I return dejected to my suite, compulsed to eat. Home alone, I become a simile about digging my way to freedom as I scour the house for tasty treats. If there are no more chips, or the candy is no more, I grow enraged. The most angry – legitimately angry at the world – I’ve ever been is when I thought I was grabbing an Oh Henry! out of a bag but it turned out to be a Nature Valley granola bar. Even though I knew the Oh Henry! was still in there, the extra time I had to wait to eat it and the disappointment in not getting what I want, well that’s a time I don’t need to revisit. I’m acutely addicted to things, which gives me a taste of how bad addiction really is.
Past Self needs to prepare, to make Present Self’s life easier to deal with. And Present Self is a lot like the Memento fella. So buying certain foods, keeping important tools nearby and accessible, this is all in Past Self’s purview.
“Ah yes, how delightful! These multiple Oh Hanks will be tootsolutely delictable when I’m unable to move on my footawn post-ingestion, mid-mundanity, pre-insanity.”
But waiting for food to heat up, even in the microwave or toaster, is so hard because of Present Self’s ridiculously addictive appetite.
Now it should be stated that I could do with a new toaster. I don’t know if I’ve ever actually owned a decent one. If there exists any toasters that do what you’d expect them to, I’ve never heard tell of ’em. Mine never fully pops the toast out at the end. It’s a lazy fight against gravity, and the bread always gets stuck in there, so I’m forced into a game of Operation with the toaster as the patient. Sometimes I use my fingers to extract the slice, if I’m in a rush and figure that getting the toast immediately is more important than protecting my hand from getting burnt, because of how short of a time you have before the toast gets cold. Other times I use a knife or fork to try to stab the slice and then hoist it out of there, risking electrocution in the process. Or I’ll dump the whole appliance upside down, forgetting once again that the crumbs being collected by the tray underneath are inevitably coming down with the toast. For some reason I’m never willing to go as far as unplugging the toaster while I retrieve the bread. I have my reasons but you wouldn’t understand. Maybe I gotta stop getting my toasters from alleys. But I never will. I belong in the alleys.