A Bit of Foodie Fan Fiction
This next piece necessitates an introduction. It is a vignette I wrote in response to an essay prompt some time ago. Unfortunately, the prompt is long forgotten. What remains is the short, bittersweet story of one man’s struggle with his insatiable relationship with food. Please, enjoy:
I had an addiction – - a habit worse to kick than heroin. I couldn’t lock myself in a room and wait for the cravings to end. My parents supported the addiction. Well, if not support, then I should say that they did not help to rid me of it, my self-destruction, because deep down I think they knew they had the addiction themselves. Child psychiatry was not a common practice during my day. My parents would not have bothered anyway. They loved to smother me with kisses. Hershey kisses, that is.
I had an addiction to food. I couldn’t get enough of it. My mouth only stopped chewing to speak or to sleep. I may have even slept walked into the kitchen a couple of times. It was not a ‘comfort’ thing for me. I did not go running to the refrigerator because some girl at school called me a bad name. It seemed more like a chemical dependency on my part. Of course everyone is dependent on the nutrients of food but for me it seemed to go beyond eating to survive.
I can hardly remember a time when I had complete silence around me. There was always a crunching, a slurping, or a sucking noise coming forth from my mouth.
Because of this “condition” of mine, it was difficult to play sports or be moderately active. You can’t run with a sucker in your mouth because you could trip and fall and have the stick stab directly through to your brain. The same goes for an unsuspecting carrot stick. So, I wasn’t an active child. One can rightly imagine my weight at the time. Even if I had been eating vegetables and fruits all of the time, the amount of calories I consumed versus the ones I burnt off with activity scarcely compared to each other. It was horrendous, but I enjoyed every mouthful. The lemon meringue pie, caramel sweets, almonds, popcorn, sirloin steaks, baked sweet potatoes with cinnamon sugar on top—anything and everything was to be had, nothing to be denied no matter how strange it looked or smelled.
There weren’t many obese children being interviewed in the seventies. I was one of the “lucky” ones. My fifteen minutes of fame came when an eccentric millionaire decided to play mind games with the world and invite ten people into his “factory”. My mother was caught up in the chocolate bar craze and was soon showering me with Wonkabars instead of Hershey kisses.
He was the owner of a well-known chocolate factory. He lured children into his “house of candy”, making them taste his sweets. Since there have been no lawsuits restricting my use of the actual names of people and places of past events, I shall use the real ones. Mr. Willy Wonka, sole proprietor of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, placed five “golden” tickets inside five very special Wonkabars for five very special people. The golden ticket invited the lucky finders to his factory and promised them a lifetime supply of chocolate.
My name is Augustus Gloop and I was the first of the five golden ticket winners. Yes, the candy man certainly made me happy that day. People came to speak with me for news broadcasts from all over the world. For once people actually wanted to be seen with me while I was eating. I suddenly had more “friends” than I knew what to do with.
But with this short lived fame there came a price. The child protection agency took notice of my eating habits. I was nearly taken away from my family. Fortunately, we were able to procure a good family lawyer that convinced them to give my mother and father a chance to reform my gluttonous ways. But that is another story for another time.
I can trace back my own recognition for a need to change to the most traumatizing time in my childhood, which took place only weeks after the interviewing episode. I am only now, thirty years later, really able to openly talk of my experiences behind those doors of the spindly, old Willy Wonka.
The real doors were opened for me as the winner of a golden ticket. We were allowed to bring one member of our immediate family to accompany us through the factory. I chose my mother to come. The directions on the golden ticket said that we had to be outside the factory gates promptly at ten o’clock. I was there along with four other children and their chosen family members. I was familiar with most, except the last boy who I had overheard won just the other day by pure luck. Not that the rest of us won with anything else…except that Veruca Salt. I had heard distasteful things about her. The other two were Mike Teevee and Violet Beauregarde.
The entrance was the typical PR reception; smile and wave to the cameras and make nice with the public. I should have known things were going to get worse when Mr. Wonka made the five of us sign a contract before we even began the tour. I didn’t like the look of the small print, but figured I had nothing to really worry about. What else did I have to do besides keep my arms and legs inside the vehicle at all time?
I was anxious to get going. All the while I had been fingering the bag of chips in my pocket, anxiously waiting for a semi-private moment to get them out and chow down. But how could I savor my chips when my arms were wedged up against my body as Willy Wonka led us into a miniature version of the Ames room–all the walls tilted at awkward angles. Surely the maximum capacity was less than eleven, exactly what we had. It was a fire hazard. The room felt like it was closing in on me, crushing my lungs like an anaconda around its prey. Being trapped in that small black and white room with nine strangers that included a wildly eccentric man was like being a tourist lost in the “bad parts” of New York City.
Through Willy Wonka’s labyrinth we continued. Some wanted to go back already but Mr. Wonka assured us that “in order to go back you have to go forward.” What a nut. Stopping in front of a plain mahogany door, he explained that we were about to enter the nerve center for his entire chocolate factory. He told us, amazingly, that, “almost everything you see is “eatable, edible. I mean you can eat almost anything.” This was the most fantastic thing I’d ever heard.
I denounced my anxiety for the long awaited bag of chips. There were promises of much better things to come. My innards roared. My mind screamed, “Let me in. I’m starving!” Or did I say that out loud?
Willy Wonka opened the door. Before I could even see inside, the intoxicating aroma of the finest chocolate filled my nose. My mouth salivated at the thought of the precious dark, milk, and almond jewels lying in wait.
Everywhere, there was stuff and nonsense that tantalized my senses. My eyes, nose, and stomach pulled me forward, demanding that I eat, eat, eat. The room was full of color; a rainbow of flavor had exploded onto everything. It was a candy garden. Gummy bears grew on peppermint leafed trees alongside chocolate and cream mushrooms. There were groves of buttercup flowers filled with sweet tea. All was to be tasted. All was to be mine.
I ran as quickly as my pudgy legs could carry me from one thing to another. Pulling things off trees, licking the flowers. I couldn’t be stopped; my heart was beating so quickly I thought it would positively burst within me. I came upon the Hope Diamond of Willy Wonka’s factory. A chocolate river! I bent down to scoop some into my hands. Absolutely wonderful! It was frothy and delicious, like the best hot chocolate in the world times ten. No, a million! I bent down again. I couldn’t help myself now. It tasted so good. I wanted to stay there forever slurping up the phenomenal concoction.
But, oh no! I stooped too low! I was slipping! The candy rocks could not support me as I grabbed at them. That Charlie kid tried to help me, but it was too late. Something was pulling me under. I was being sucked down into the chocolately depths by I know not what. I was most assuredly done for. I apologized for everything I had ever regretted in my life. I apologized to a billion kids in Ethiopia for all I had eaten in my life time twice over. I tried to picture my mother and father, beaming with pride for me with tears in their eyes. My epitaph: Augustus Gloop—He had his cake and ate it too.
There was a light. Not under my own will, I gravitated towards it, slowly at first but then picking up speed as I went along. The tunnel of light grew and grew until I could fit into it. I began to climb up the tunnel of light, but stopped. Looking around I saw the bright colors of the world I had just left. ‘What is this?’ I had thought to myself. I could see them looking towards me. All of them were aghast except Mr. Wonka. He stared blankly towards me, calmly eating candy.
“Help!” I exclaimed. “Help!”
It began to hurt. The unknown force was shoving me harder than before. But to where, though? The pressure was mounting. I knew I couldn’t go much farther. My shoulders were already wedged too tightly into the tube. Something was building, growing steadily below me. POP! I went flying up and up, and I was in darkness again. The tubing took a left, went up some more, turned right, and dipped downward. I was tumbling down a slide…into the hands of…little orange men with green hair…
* * *
I don’t remember much of anything after that. I’m told I passed out from shock. After finding out that I was fine, my mother barely spoke to me for a week. I was sent home in shame. We weren’t going to receive the lifetime supply of chocolate—there was some breech in the contract.
The airplane seats were again too small—one more brick in the wall of humility. My body remembered being squeezed almost to death in the chocolate tube and shuddered. On the flight home I vowed never to eat more than one plateful of food at one sitting ever again and to lose weight, too.
Once home I began a strict regimen of daily habits. In the morning I awoke at six to go walking for at least a half an hour. I ate a healthy breakfast of toast, orange juice, one fried egg and a bowl of cereal. Lunch consisted of a casual sandwich, fruit, some crackers, and a thermos of milk or water. After homework in the afternoon I would go for another walk. Dinner was a lean portion of whatever my mother had prepared that day.
As the months progressed my walks turned into jogs and my jogs into runs. Their length increased to sometimes even an hour and a half. I was becoming lean and fit. I received compliments about my weight loss everywhere I went. We had to keep shopping for new clothes almost each month. I felt better about myself than I had in years. I wanted this to go on. I loved the way I looked and the way people saw me.
* * *
Both my breakfast and lunch became solely fruits and vegetables. At dinner I took an even smaller portion of the main dish. I kept smiling as I ate less, ran faster and farther and lost more weight. Soon I was down to one hundred and forty pounds, but I felt I could do better. I began to do crunches and push-ups before and after my runs. Over the year my runs had lengthened from only one mile per day to seven. My weight was bouncing between one-ten and one-twenty. My smile was broadening but others’ smiles were diminishing.
During gym one day I fainted. My parents were notified and took me home. This event seemed to assure them of something they hadn’t wanted to admit. They checked me into a local hospital, diagnosing me with anorexia nervosa. Upon examination at the hospital I weighed merely one hundred and three pounds. The hospital technicians strapped me down into the bed. Overweight nurses waddled around me now and again assuring me that I was not being harmed in anyway. “This is for your own good.” The good came with machines hooked up to me so the doctors could monitor my every bodily function. They made me watch videos about healthy lifestyles and listen to doctors give speeches on how to lose weight and gain muscle without going overboard. But, all that they told me I should do, I had done. I had done it perfectly.
Tubes reentered my life. I was fed through one until I had gained an appropriate amount of weight. Then they watched me eat after I was off the tube. I felt like I was in prison, especially after I was released early for good behavior.
After leaving I was eyed very closely. My mother and father took turns making all of my meals and watching me consume them. At school they had teachers make sure I ate what they had packed for me. A few weeks passed in this manner. My mother had told me if I ate well I could go back to my exercise routine. I did just that.
* * *
During the next three years I was hospitalized twice more. The second time I nearly died. I had kidney damage because the malnutrition was a disruption to my body’s fluid and mineral balance. My heart rate was irregular and the glands around my neck were swollen with stones in my salivary duct. According to our family doctor, these are all the “medical dangers associated with anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder”.
They put me back on tube feeding, this time for several months, and made me go to classes that helped people like me. I was able to talk to other people about it. I told them about my transfer from my old addiction, the one that had nauseated me at the mere thought of it during the last years, to the more recent obsession. When I saw an obese person eating I would shudder and refuse to eat anything more that day. Eating with my family was a daily torture. I had to develop a cough, an allergy to the air around the dining table so that I could cough my food into my napkin.
I had felt out of control and helpless to do anything about my problem, my fixation, my addiction concerning weight, but now I know there is better for me. I don’t have to hide my food away, barely half eaten. My new friends and I accepted my past and helped me to see a better future with a healthy median.
Now, I’m eating regularly and teaching aerobics classes down at the YMCA. When I see obese people, I don’t shudder. Instead, I feel the pang of knowing what it is like. Food is an enjoyment with friends and family submersed in conversation. Life without the scale in the bathroom is better. And, when I see someone heading down the roads I took, I make sure to show the kid what it took me years to realize. I let the kid know to take it easy with himself and to take things in moderation, not to the extreme—that sometimes, as the truism turned cliché goes, there really can be too much of a good thing.
January 24, 2009
Tags: food event, nutrition, obesity Posted in: Uncategorized
One Response
I liked it. It had a good flow and rhythm to it that made it easy to get into the story from the get-go.
There were some lines that that confused me at first and caused me to backtrack in order to understand those.
The way you set up the story was well executed: rather than jumping in and saying “Hi, I’m Augustus Gloop,” you built it up. The story is not about Augustus, but his disorder.
All in all, a wonderful tale. ^_^
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