So it occurred to me that being a food hoover is far more complex when you’re a human being than it is when you belong to some other species. Bit of a random thought, but it popped into my head last night when I was cooking tea, having narrowly avoided tripping over the dog for about the tenth time.
Had anyone been observing the two of us as we moved about the kitchen, it must have looked a bit like a sort of clumsy ballet. Whenever there’s food, or the smell of food, or even the hope of food, my four legged fur baby welds himself to my side and develops eyes in the back of his head so he’s in exactly the right place at the right time to take advantage of anything which might come his way, either by accident or design. I take a step, he takes a step. I turn around, he turns around (unless the food is actually visible in which case he removes all risk of missing anything by walking backwards).
Even as a puppy he was solely motivated by food – within 3 days of coming home he’d pee on the puppy pad and then go wait expectantly by the fridge, and his love affair with chicken and sausage in particular continues to this day. Incidentally so does mine, but as a fat girl I’d die before being quite so obvious. As a skinny girl, you can get away with knocking people out of the way like skittles to get to the cake…people will smile and tease you about how you can love cake so much and stay so trim. “You must have a worm inside you, ha ha ha”... As a fat girl, no chance. Those same people wouldn’t tease you at all, they’d probably just shake their heads sadly and think “No wonder…”
I’m convinced that’s why a lot of fat folk eat in secret, as though it’s something to be ashamed of. Or maybe it’s because we think people won’t notice that we’re fat if they never actually see us put anything in our mouths…that’s asshole logic if ever I saw it. But I for one have lived it! Eating publicly can be difficult when you’re bigger than the average bear – imagine two people walking away from a fast food counter with overloaded trays, one fat girl and one skinny girl…only one of them is going to feel self conscious, judged, ashamed that she’s not about to eat salad. Am I right?
So how come a slavish devotion to food is cute in a dog but shocking when you’re just a fat girl who can’t get it under control? Why does one provoke smiles where the other provokes scorn and judgement from the world in general? I’d hazard a guess that it’s because we’re supposed to be the ones with a fully formed thought process and a sense of reason – don’t get me wrong, dogs are bright but they’re not likely to think things through in a ‘better not have another bonio if I want to wear my favourite collar at the weekend’ kind of way. But we are, we’re supposed to have it all figured out.
But what if your thought process is broken? What if you have an asshole who lives inside your head and relentlessly kicks all reason into the long grass till you can’t get to it..? What then.
