Garbage In
Having just turned 44, I can’t help but reflect on how my priorities have changed over the past four decades.
Like most adolescents, my high school years were basically filled with pitiful attempts to get laid and a give-me-liberty-or-give-me-death attitude towards the fascist regime that called themselves my parents. College brought even more pitiful and increasingly desperate attempts, and a give-me-liberty-or-give-me-death attitude towards the fascist regime that called itself Student Housing.
By my late twenties, my biological needs finally started getting met (in much the same way that a famished Ethiopian needs are met when he gets unwittingly bonked on his thinly-skinned skull by an errant box of Uncle Ben’s that was swept out of the cargo hold of a passing UNICEF plane). While this only fueled my appetite, just knowing that intercourse with a woman was a real possibility helped to free up some of my waking moments to focus on an equally shallow endeavor: making money. And in this new pursuit I was equally successful.
Contrast that with my forties, where my main objective is simply avoiding cancer. It’s kind of ironic that, having wasted the first have of my life chasing one c-word, I’m now spending the second half avoiding the other c-word.
Among other things, this fear has lead to a near-religious pursuit of all things fiber. These days I eat so much roughage that I crap mulch. My colon is basically a wood chipper. On the plus side, if I ever get nailed for that jaywalking rampage I went on last year, the mass unmarked grave of mattress tags in my backyard, or my international plutonium mail-order business (I doctor-up and re-use cancelled postage stamps), a bear-trap bunghole might serve me well in prison. Or make me the belle of the ball. I’m not really sure how that would work out.
Really, though, food has long been a problem for me. And like most of the problems in my adult life, it is the result of a vulnerable moment in childhood when I was wearing nothing but underpants. There I was, a wide-eyed boy, innocent in the ways of the world, practicing my Gene Simmons impression in the full-length mirror on the changing room wall in the local Sears-Roebucks. Suddenly a hand reaches into my stall, the hand of a trusted adult, and forever changed the course of my eight year-old life.
That was the day that my mother, well-meaning but practical to a fault, passed me a pair of “Husky” size Sears’ and ordered them put on. Of course, I tried to fight back, but a child is no match for a desperate mother in the waning hours of a back-to-school sale.
Later that evening, wrapped tightly in my cherished NFL bedspread on the lower bunk, a harsh new reality crowded out my carefree past. I had started the day as just a kid, but I would end it as a fat kid, wholly aware and self-conscious of my undeniable huskiness.
By age ten I was jogging. By eleven I was making my own lunches. By twelve, I was having nightmares about gorging myself on Snicker’s bars, waking up relieved and thankful that I hadn’t actually consumed those horrible, empty calories, and then falling out of bed into some push-ups for good measure.
Ever since I have been plagued with the need to watch what I eat, to cautiously avoid the simple pleasure of the moment in case it leads to tomorrow’s ruin. Ice cream? I’ll have frozen yogurt instead. Pizza? OK, but just a slice and first let me dab off the grease. Fudge? Get the fuck away from me with that shit, you maniac!
Now, staring down the barrel of 45, cracks are beginning to form in the foundation of my food-control philosophy. In the past twelve months I have been side-swiped by the threat of testicular cancer, melanoma, and the whole shrinking face thing (still a mystery) despite a general lack of regrettable, unhealthy behaviors. Were I able to blame Hostess, Mr. Hero or Frito-Lay for these brushes with death, there would at least be a feeling of control over my destiny. It’s the difference between knowingly allowing the steering wheel to slide between your fingers and veer off the road, and being clamped down hard on the steering wheel and realizing it isn’t actually attached to anything. As it stands, I’ve got nothing to blame and feel all the more helpless because of it.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe it is possible to minimize certain risks – don’t mount, in any sense of the word, a moving armored vehicle; don’t clean the sneeze-guard at the Denny’s all-you-can-eat seafood buffet with your tongue; don’t tease Darfurian warlords by tickling their earlobes with a tree branch - it is absolutely naïve (or arrogant) to think you can control risk as a whole. Fat or thin, healthy or poxed, benevolent or belligerent, everyone but Molly Brown sinks when the Titanic goes down. And who do you think felt better about themselves when the icy waters rushed in: the impulsive slobs who nabbed seconds off the dessert cart, or the smug discontents who mocked them for it?
Which, in lieu of a point, brings me to my conclusion: here is a list of forbidden foods that I vow to once again to enjoy, if only on occasion:
Chocolate Vanilla Crème Pop Tarts
Single-serving Bluebird Cherry Pies
Chocolate-Covered Oreos
Malted Milk Balls poured directly into my mouth from the carton
Macaroni & cheese, burnt around edges
Twinkies, Ding-Dongs and Ho-Hos.
A wheel of cheddar cheese and a sleeve of Saltines
Pizza with double pepperoni
Captain Crunch
Deep-fried pickles
Crispy buffalo wings, extra hot
Mr. Hero’s Romanburger (quite possibly the unhealthiest combination of food items ever assembled)
Lime and Chile Tostidos by the fist-full
Any cupcake, anywhere, anytime
Chicken-fried steak with gravy
Elephant ears, or any fried dough within shouting distance of powdered sugar