when i was 15 i decided that i was not going to eat the same food that my parent's ate and my brother ate and my grandmother and so on on on, anymore. i became the weirdo that would eats bowls of vegetables for Christmas dinner and only had the corn on the cob at cookouts. this was an act of rebellion. i was one of those kids that was really awful when i was pretty young, like 12 to 16, pretty awful, and still now i have those moments where i flip the switch, pull the script and get on with being a complete loon, but it is not so much some active disappointment i am attempting or some nodding rebellion. it is just sort of who i am now.
and it always surprises me the way that happens; how we grow and pull fruits from the trees that bend towards us, and those parts of trees we synthesize and the other parts that rot into the soil around us. i can imagine there are so many foul fruits i have ingested and let the wrong ones fall to the earth.
of all of the things i've done, good or bad, choosing to be particular and educated about health and food has had the greatest effect. 13 years later and my rebellion about diet and health has just grown even further away from the american standard.
yesterday i got into a terribly heated discussion with a dairy farmer (slash major slash a dude that sells bull embryos) about health and diet and government and marketing and consumerism and everything that makes me more heated than anything and, also, the things i do not like to talk about because my opinions are so strong that i do not like to make people uncomfortable and i do not like to force my anti-consumerism anti-government ideas on anyone. it is only on a day like yesterday that i go to the moon
and only because yesterday my father was released from the hospital, with a stern warning and the sentence of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and he has to take some stress tests to check his heart because the doctor suspects he's had a heart attack in the past. this is all diet. also add
that my father was rushed to the emergency room last thursday because he had a partial blockage and could not digest food. this blockage was caused by scar tissue from 2 surgeries he had a year and a half ago because his colon burst from far gone diverticulitis. a disease based on diet and processed foods.
i have been trying to educate my parents about food for the past 10 years without brow beating them but yesterday my mom tried to take a burger to my dad. she thought it was okay and i was horrified. it was the first time that she ever really wanted me to explain to her why it was awful. and she really listened. and my dad called when he got home from the hospital to tell me thank you for getting all of the cookies out of his house, and my sister in law's sister texted me to tell me that the cookies i made for them are delicious.
i hope this continues. oh, and the dairy farmer and i ended up finding a very strong common ground and hugged it out in the end. poor dude just came to dinner on the wrong day.
No comments:
Post a Comment