2003-01-07 - 9:15 p.m.
I made it through the work day without indulging in the luxury of buying some nice big peanut butter cookies from the vending machine in the hallway. Normally I would do that on a day like this, that seems to be dragging on and on, with a series of small irritations to keep me from concentrating on my work. The heavy-smoking woman with no teeth in our office kept having hacking fits that sounded like some tubercular old man about to cough up a lung. The air ventilation men came in and took the tape off the air vent over my desk. That would be the tape that I put up there to keep the vent from making a high pitched whistling sound practically guaranteed to drive a sane person mad. As soon as they leave, I intend to climb back up there and replace it, but today it was just whistling like a raging wind storm above my head.
And I was hungry, but as previously stated, I did not get cookies so I added "stomach growling" to the list of irritations. I do have those New Year's resolutions to consider. I brought my lunch today, and ate in the "staff lounge" (a room with some tables, chairs, trashcans, a sink and a collection of magazines old enough to put any doctor's office to shame).That cup-o-soup lunch just isn't cutting it. I was thinking that the whole food thing would be so much easier if I actually liked anything that was good for me. For the most part I still have all the food fears and prejudices of the average eight-year old. It is very embarrassing.
I was reflecting on my childhood history of food dramas.....
For example, I was terrified of tomatoes. If anyone tried to insist that I do the unthinkable and eat one, I stubbornly braced myself for a fight that I would rather die than lose. And I felt the same way about peas, beans, carrots, onions, cucumbers, radishes, spinach, lettuce, beets, eggs, and dozens of other items that most other people considered food. My childhood was a minefield of occasions when I might be expected to eat in public, and risk personal humiliation at having to refuse what I was expected to eat. It was no mere preference; I was absolutely horrified at the thought of any of these substances crossing my lips. Even smelling them or thinking about eating them made my stomach start to turn and come up in my throat. I lived in the darkest fear that I might have to face these dreaded things across a plate or that they might mingle with or touch any of the few things I actually liked.
My parents, while not approving of my elaborate system of food taboos, finally decided this was a battle they were not going to win, and they usually let me eat what I wanted. My father had his moments, though, when his outrage overcame him and he lashed out at me about tomatoes. It was always tomatoes. He could sit down to a plate of fresh sliced tomatoes, cover them with salt and pepper, and eat them with such gusto you never doubted that he believed he was eating like royalty. What daughter of his would turn up her nose at tomatoes? Did I think I was too good to eat tomatoes? One Saturday during my seventh summer, we had a big plate of tomatoes on the kitchen table for lunch and my father decided to insist I eat some. The crisis escalated as he yelled and I sobbed but continued to refuse. Finally he told me that lunch was over but I wasn't leaving the table until I ate the tomato on my plate. He got up and walked away, and I, relieved to be temporarily released from the conflict, pulled my knees up and prepared to spend the rest of my life in the chrome and plastic kitchen chair. Some time later, he came back and found me curled in my chair, the tomato untouched. He sent me to my room, then and told me to get in bed. And as I morosely climbed into my top bunk, he stood there in my room, and gave me his final word: "I just want you to remember this one thing. If you don't learn to eat tomatoes, you will grow up to be so ugly that nobody is going to want to look at you. You won't have any friends, you won't have any boyfriends, and nobody will ever marry you. You'll end up all alone. And I won't feel sorry for you because it's your own damn fault." I curled up in bed on Saturday afternoon and contemplated my future as a lonely, ugly woman.
School lunches were easy at first. My mom packed peanut butter and jelly, or bologna sandwiches and cookies or bananas, and even the occasional Twinkie into my red plaid-printed metal lunch box. She sometimes put chicken noodle soup in the matching thermos, before I broke it. I got grossed out at the things the other kids ate, but if I kept my eyes on my own food, I was ok. Then in the fourth grade, I went to a new school where we were served a hot lunch. Every day the lunch cart, a big, rolling stainless steel warming table, was unloaded from a truck into the lunchroom. The red-faced ladies wearing hairnets and white uniforms lined up behind it to dish out the trays of food, assembly line style, with ice-cream scoops. Every day's menu was a surprise, no choices, no advance warning. We paid our 30 cents to the principal stationed at a folding table with the cash box, and assembled in an untidy queue before the great steel monster, belching steam and ominous odors. As soon as I could identify which tray would be mine, I began to watch it as it slid through the gauntlet of servers. Please, please don't let them slop sauerkraut on my mashed potatoes.
I felt faint when I heard that one of the lunchroom teachers made a rule that you had to at least taste everything on your plate. With horrible visions of being forced to down a bite of peas and vomiting in front of my classmates, I readied myself to defy the rule no matter what. Years before protestors practiced passive resistance in peace marches and sit-ins, I planned my strategy to resist the adults who would force this stuff down my throat. I would clamp my teeth shut tight and crawl under the table. I would refuse to come out. They would call my Mother. I would be in Big Trouble. But nothing seemed as terrifying as putting something scary in my mouth. But my great protest never happened, and somehow, day after day, I escaped notice. Often I carried a tray of food to my seat, timidly mooshed it around to make it look as though a few bites were taken (and even that seemed brave), and after sitting there for the requisite time, turned it in. I don't remember ever feeling hungry, even when I went all day with only a pint of milk for lunch. My relief at having avoided some horrible encounter with food and adults was the stronger emotion. Luckily for me there were always a few kids with indelicate palates and enormous appetites who would eat their own and others' servings of some of the most hated foodstuffs. The kid who liked spinach was as fascinating, in kind of a horrible gross way, as the kid who ate paste in art class.
This was the pattern of my elementary years, although teachers seemed to give up on making kids eat their food, and settled down to their primary mission, which was maintaining a semblance of order. I began junior high school during the final years of a relaxed school administration that actually allowed students the freedom to leave the school grounds during lunch period. I would take the one dollar and fifty cent check that my Mother made out every Monday morning for my week's lunches and cash it at the school office. Instant allowance! Then, at the first peal of the lunch bell, I would race down the big stone steps and out the front door, and head to Mecca: the Dime Store. It was a "Variety Store" that sold "sundries" according to the chipping paint on the windows, a dimly lit and cavernous space, with dark, warped wooden floors and stamped tin ceilings. Small items were displayed on counter tops, in little glass corrals, and more expensive ones were stored in labeled boxes on a wall of shelves. For those you had to ask. "I'd like to see what you have in ladies' size seven gloves, please." And the large cheerful woman, whose name was Patty, would slowly drag the ladder over to the right shelf and pull down the box marked Ladies 7 and spread out your choices.
But I was not that sophisticated. I was happy to eye the new colored pencils and erasers and notebooks, finger the rolls of satin ribbons, wonder about the Tangee lipstick. I usually ended up in front of the candy counter, picking out a nickel's worth of licorice and caramels to hold me until dinner. My lunch money bought me a selection of paperback books, grown-up novels and books our tiny school library would never have stocked (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Exodus) and the occasional teen fan magazine ("If I am going to be like the other girls, I am going to have to worship some singing groups.") I bought the cartridges for my leaky fountain pens, and big chief tablets, and hair barrettes, and stickers - but I very rarely bought lunch.
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