When I was 14 or 15, I badgered my mom into taking me to a Berkeley record store one afternoon so I could buy a CD that was otherwise sold out. It was a compilation CD released by a local radio station (obviously, this was before iTunes), and for one reason or another now long forgotten, I needed to have it. Like most teenage whims go, my very happiness depended on it.
After finding the CD, my mom said that she was getting hungry, but we couldn't agree on a place to eat. Back then, I was on an obsessively low-fat, "brown rice and vegetables" kind of diet; fried falafels and pizza would not do. 10 minutes later, she felt queasy from hunger. She broke out in a sweat. She said that she just couldn't take a step further. I couldn't understand and thought she was just being dramatic--if you're hungry, let's just walk faster to get you some food!!
As karma would have it, I was hit with my first episode of "the shakes" a few years later during a morning cross-country workout. I suddenly felt suspiciously off. Not tired exactly, not hungry exactly, but definitely both of those things. I stopped running and stood by a tree. Within a few minutes, I felt clammy, queasy, and so weak-knee'd that I could barely even make it as far as a nearby bench to sit down.
Since then, I've felt this way a number of times and dealt with it better on some occasions, worse on others. I've self-diagnosed it as "low blood sugar," a condition completely different than mere hunger, which is like my usual state of being. Sam knows that when I say I have low blood sugar, it's best to steer clear. Ironically, it sometimes happens if I've had too much sugar, or if I'm overly hungry. Other times, it seems to happen randomly.
Like yesterday, after a five-block walk from the house to the Flower Mart, a conglomeration of flower vendors in one sprawling complex. Sam wanted a houseplant for us to inevitably kill, and Allen planned to meet us there for lunch.
I started feeling the creeping onset of the low blood sugar by the time we got there, and Sam kept on asking for my opinion on this plant or that tree. No way could I focus on something that I had no faith in ourselves to keep alive. Oddly enough, though, singing Eric Carmen's "Make Me Lose Control" quietly to myself helped stave off the worst of it (how I discovered this at that moment I'll never know). Mostly, I was just trying to hold it all in.
Not wanting to actually freak out as much as I was on the inside, I first just told Sam that I was feeling a little hungry. He said, "Of course you are. It's past your feeding time," in that tone I usually love and find hilarious. At that moment, however, I just wanted to tremble out of my skin and punch him in the throat, if only I could summon the energy.
Luckily, there was a McDonald's across the street. I gave him my self-diagnosis, he changed his tone, and I walked over in search of an apple pie. I wanted to run, sprint over as fast as possible and devour every pie, apple or otherwise, they had available, but the intersection felt like a chasm, and the best I had in me was a slow shuffle. Any more and I was afraid I'd trip over my own feet.
By the time I got inside and in the line of about five people deep, I noticed that this McDonald's displayed caloric values of each food item, and two apple pies (for $1) are 500 calories. In a complete flashback to my teenage years, I just couldn't justify it when lunch was right around the corner where I probably would be eating three times that amount anyway.
So I opted for oatmeal, and when I got my hands on it, it was as if this were either the first or last meal of my life. This wasn't about savoring it, or even tasting it much; this was purely about ingestion. I couldn't fit enough of it onto the spoon at one time, couldn't take the time to let it cool. The top of my mouth is still gently burned.
But it was so worth it. I felt better within a few minutes, and within the hour, all was a distant memory. The rest of the day was beautiful, sunny and warm with a hint of a breeze as a reminder that this was still San Francisco in the wintertime. We walked to lunch, critiqued furniture at a few nearby stores, and bought a vintage-looking Le Tigre polo from Out of the Closet for under $5. All made possible by the oatmeal that saved me from turning into a trembling mass of jello outside of the Flower Mart.
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