Reflections On a Simpler Time

Today I'm celebrating one month of self-denial by having my first cup of coffee in four weeks. It's not decaffeinated or fair trade either- it's good ol' Red Diamond, packaged right here in Birmingham. With all fairness, I'm drinking it with soy milk, not the macadamia nut flavored creamer that I still have in my fridge. I thought I'd be jittery but I'm really not. It is probably the best cup of coffee I've had in my entire life though.

It makes me think of the days when I'd go to Books-A-Million on a Sunday morning and order a venti dark roast, load it down with half-and-half and cinnamon, and sip whilst reading the New York Times and perusing the art books. When it ran low, I'd bring my cup back to the barista and get a discounted refill. I was ruining my circulatory system and didn't even realize it. And let's not forget the high school days, when I thought my ubiquitous cup of gas station cappuccino paired with my heavily dog-eared copy of On the Road made me better than my peers. (We didn't have Starbucks in Alabama until my first year of college, and at that point those were only found in Barnes and Nobles.) Whatever happens, I really don't ever plan on returning to those days.

Even more disconcerting, I remember a time when I worked a third shift in the IT department of a printing plant. (That's 6 pm to 6 am, by the way.) I never got used to it. The days when I didn't work were harder than the ones that I did. Try staying up all night and going to bed at seven in the morning on your day off; if you're a club kid I'm sure it's great, but for me it was quiet, dark, and lonely. Even worse, I worked the shift alone, and there would rarely be any actual work to do. Someone had to be there just in case something went wrong- and rarely did that happen.

Oftentimes a 500 page Atwood novel or a twelve hour Internet surf wouldn't do the trick, so I had to have a Snickers bar from the vending machine. Or two. Or three. And about ten Cokes to wash them down with. I'd feel no guilt at all for loading my system with preservatives and refined sugars. Not to mention empty calories and unhealthy fats. Ehck, bad Nicole. Strangely enough, I actually lost weight during that period in my life- that was sadly all that I was eating.

I go on to reflect on people I have known who eat like this all the time. College is one thing- when you're forced to eat dorm food your palatable options are usually limited to burgers, fries and the dessert table, and some kids can't resist the privilege of eating six brownies in one sitting. (Hey, all you can eat means all you can eat!) And we all know that the "Freshman 15" (or 20, or 30) is from alcohol and ordering pizza at 2 am when you're stoned, not cafeteria food. I utilized the salad bar more than most Montevallo students, but I'll admit to eating several bowls of Cocoa Frosted Flakes for dinner more than once. (As a side note, my school had about 3000 students, which made it too small to have a food court and too large to really give the food attention, so it wasn't all that great. I envied my friends who attended the University of Alabama, where one could have Chick-Fil-A or Pizza Hut for lunch, or Judson, which had a student body of 500 and REALLY good meals. Whenever I come back to visit my campus I eat in the cafeteria and wonder how I made it through four years of that junk.)

You also have to consider the poor. I live in a state that has one of the highest obesity rates in the nation, and also a very large poverty rate, especially in the rural areas. These two facts are interrelated, and a lot of people even here cannot figure out why poor people (and even homeless people) are fat. It's easy- if you can't afford fresh fruit and a bagel, which is what you should be eating for breakfast, then you tend to gravitate towards biscuits and sawmill gravy. (That's one dish I have been trying to find a vegan recipe for- if you're not eating it out of economic necessity, it's indulgent and it's good.) One of my least favorite things to hear from people is "She can't be that poor- she must weigh 300 pounds." Think before you speak, people.

But what about those who have better options available and can afford them, but still eat nothing but junk? I used to have a co-worker who was in her early to mid forties, but who looked ten years older. She was obese, albeit not "Why doesn't she join the circus?" such, and she took no fewer than a dozen medications (I know this because they were piled in a corner of her desk). What was her diet like? She ate five or six items from the vending machine a day, bragged about chugging a minimum 64 ounces of coffee a day, and made me hate lunch hour because of the ever-present odor of KFC chicken livers that would inevitably waft from her cubicle. And I would be willing to bet she hadn't exercised since high school gym class. I'm a Libertarian and all, but this woman made me not at all opposed to limiting civil liberties concerning personal health habits.