whatever term you choose to use to describe the fact that you are overweight, but we Americans are the fattest fuckers on the whole damn world.

Anyway, back to the fatties. Taking a page from most fantasy MMORPGs from the past few years, it appears that these girls are there as a Tank. For anyone who has never played these types of games, the basic idea of the Tank is to go up to the giant boss, distract him from attacking anyone else in the party and absorb all of the damage so every one else can beat the shit out of the boss. I feel that is exactly why these girls are there.

Now, some may say that they are really hanging out with this girl to make themselves look better, and those are generally shallow girls with low self esteem, but it is my honest opinion that they exist solely to distract the guys who come and try to hit on the rest of the girls. That stand out in front, bravely taking the jeers and ridicule of whatever drunken frat trash staggers up to their friends, keeping him distracted while the rest of her friends hurl insults at his hair, clothing, whatever in attempt to beat him down and thereby win the fight.

Of course, I could be wrong, I am old after all and don’t understand the mentality of those a decade younger than me, but in my deranged eyes, this all makes perfect sense.