Hunger Games

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 40^th 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.