Throughout my childhood, I was told that I was “awfully skinny and that I really ought to eat more, for gods sake.” I just didn’t like food in general, ‘cause I thought it tasted like slimy guts, and I was not old enough to see the emotional value in it. Except for shrimp and lobster sauce, god I loved shrimp and lobster sauce, but we didn’t get to have that every day or anything. And then when I did manage to gag down whatever I was supposed to eat, I was praised lavishly. Overly lavishly like I’d just won an Olympic medal.
Shrimp and Lobster Sauce
I never ate more than 2 bites of my sandwich in elementary school. I absolutely
hated lunch time, and hated recess even more, and wondered why everyone else
thought these periods were so terrific. In my eyes, they were nothing more
than 40 long, insufferable minutes of anarchy and chaos; the clock struck
11:34 am and the demon in every child in my school was set loose to raise
hell. All the noise and commotion made me sick and so my turkey on Wonderbread
tasted like throw-up.
Dinner time was torture ‘cause my parents would make me sit at the table
until I had eaten at least 3/4 of what was on my plate. And for some reason
that was too much to handle. I drank a lot of coca-cola though. We drank coke
with dinner most of the time, and I would just keep drinking it to stall between
forkfuls of Asian stir fry and rice. No wonder I never went to bed until midnight.
Not even in 1st grade when my ogre-teacher would scream at me for being tired
in school, and I’d lie to her about my bedtime being at 9:30 every night.