Wednesday, October 5, 2011

I'm not eating that

When I was seven I spent most of my summer at a day camp or with a babysitter. The babysitter I liked; she never tried to give me a snack that my parents hadn't already said was safe and she brought my EpiPen along if we were going to walk to a park or something. But the adults at the day camp I had a problem with.
In the summer program we got two snacks a day in addition to the lunch boxes our parents packed us. I'd take the cup of juice that came with it, but I'd always refuse the snack. It wasn't until fourth grade that I was able to consistently and accurately sound out and define everything in an ingredients list, and so I just didn't take one. Until one day, when the snack was apples. I took one, ate it, and came back with the core a few minutes later and asked for seconds. I got it, but the adults sat me down and asked why I was so hungry today when I'd never wanted a snack before. I explained that I had peanut allergies and didn't know how to read an ingredients list, but that apples don't have ingredients lists, so today I got to have a snack. Then I went off to wash the apple juice off my hands, and the adults apparently stayed behind and decided that my refusal to eat snacks was only paranoia and obviously very unhealthy if I'd been hungry enough to eat two apples. (Or maybe I just liked apples. That was always a possibility, but none of them considered it.) So the next day at snack time they took me aside, presented me with a cup of juice and a packet of teddy bear grahams, and told me that I was going to sit at the table until I'd eaten all of them. I drank all the juice, picked up the packet, turned it over a few times, and decided that I had no idea what the list said and so I wasn't going to eat it. Then I sat at the table for almost an hour, rolling the cup around, playing with my hair, crying a little, and whining about how I had to use the bathroom. They eventually let me up to use the bathroom with the understanding that I would come right back when I was done, and then I ran away and hid in various play rooms until five when my mother came to get me. For the rest of the year they harassed me about eating snacks, but I ran away when the subject came up and either staged a hunger strike or threw a tantrum when cornered, and they never succeeded in making me eat anything. They never told my mother they were doing this and it didn't occur to me that I should, so I don't think she even found out until years later when we were talking about the place I used to go.

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