The Teen Years

I have realized that I do not have the typical memories of my teenage years that coming of age movies tend to revolve around.  I do not have a first date to look back on from those years or any funny stories about bumping noses as we both moved in for a first kiss.  I was a chubby teenager in a small school where any of the boys would have, at best, only thought of me as a friend.  I don’t actually know if my lack of dating was because of weight, low self-esteem or the fact that I had known most of my classmates since kindergarten.  Whatever the reason, I was left with a lot of free time that I inevitably filled with food.

I have many memories of cookies and pies that my mom made from scratch for a nightly snack between dinner and bed.  I remember dinners of spaghetti with homemade sauce when I was yearning for Ragu.  I fondly look back on weekly Sunday visits from my grandparents which always ended with an afternoon dessert and Sunday night dinners of hot dogs roasted in the fireplace since it was the one night my mother did not cook.

Maybe there is no such thing as a "normal" childhood memories.  Maybe everyone has some degree of food intertwined with recollections of the dinner that came along with that first date.  But am I the only one who would sneak a potato chip sandwich (white bread with potato chips in the middle) when no one is around?  Not that it was even that great of a snack except that my mother wouldn’t be likely to miss a couple of slices of bread and a few chips.  Would anyone even eat such a snack if they weren't trying to avoid discovery by a disappointed parent?

I would like to say that I have outgrown of all of these behaviors but no matter how I have grown (and shrunk) during different times in my life, food is always central.  Whether I am enjoying it or avoiding it, it is still always there.