Blubber

Some days I don't really need to eat anything, but today was not one of those days. I've been cursed with a hollow leg today and have eaten my weight in food.

It must be the weather. It's too cold and it has been for a few days now. I decided I would walk to the bank and then run some other errands, but after depositing a cheque I hobbled home chilled to thaw out.

These days I seem to be completely incapable of keeping myself warm without swathing myself in a yurt.

It wasn't always this way. In elementary school my parents used to leave for work early so I would get to school at 7:15 am, long before most of the staff had arrived, and the only thing that was open with adult supervision was the Breakfast Program. Since we lived in a low-income neighbourhood, a good 20% or more of the school used to go there to eat because their parents couldn't or wouldn't feed them at home.

We weren't particularly hungry. We'd always arrive with stomachs full of breakfast from home, but we couldn't very well pass up the food that was there. It was offered, it was novel, and our consciences were clear because mom used to write a cheque to the program every month to be sure that we weren't taking food away from the welfare kids.

Besides, mom never let me have sugar sprinkled on my toast like Mrs. Garrison did. Or Nutella. These things were unheard of in our house. And she was generous with them too.

When she was down to the bottom of the Nutella jar, she used to offer it up to some students to scrape clean, and because I used to help clean up, I was always a star candidate. The jars never arrived empty. They usually had a good inch of Nutella stuck in the bottom, which meant more than enough to share.

All of this coupled with the fact that I was a pretty sedentary kid mean that I acquired a good layer of blubber that used to keep me warm. Used to. Now that it's cold, I kind of want that blubber back. Maybe that's why I'm so hungry.