Purpose

“We are gathered here today to attempt a new approach to weight loss. Many of us have over the years grown more than fond of ourselves, if you know what I mean. Eating disorders come in all shapes and flavors.”

That is when everyone laughed and I began to dream about the days when metabolism could be blamed for everything. No longer an option for weight loss, weight gain, weight manipulation, all are fair game when it comes to indoctrinating us with the notion we are not perfect.

We of course know we are not perfect and that is why I am sitting here listening, or trying not to, to this person attempting to tell me that looking at a freshly baked apple pie and believing it is made of plaster, and tastes like garbage bags smell, can be achieved if I put my mind and its powers behind it.

There must be twenty of us, a few I know from Eaters Anonymous meetings. We are here to have our ideology about food altered, so it no longer has a hold on our psychic union with our desires. The course literature claims that it is all in our minds and we can overcome any addiction if we just learn the ways to trick ourselves into believing something other, than what our desires are suggesting.

Yes, I get a lot of what he is saying, but I’ve also had the inclination from time to time to begin chewing on a menu that I may find particularly attractive. Did you know those sneaky promotional devils have started using scent aroma to facilitate addiction. It is imbedded in the glossy paper to arouse your instinctual need to eat often, and as much as can be appropriated. Food appropriation is something we are all born with as a survival mechanism, but because of the times and technology are no longer needed, but remain all the same.

They have a series of food tables set up along the wall. Each table has an assortment of plates, utensils, and the like. I should mention we are in a middle school gymnasium. The ambiance is lacking that of a normal restaurant, even though they have raised the basketball paraphernalia up to the ceiling and placed white paper napkin swans at ever place.

He has begun talking about portion size and how the ability to enjoy more with less is an appreciative awareness “that we must learn to cultivate, as it is in this case, the eyes of the soul.”

I kind of know what he’s talking about, but have you noticed as I have, that the less food you get the more they charge for it. I thought at first it was simply a matter of economics, but I’ve had people defend this conundrum by telling me it is not the quantity of food, but the quality. And that we learn to appreciate more of less by contemplating the intricacy and delicacy of each item. We must make the time to savor the richness, creativity, the imagination of the one who lovingly prepared the feast.

I understand the philosophy. It makes perfect sense to someone who has the means to eat whenever and whatever they please, but for a lot of people, if they could digest rocks they would eat them and be glad of it. 

I know there is a difference between need and want, appreciation and expectancy, but I also know that we live in a society where you can’t stop to tie your shoe without running into a picture or smell of something, someone wants you to eat. 

Here comes our first course. We have been asked to refrain from speaking to one another so as not to interrupt our minds need to meet the cravings we are bombarded with by aroma and presentation. 

We remain silent in anticipation, and they bring each of us, on an unadorned white plate, a carrot, two sticks of celery, and a banana skin shaped into something, I can only assume is supposed to look like a Teddy Bear. The carrot is not raw but appears to have been fried in oil and parsley, and sprinkled with curry. The celery has been shredded on one end to resemble a bad hair day, and appears to be raw. Then way off to the side something that looks like a giant bug, possibly a raisin or an old grape, or what I can only hope is not one of those edible insects that have become so popular with the more adventurous.

“OK people. Here is our first course designed to allow your imaginations to take you wherever you wish to go. You will be allotted fifteen minutes to sample the cuisine and then as you have noticed no doubt, the tablet doubling as a placemat and a felt pen. You are required to write down your assessment of what is presented, the taste, presentation, and your reaction to it.” His words still ringing in my ears, I dive into this tribute to the ingenuity of time and space.

I must say I am impressed. Everything I’d imagined plastic food would taste like, was reinforced in that moment. I, not believing my own first impression of a bad joke, looked about the room to find similar quizzical expressions on the majority of faces. One woman across from me, Jenene, I know her from the spaghetti sculpture class on Friday evenings, looks as if she is choking on fright. Her eyes meet mine, our mouths both open, astonishment dripping from our lips, and she asks so everyone can hear, “Is this some kind of experiment?”

Sometimes it takes more than the obvious to realize there is more on a plate of ingenuity than was promised.

Chef Bill stands at attention under the “Bobcats are Best” sign, and begins to read from a small leather-bound book entitled, Hearsay.

“What you believe, and what and who you believe you are, are one and the same.”  He then slams the book closed and his eyes roam each side of the table engaging each set of moon pie eyes, and says “If you believe you are plastic, you will look and feel like the items before you. However, if you look past the fact that appearances often lie, and truth is not only in the eye of the beholder but on his lips, you will recognize as the raisin does, that quality and quantity can be disguised by presentation.”

I didn’t know what to say. We didn’t know what to say. So we said nothing as we were instructed to do. Most of those in attendance, pretended I believe, to have learned a lesson. I for one now know that plastic food, no matter how well prepared or presented, tastes just like I knew it would. A bit tougher actually. 

Jenene looked as if she were about to pass out from the anxiety instilled in us by the presentation. Although we rarely speak about food knowing it is a complicated subject, I felt I needed to do something to save her from this overly intimate display of gastric sensibilities and get her mind off the present and provide a more enlightened future.

I invited her to go with me to the “Big Is Better Burger” establishment down the street. They have a burger that takes two hands and an extra-long cabob stick to hold it together.

She declined. Said she had to go home and prepare for the sculpture class. And she was right of course. It takes a good twenty-four hours of drying time for spaghetti to become atrophied to the point of “holding its own.” That is a little joke we use to break the tension on awards night. But I should add for clarity sake, it works just as well for happenings like the marshmallow derby races on Saturday afternoons. Assuming of course it is not raining.