The first time it happened, it was really unplanned. I was twelve. My best friend had thrown me over for cooler girls. There I sat at home on a Friday night, not at a slumber party with the rest of them. So, I invited Loneliness over to hang out. Always so obliging, so eager, that Loneliness. Unlike me, she never begrudged being the substitute friend when there was no one better or more interesting to fill the social calendar.
Somewhere in the middle of that discussion, I was hyperlinked back in time to this moment in my early twenties when I had yet another temp job, sitting in the lobby of an insurance company. I was subbing in for the receptionist who was on vacation. On the final day, I listened to the staff upstairs as they enjoyed their holiday party while I sat and looked out the window, watching ice pile up on my car…
As I prepare for this project, I invite you to talk to me. Over the next few months, on my social media, I will be hosting “Food Fridays.” I will ask questions such as…What’s a food that makes you feel really good in your body when you eat it?
Who is someone you really trust that you think could help fix our food systems?
What do you think of when you hear the words ‘food systems’?
Did I have enough time to take a good shower and dry my hair before the call? If not, was I willing to go through the video call with wet hair? [Side note: I’m not one of those women who looks cute and dewy after stepping out of the shower. My face gets flushed from rosacea, and my stringy hair makes me look rather like a drowned rat. In other words, I generally try to avoid having people see me in such a state.] If I didn’t take a shower then, was I willing to spend the rest of the day feeling gross? [Another note: This is the pandemic, so you know, it had indeed been, um, a whiiiile since the last shower.]
I would never buy a bottle of water.
Many people who know and love me recognize that I have this kind of extreme hangup about environmental waste, carry my own water bottle pretty much everywhere. Given that water in this country is often free and clean, I always wonder why more people don’t insist on doing the same. The answer, of course, is that we’ve been marketed out of understanding and believing it.
