Chapter 3: You are What You Eat
One day in the fourth grade I brought a stick of butter to class to snack on during silent reading. It came wrapped in gold-colored foil and smelled of freshly stale cheese. I considered purchasing one of those tubs of spreadable butter but preferred the ease and portability of the sticks instead. As I sat down with my copy of Atlus Shrugged in hand Mrs. Smith peered over at me and let out a deafening roar.“Mr. Miller what in the world are you eating?”
Startled, I dropped my stick of fatty goodness onto the ground where it rolled off my denim jeans and onto the dusty old carpet. Its golden exterior now a light shade of gray, covered in dirt and short strands of hair.
“Mrs. Smith it’s a stick of butter, the golden kind,” I said as I picked my treat back off the ground. I examined it for a few more seconds trying to decide if it was fit to eat.
My teacher was horrified and disgusted. “Mr. Miller if you eat that one day you will grow up to be a fat bald sad old man. You are what you eat you know.”
I looked at her and then back at the golden stick staring back at me, and then smashed the stick of butter into my mouth, enjoying every second of it.
I spent the rest of the day migrating from time-out to the shit-stained bathroom stalls of Parmer Lane Elementary. During one of the dozens of trips I made to the toilet I looked down on the ground and saw something magical staring back at me. There, shining below my dangling feet and immersed in a thin layer of pre-pubescent piss lay a golden token. And not just any token either. No, it was a token to the wondrous land of Sega City. A sprawling arcade previously located in the nearby mall. I squeezed out the last of my buttery shit and reached down to pick up the moist token. I smiled and stuffed it in my pocket as I ran back to class.
The next day after eating my daily turkey sandwich and green apple during lunch I ran out to the playground to beat my arch nemesis Billy Schrider at a game of tetherball. As I trotted out to the slab of concrete I saw, to my dismay, a group of young boys standing alongside Billy.
“Hey butterface!” Billy sneered as as his cronies snickered.
“Hey Billy, ready to play?” I said nervously.
He didn’t say anything else and instead walked over to me and punched me in the face. I saw a flash of white and fell to the ground as the boys proceeded to kick me over and over again.
“Butt-er-face! Butt-er-face!” They chanted as they landed blow after blow. I rolled into a ball and remembered the golden token I had found on the floor of the boys bathroom the previous day. A smile spread across my blood-stained face. All I could think about was how fun Sega City was going to be that weekend.
Soon the kicking stopped and the pain seceded. I slowly made it to my feet and stood face to face with Billy as I swayed to and fro.
Billy was smiling devilishly. “Take that you turkey!” He said as he punched me in the adam’s apple.
I let out something that sounded like a wheeze and fell back again. The boys quickly ran away and left me sitting on the ground grasping my throat. As the oxygen slowly left my brain and darkness surrounded me it finally made sense. “Turkey? Apple? Of course!” I whispered with my last ounce of strength.
From that day on I refused to eat anything containing Turkeys or Apples. Instead, I mainly consumed foods the color of that glorious stick of butter. And that, folks, is what I attribute most of my success to today.
