"I Want a Hopper!"
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Having been diagnosed with Type II Diabetes, I have been thinking a lot about food. I mean, more than usual. Which is a lot.
According to my mother – who has no reason to lie -- my first full sentence was “I want a hopper.”
We were in the car at the time. I was perched on my mother’s lap in a pre-child-seat era, when I waved my chubby little arms excited and said clearly, “I want a hopper!”
The first time, they were cooing and pleased that I’d joined the world of coherent English speakers using full sentences. But they had no idea what I was talking about. Until on the drive home, passing the same intersection, I again bounced enthusiastically and again announced this heart-felt desire: “I want a hopper!”
Only then did they realize we had stopped in front of a Burger King. Hopper = Whopper.
Now, this says two amusing and yet disturbing things about me and the state of the culture we live in. First, that at the approximate age of two, barely able to walk, still happily crapping my diaper and slobbering copiously and indiscriminately on anything that would fit in my mouth, I had already been exposed to enough television to know what a Whopper was and where it came from. The mad men of Madison Avenue had already begun my brainwashing, making me believe that I desperately needed the fast food of future triple bypasses.
The second disturbing thing is that my first sentence was about wanting, demanding…. and food.
As a child, I ate what was put in front of me. Not like my little sister, who used to stuff food down into her chair cushions in order to avoid actually having to ingest it.
While I was growing up, my mostly-stay-at-home mother cooked every day, and, because she was a product of her generation, she cooked what my father would eat. My dad was picky eater from childhood, further spoiled by his doting mother’s capitulation to his reluctance to eat things like vegetables. Given a limited number of acceptable dishes, my mom would cook both rice and potatoes for major meals. (I never knew there was anything wrong with this until I went to friends' houses and wondered where in the heck the rice was.)
I always knew that no matter where we went out to eat, my father would order the hamburger steak and some form of potato. I never saw him eat chicken or, God forbid, a salad. Once, on vacation, he found himself in a restaurant where the waiter insisted a salad came with his meal; he finally accepted a wedge of iceberg lettuce – provided it came with a dollop of mayonnaise – but was very peeved about the whole thing.
About the only vegetables he would eat were English peas (but only with a bacon sandwich) and collards, swimming in pot liquor. This was a man who could live on fried potatoes, hamburgers and chili. And yes, he eventually became a member of the “zipper club” with a quadruple bypass, a couple of strokes and a too-early death.
Me? I liked to eat, and would eat anything that didn't eat me first. This included vegetables, when I came across them -- tomatoes were wonderful, so were salads, even if I didn't know there was anything but iceberg lettuce drowned in Ranch dressing for a long, long time. I remember discovering tuna fish salad at a friend's house, and begging my mother to make it.
I was never thin, but hardly fat, as a kid. My sister, on the other hand, looked so chronically malnourished that when a movie about turn-of-the-century orphans was being filmed in town, she got hired as an extra. She made a great skinny, dirty little orphan.
But I never had a weight problem until I hit puberty. Which is really cruel, that so many of our girlish bodies betray us just when our body image matters the most. I thought I was fat, but in retrospect, size 14-18 wasn’t really so bad. I do remember the misery of shopping for clothes, and it didn't helped that my breasts developed early and with a vengeance. I did my first stint of Weight Watchers with my mom, eating that skinny bread and a lot of tuna and bananas. I gave up regular soda for Tab, and dropped 20 lbs.
But since then, my life has been one of -- if not constant dieting -- then the constant awareness of the battle between lips and hips.
More about my relationship with food to come…..
Having been diagnosed with Type II Diabetes, I have been thinking a lot about food. I mean, more than usual. Which is a lot.
According to my mother – who has no reason to lie -- my first full sentence was “I want a hopper.”
We were in the car at the time. I was perched on my mother’s lap in a pre-child-seat era, when I waved my chubby little arms excited and said clearly, “I want a hopper!”
The first time, they were cooing and pleased that I’d joined the world of coherent English speakers using full sentences. But they had no idea what I was talking about. Until on the drive home, passing the same intersection, I again bounced enthusiastically and again announced this heart-felt desire: “I want a hopper!”
Only then did they realize we had stopped in front of a Burger King. Hopper = Whopper.
Now, this says two amusing and yet disturbing things about me and the state of the culture we live in. First, that at the approximate age of two, barely able to walk, still happily crapping my diaper and slobbering copiously and indiscriminately on anything that would fit in my mouth, I had already been exposed to enough television to know what a Whopper was and where it came from. The mad men of Madison Avenue had already begun my brainwashing, making me believe that I desperately needed the fast food of future triple bypasses.
The second disturbing thing is that my first sentence was about wanting, demanding…. and food.
As a child, I ate what was put in front of me. Not like my little sister, who used to stuff food down into her chair cushions in order to avoid actually having to ingest it.
While I was growing up, my mostly-stay-at-home mother cooked every day, and, because she was a product of her generation, she cooked what my father would eat. My dad was picky eater from childhood, further spoiled by his doting mother’s capitulation to his reluctance to eat things like vegetables. Given a limited number of acceptable dishes, my mom would cook both rice and potatoes for major meals. (I never knew there was anything wrong with this until I went to friends' houses and wondered where in the heck the rice was.)
I always knew that no matter where we went out to eat, my father would order the hamburger steak and some form of potato. I never saw him eat chicken or, God forbid, a salad. Once, on vacation, he found himself in a restaurant where the waiter insisted a salad came with his meal; he finally accepted a wedge of iceberg lettuce – provided it came with a dollop of mayonnaise – but was very peeved about the whole thing.
About the only vegetables he would eat were English peas (but only with a bacon sandwich) and collards, swimming in pot liquor. This was a man who could live on fried potatoes, hamburgers and chili. And yes, he eventually became a member of the “zipper club” with a quadruple bypass, a couple of strokes and a too-early death.
Me? I liked to eat, and would eat anything that didn't eat me first. This included vegetables, when I came across them -- tomatoes were wonderful, so were salads, even if I didn't know there was anything but iceberg lettuce drowned in Ranch dressing for a long, long time. I remember discovering tuna fish salad at a friend's house, and begging my mother to make it.
I was never thin, but hardly fat, as a kid. My sister, on the other hand, looked so chronically malnourished that when a movie about turn-of-the-century orphans was being filmed in town, she got hired as an extra. She made a great skinny, dirty little orphan.
But I never had a weight problem until I hit puberty. Which is really cruel, that so many of our girlish bodies betray us just when our body image matters the most. I thought I was fat, but in retrospect, size 14-18 wasn’t really so bad. I do remember the misery of shopping for clothes, and it didn't helped that my breasts developed early and with a vengeance. I did my first stint of Weight Watchers with my mom, eating that skinny bread and a lot of tuna and bananas. I gave up regular soda for Tab, and dropped 20 lbs.
But since then, my life has been one of -- if not constant dieting -- then the constant awareness of the battle between lips and hips.
More about my relationship with food to come…..