Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Would you like an LSAT with those fries?

Overheard at work, man installing cubicles says to child sitting at her dad’s desk eating an after-school snack:
Man: "That a cucumber?"
Child: "No, it’s a mango."
Man:"Oh, I’ve never heard of that. We only had watermelon, cantaloupe, pineapple, and marshmallows."

I think it’s safe to assume that the gentleman who had never heard of or seen a mango grew up in a warm part of the country – where the fruits he described are more plentiful. His comment made me think about the foods that I associate with childhood: Pepperidge Farm wheat bread – with either cream cheese or peanut butter and Smucker’s raspberry jam, apples, cheerios, carrots, and fruit roll-ups. Pretty exciting eh? There are other periods in my life where specific foods feature large in my memory – like my pizza summer when I spent a significant number of evenings with my high school boyfriend, munching greasy thin crust pizza followed by ice cream from the window. The spring that followed was dominated primarily by hunger, rice cakes, and green apples. The correlation between the pizza and the hunger-pains was, of course, not a simple one. More significant than any ounce I may have gained, was the disappointment, rejection, boredom, fear, self-criticism and even more self-doubt I was feeling at the time. Outwardly, I was winning book awards, scoring goals, serving aces, and applying to top-notch colleges, but inside I was on treacherously shaky ground. I surprised even my shrink with how ferociously I clung to the rigid schema of restriction that I had erected. But gradually, my grip loosened, and my girth widened.

Just this year I’ve gone through another round of applications. It’s been an entirely different process than my first rocky go-round with standardized tests and personal essays. And tellingly, I’ve made it through sans hunger pains.

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