Better Than Ice Cream

This is the post that I started writing and intended to put up Wednesday night, but fatigue got the better of me - so, here it is, a day late.

Everyone here knows
how to cry . . . Source

My parents started leaving me home alone when I was in the second grade. It was an economic necessity since they had to go on service calls and childcare has always been far too expensive. The rules were: 

Do not go outside.

Do not answer the door.
Do not answer the phone.
Do not use the stove.

I was left to my own devices most of the time after that. I learned to cook food in the microwave, and at some point I got the go ahead to use the sandwich maker to make grilled cheese. Mostly, I ate junk. My mom would buy cases of Fla-Vor-Ice in the summer and I would eat them one after the other until they were gone. I thought I was slick by hiding the wrappers in the couch. I figured that they wouldn't know what I was doing if the remains never wound up in the trash. 

My mom would buy several cartons of ice cream when it was on sale, so there was a steady supply in the house, and I was the only one eating it. I remember that one of my favorite breakfasts/snacks was butter pecan ice cream mixed with Basic 4 cereal. Strangely, it wasn't my mom buying the Basic 4; that came from the next door neighbor. Eleanor was sort of a hermit. She only went shopping once a month at which point she would stock up on everything and buy more than she could fit in her tiny refrigerator. Inevitably we wound up with brand name Pop Tarts, Nutri-Grain bars, yogurt bars, juices, and ice cream. Higher end healthy things that we were too poor to afford. Eleanor wasn't rich, mind you, she just didn't have any bills, so she could safely spend her entire Social Security check on fancy health food.

My parents always tried to refuse these bags of groceries, but the lady was very kind and very persistent. I, on the other hand, being a greedy child, could not wait for Eleanor's shopping trips. I especially loved the ice cream she bought: Bryer's Natural Cherry Vanilla. Have you eaten this stuff? It is sinful. 

They were scary enough without
him, you know. Source

The first time I remember eating the stuff was one Saturday in March or 1994. My mom had taped Gremlins 2 for me the night before and I sat down to watch it after my Saturday morning cartoons. I remember all of this very clearly for several reasons. For one, Eleanor's sister Dolores and her two teen daughters were in town to look in on her. I was very happy to meet Dolores and her daughters, but I was sad because they took Eleanor to the store the day before instead of me and my mom. I had a very boring childhood and visits from Eleanor were really the highlight of my month at times. 

Meanwhile, my mom and dad were under a lot of stress that weekend because an anonymous someone had turned them into the county for having appliances all over the yard. Now stop. I know what you are thinking. My parents were not hoarders. They ran an appliance repair business and they kept derelict machines around for spare parts. There were washing machines, dryers, and refrigerators scattered around the back of the house, but they were all in some state of repair or deconstruction. They were not rusted and falling apart. Even still, with the county breathing down their necks, they had to make quick work of stripping what was there and getting it off of the property. So, while I was in the house watching TV, my parents were in the yard all morning with my Uncle Gene trying to get as much hauled away as possible.

So, as I watched the Gremlins running amok in New York City, everyone congregated at my back door without me knowing it. I was too busy stuffing my face with bowl after bowl of that sweet and delicious cherry goodness. Then, all hell broke loose.

My mom ran into the house screaming "Call 911! Your Dad's having a heart attack!" How old is a person in the second grade? 7? 8? I ran to the phone, but being that we were poor and rented a rotary phone from the phone company, I dialed 9-1 by accident. This was when I first became aware that I am next to useless in a crisis. I stood there with the phone receiver in my hand until my mom snatched it from me and sent me to wet some towels for my dad's face. Wet them, I did. I stuck the towels in the bathtub, under the faucet, and turned it on full blast. When they were soaked, I pulled them out and without wringing them, took them to my mom, who had my dad on the back porch. Really bad in a crisis.

At some point Herb, the First Responder who lived right across the railroad tracks from us showed up. The nice thing about this situation was that my sister's dad was a volunteer firefighter and I literally knew all of the police, firefighters, EMTs, First Responders, and Paramedics in town. All together that amounted to about 10 people since most of them pulled double duty. Seeing Herb, I felt better and I figured he knew what he was doing. 

Crescent City's Finest at
work during a real crisis:
 The Amtrak Derailment of 2002
Source

Then the ambulance showed up. How many medics does it take to get a guy to the hospital? 5, apparently. At this time, a firetruck was dispatched to all 911 calls "just in case", so our tiny trailer was overflowing with people. I was in full on kid panic mode, crying and all. My dad was trying to fight with the paramedics because he didn't want to go to the hospital. My mom was trying to stay as calm as she could, given the situation, and then, somewhere among all this were Eleanor, Dolores, and my uncle. At one point, one of the paramedics got up in my face about my crying. Uh, I'm a kid and my dad is getting wheeled away on a stretcher . . . I think I'm entitled to freak out a little? In hindsight, I think that lady just did not have a way with people. Her oldest son was a good friend of mine later on in high school and he couldn't stand her either. Finally, my dad was in the ambulance and my mom was scrambling to find me a babysitter so she could follow them up to the hospital. 

I would like to tell you all that it was at this point that I annihilated the ice cream, but that would be a lie. I ate the entire half gallon while I was watching the movie, before the chaos ever started. Should this ever come up in conversations, which it has, I tell people that I ate a half gallon of ice cream the day my dad had his heart attack. People who don't know me then assume that this happened when I was an adult, or at least a teenager. They also assume that correlation does imply causation in this instance. I like to let them think that. It's a lot better than admitting to having been a binge eater from childhood with no apparent reason.

I've been really observing how I eat and thinking about my past eating habits. You see, I really like healthy food, and most of the time I think I eat very healthfully. That's because I've been hiding the truth from even myself. The truth is that food is my drug, and it's a hard habit to break. I obsess over food. I binge. When I am dieting, I will eat things and then forget that I even ate them - then I wonder why I'm not losing any weight. It's like being in a trance. I never understood why I could relate to Trainspotting so much until recently. I'm a junkie, and my "junk" is food. Sugar is my number one choice, but like Rents and Sick Boy, I'll take what I can get. While they are scamming pills off geriatrics to cook up some more heroin, I'm convincing myself that I can binge on salad because it's healthy. I can eat a pound of strawberries in one go because they're fruit and fruit is good for you. But this is like taking methadone; it just masks the addiction until eventually I fall off the wagon and I've eaten an entire cake by myself. Or a jar of Nutella. Or, God forbid, a half a gallon of ice cream. 

I can see how Edmund turned Judas and sold his soul for some Turkish Delight. If some witch showed up in a sleigh and offered me a room full of processed sugar, I'd give her offer some serious consideration. I don't think I would sell out my family or anything, but I wonder if I haven't traded my soul for refined sugar already. 

I am a woman of many addictions - this is one of mine. What are some of yours?