Hunger Pains

I came to the realization today that I have never known what it truly feels like to be hungry. Not normal hungry, mind you, but intense, painful starvation. The kind of hungry that makes my skin look tight under my ribs and causes my eyes to look too large for my head. I came to this epiphany while I was stuffing my mouth full of a large pastrami sandwich from Capriotti's. Before I managed to get my hands on that beastly sandwich, it was a full ten hours since I ate and I was starting to feel a noticeable pain in the pit of my stomach, a pain I don't normally get. It was a hunger pain. And why don't I get hunger pains very often? It's because I'm an American, I'm 35 pounds overweight and I eat ALL THE FUCKING TIME!!!

(now this is what the REAL American flag should look like)

It was in eating that delicious 12 inch pastrami sub that I came to the conclusion that I eat too frequently. I eat so often that my appreciation for food is diminishing. Now I'm not entirely concerned about my weight, or my health for that matter. However, I want to gain enjoyment out of the little things in life and that will be easier to accomplish if I appreciate all those little experiences we all have on a day to day basis: like waking up, eating breakfast, daydreaming, going to work, daydreaming some more, eating lunch, daydreaming about dinner, eating dinner, being disappointed in dinner because it wasn't as good as the dinner you daydreamed about, but it might have been as good if you didn't eat a lunch that was so massive that it spoiled any kind of appetite you could have possibly had before the end of the day. These experiences are separate, but shared by all of us and most people just take them for granted (myself included). It takes a rare kind of annoying optimist to attain enjoyment out of every moment in life and if they are indeed happy during every second, then there is something fundamentally wrong with them. We're not meant to enjoy every moment. Sometimes we're supposed to suffer. Sometimes we're supposed to have doubts. Sometimes we're supposed to envy our rivals. And sometimes we're supposed to be disappointed in a meal.

(now that's a disappointing meal)

At this moment, as I'm writing this, I have six inches left of my twelve inch pastrami sub. I'm debating within myself when the perfect time to finish it is. In the next half hour? Not very likely. In the next two hours? It's possible. Ten hours from now?... Well if it's not eaten by then, I will surely feast on it at that time. Although the noble thing to do would be to take the sandwich outside and give it to a bum who's homeless and hungry on the street. But of course I'm not going to do that. It would be much easier to throw it in the trash. And that's exactly what I'm going to do if I don't finish it by Tuesday.

(the sandwich in question: the Capistrami from Capriotti's)