Alone and Unobserved

Ken Craig, a blogger in Las Vegas, NV, recently wrote about his experience with swearing off sugar for a month. (It’s hilarious and very well-written; you can find it here.) He describes the feeling of wanting sugar so badly that he ransacked his kitchen, searching for something, anything, that would satisfy his unholy thirst. My reaction: Mr. Ken Craig, you just described my entire childhood.

I’m sure my mother always wondered how I could walk miles every day, eat the healthy, sugar-free, low-fat, made-from-scratch dishes she cooked, and yet continue to get chubbier and rounder. She must have suspected: the only possibility was that I was eating all the time. If she left the house for two minutes, I would clamber up on a stool in the kitchen and hoist down the generic supermarket brand Cheerios-type cereal, the milk, and the sugar. The milk was so clogged with sugar that it was like eating sweet, wet sand, but I devoured that mess by the bowl, listening the whole time for the sound of my mom’s car in the driveway or her step on the back porch. My younger brothers and sisters knew better than to question me or tattle; I was a pretty easy-going older brother, but not when it came to gettin’ my sugar.

I’m still addicted to sugar, but I don’t notice it as much anymore, because I can get it whenever I want. The only time it really hits me is when I go home to visit and, once again, find myself with my face buried in a bowl of cold cereal and sweet, wet sand.