I had a fiery debate recently with some friends regarding
veganism, the day before this there was a spat between two kids at work about
whether coke or juice was a healthier option and finally I had a scare at a
restaurant when a buddy with a nut allergy ingested some nuts. These three food
related incidents got me thinking about the things we put into our bodies.
I like my body. I feel like we are fast friends. My body gets
me through all sorts of situations and is yet to complain, no matter what I do
to it. For example; last week I was rejoicing that I was only five minutes from
the end of my shift and decided to let out a celebratory “woohoo” accompanied
by a double fisted ‘yes’ gesture. You know the one, kind of like you’re doing a
chin up without a bar, grasping at the air with both fists and pulling down
hard and fast while ‘yes’ becomes ‘yesssssssssssssssss’. The only problem was,
I had just been washing all of the steak knives and had placed them, blade side
up, in a cutlery basket. This meant that instead of the celebratory gesture I intended
it to be, I actually ended up stabbing myself in the elbow. The wound was a
good centimetre deep. And no complaint from my body. It just puts up with the
stupid shit I do, ah, my constant friend.
As was the case a little while ago when I accidentally ate
something a little iffy.
A few months ago I stopped for petrol on the drive home and
was offered a too-good-to-be-true offer of two Starburst Sucks lollipops for
just forty cents which, of course, I snapped up immediately. Now, I love to eat
in my car. It doesn’t have a cd player, any working windows, an interior light,
an aerial, air conditioning and leaks when it rains, meaning it constantly
smells like wet dog. So eating has to be the main form of entertainment on the
forty minute drive home from work. I tucked right into the first of my two strawberry
flavoured sweets and put the other in the centre console for the next return
journey from work (or drive TO work at 5am if I was feeling crazy) and promptly
forgot all about it.
Jump forward two weeks and on a hot, sticky afternoon I uncovered
the remaining lollipop while crawling along in heavy traffic. What a coup. I
said a silent thank you to past Maz for leaving it there for me and as we
started moving I unwrapped it whacked it straight into my mouth. A few minutes
later, it began to taste strange. I went to look at it just as traffic began to
move again and noticed that it was flecked with black. I assumed I had simply
bought one strawberry and one watermelon flavoured Starburst. That would
explain the slightly more acrid taste of this second candy and the strange
colouration. So I continued to happily suck away as I slowly made ground in the
traffic. At the next lights I went to check the progress I was making on my
lolly in order to ascertain how close I was to that point when it’s ok to chew the
rest of it. Upon pulling the lollipop from my mouth I discovered that there
were a few little black bits exposed and poking out of the walls of the
lollipop. On even closer inspection they were ants. They had crawled up the
hollow stick of the confection and had become entombed in the hard candy. Much
like Han Solo frozen in his carbonite prison, their little legs reached forward
lamenting their untimely deaths. So I decided the only way to honour the little
suckers (you’re welcome for that delightful pun) was to finish eating that creepy
crawly candy. And so I did just that. Whilst stopped amongst a hundred cars, I
sat quietly and ate my lollipop of ants. I must have been the only person in at least a ten kilometre radius doing
that exact thing.
I felt fine, not a trace of sickness was to be noted and I hadn’t
even wasted my forty cents. Yep, that car ride home was a definite success.
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