I did it for the government cheese

butter photo

I was a hungry kid. Not starving hungry, but no matter how much I ate I always seemed hungry.

This meant that I was often on the lookout for food. No surprise I was also fat and food always seemed to help me feel better and less anxious about things. When I was in elementary school I found a new way to get some snacks. Help out in the school kitchen.

I asked the school cooks if I could help out like I saw other kids do. I learned that those kids had to help out because they were poor and their parents couldn’t pay for their lunch. My parents could afford to pay for my lunch, so why was I working? One of the benefits of working in the kitchen besides free food, you get extra food. Basically, you get food that would be thrown away and that included all that delicious government cheese.

It wasn’t just cheese but all kinds of the extra food I got. It didn’t help me lose weight, but I did have fun learning how to use things in the kitchen and scraping plates, and doing things during lunchtime. My classmates would sometimes ask why I was helping and I said that I enjoy helping clean the plates and working in the kitchen. There was a little bit of social disapproval here since the other kids that helped were ostracised and made fun of because they were different. I didn’t mind if they made fun of me. I got extra food!

I continued to help in the kitchen until almost junior high. Probably 5 years or so. In junior high, they didn’t have that option so I couldn’t do it. Also, I was hanging out with friends during lunch and that seemed more important than getting extra food. Plus I had slimmed down and I wasn’t as hungry anymore. Sometimes you outgrow your hunger.

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