I have a confession to make, but first I need to offer an
apology. Participants at Emerald City Comicon, “the largest comic book and pop
culture convention in the Pacific Northwest,” I am sorry. I apologize for
calling you freaks and for publicly making fun of your really bad haircuts on
my Facebook page (although in all seriousness, not a single one of you had a
decent haircut) and for wanting to rip your ridiculous animated superhero costumes
off and strangle you with them. I truly am sorry. (That is not to say I don’t
still think of you as freaks. Adult human beings who spend time dressing up as
Superwoman and Pokémon characters, have way too much time on their hands and
need serious help, as well as our pity.)
Okay, apology made, on to my sordid confession, but first, a
brief disclaimer: This blog post is not about the wildly popular, over-hyped
series of books with which it shares a title, nor is it about the recently
released “major motion picture.” In fact, I know nothing about the books or the
movie. Well, that’s not entirely true; I know a few things – the books are
“young adult” fiction featuring a main character named Catnip. (I know it’s actually
Katniss; you’d have to be dead to not hear Katniss-this and Katniss-that and “Go,
Katniss!” every two seconds. I like Catnip better though because it makes me
laugh, so that’s what I’m calling her.)
Back to my confession: Sometimes I get hungry. Yes, that’s
right, I get very hungry. I suppose that, in and of itself, isn’t unusual.
Everyone has to eat so naturally, we all get hungry when our bodies need food. The
odd, and unsavory, thing is WHAT happens to me when I get hungry. It’s ugly. I
know a lot of people admit to getting cranky when they’re hungry, but when I
get overly hungry, it’s as if the fiery gates of Hell open and all the evil
held therein comes gushing out into the world . . . through me. It’s true. Just ask my husband. A high
percentage of our fights happen when/because I am hungry. With the exception of
the really epic ones, which everyone knows happen when you’re both drunk.
When I get really hungry and can’t get food immediately, I
become a volatile combination of a petulant toddler, a sullen teenager, and the
Wicked Witch of the West. I am Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly from The Devil
Wears Prada – cruel, ruthless, and sarcastic. I am one of the Heathers from the
1989 dark comedy of the same name, ruling all I survey with ridicule and
contempt. Hunger brings all of them together in an epic bomb of nastiness on a
hair-trigger. I’m aware of it and I try to mitigate it, but I can’t. It’s like
I’m possessed by particularly tenacious hunger demons.
Compounding this unfortunate problem are two facts:
1) I am somewhat picky about what I eat. OK, that’s an
understatement; I’m actually very picky about what I eat, which makes it
impossible to scoot into a fast food joint, select a less busy restaurant, or
purchase something out of a machine or convenience store to appease the hunger
demons.
2) I get hungry a lot. Unless I eat pretty much all day –
something at least every two hours – I cross over into really hungry territory.
Medical procedures that require fasting terrify me. I live in constant fear
that my doctor or dentist or hair stylist will require me to report to a midday
appointment with an empty stomach. (I’ve never heard of partial foils and a cut
requiring a fasting period, but I worry about it nevertheless.) With my 40th
birthday quickly approaching, the specter of a colonoscopy looms over me like
an ominous storm cloud. It’s not the procedure itself that alarms me (although
it certainly doesn’t sound pleasant), but the necessary pre-procedure fasting.
The healthcare professionals who will be required to interact with me on that
fateful day before I am drugged will surely suffer my hunger-induced wrath
whether or not they have nice haircuts and the good sense not to dress like
Pikachu.
I don’t understand people who “forget” to eat or skip meals
entirely. “I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten all day,” they genteelly explain with a
blasé wave of their hand. This is stunning to me. Let me tell you, if I hadn’t
eaten all day, we wouldn’t be sitting in a restaurant, nonchalantly waiting for
a table over chit-chat about our day. Quite the contrary; everyone would be
diving for cover (if the place was still standing) and I would be zooming
around on my broom overhead, cackling and screeching, “I’ll get you, my
pretties, and your little dogs too!”
I know I should carry emergency food with me like people
with allergies carry an EpiPen, but how inconvenient is that? I’m quite fond of
my handbags and I really don’t want a banana turning to mush in the bottom of
one or a forgotten apple rotting amongst my lipsticks and car keys. The last
time I checked, broccoli doesn’t slip into a wallet very easily. Nutrition bars
are the obvious solution – they don’t spoil quickly, are housed in handy and
cleanly wrappers, and can typically withstand some jostling about, but one can
only eat so many of them and, like I said, I run into these little hunger
episodes quite a lot.
Saturday was a perfect example. My family ventured downtown
to complete some specific errands, which needed to be achieved in an efficient
and timely manner to maintain control, or at least the illusion of control,
over our busy weekend. In the interest of said efficiency, it seemed like a
no-brainer to obtain lunch at a downtown sushi restaurant that is typically
deserted on weekend afternoons. Sadly, it was not a typical weekend: It was
Comicon weekend. The gigantic Freak (oops, I mean Comic Book) Conference was
being held at the Seattle Convention Center, which just happens to be a block
from the sushi restaurant. The place was packed. Realizing that every other
nearby restaurant was going to be just as busy and being hungry, bordering on
very hungry, we decided to put our names on the list and wait.
At first I was fine – only mildly annoyed with the 16
year-old video game geeks trapped in out-of-shape 45 year-old men’s bodies who
were displaying their Comicon laminates like they were Rolling Stones backstage
passes or White House Press Corps credentials. But then it happened. I felt it
coming on; I got really hungry – ruthlessly, cruelly, sarcastically, evilly
hungry. While my five year old waited with the patience of a saint (“It’s OK
mommy, it won’t be that much longer, our name will be up soon.”), I glowered at
the man standing next to me in a crazy scientist outfit and imagined how
satisfying it would be to crack open the glow stick posing as a test tube full
of toxic potion in his lab coat pocket and pour the contents down his throat. I
hoped that the half-naked Wonder Woman’s cape would get caught in the door,
pulling her off her gold platform boots backwards by the neck.
I sent my husband to look for a less crowded restaurant,
which he happily set off to do because I’m sure it was much more pleasant than
being around me. I sneered at the three fifty-something women getting their
pictures taken with the guy dressed as a floppy-eared blue character. One of
them looked more ridiculous than him, having cinched her Sleepless in Seattle
sweatshirt with a neon-colored skinny belt. I formed a mean-girl-like alliance
with the gay bus boy. We snickered openly when some guy ordered Irish whiskey
and made catty comments when he was taken aback that they didn’t have it. “Wow,
a Japanese sushi restaurant that doesn’t have a specific brand of Irish
whiskey? That’s weird!”
Finally, we got our table and, the instant I got some
edamame in me, I was a different person. As the evil drained from my body, I
rubbed my eyes, looked around and wondered, just like always, “what happened
just then?!” Suddenly the aging gaming geeks and the bad skinny belt ladies
seemed sort of sweet – still freaks, but sweet. Crazy Scientist and Wonder
Woman seemed like they were probably just regular people having a good time –
still freaks, but regular people freaks having a good time. And the floppy-eared
blue character seemed like an intelligent and creative professional engaging in
a worthwhile hobby. Oh, who am I kidding, there is simply no excuse for a grown
man dressing in a blue, fur, full-body suit with floppy ears. That’s just
fucked up.
I said I wasn’t hungry anymore, not that I was
instantaneously transformed into a saint.
