When I hit my mid-20s, I realized quickly there were two things that needed to be eliminated from my diet immediately… ramen noodles, and kraft mac n’ chesse. I spent 24 years of my life eating those magnificent creations. But supposedly they have no “nutritional value.”
Well, I recall one spring break when I was around 11 years old and I had a buddy spent the night. We decided to build a raft out of random scrap wood from my fort. We literally spent the entire week building this thing and it was awesome. We used the old warped wood that gave you splinters every time you touched it, we had snagged some crates from the back of Country Market near Mountain View and 15th avenue. Then we used an old broken broom and one of my Mom’s good sheets as a sail. After spending most of the days and nights working on it, we finally finished, after fastening the two crates and filling them with water balloons. We pushed the raft into the pool and gave it a test run. No sooner than we tried to sit on it, it sank. Little did I know, this wouldn’t be my last attempt at wasting time (The Army was especially good at wasting time). We eventually ditched the project, and spent the last day of spring break in the house eating mac n’ cheese.
After our failed attempt at rafting, we cooked up some food. We used to get food boxes when I was a kid, and someone dropped off the equivalent of a Costco palette size of mac n’ cheese boxes. My buddy and I made a bet. He said he could eat 4 boxes of macaroni and I said I could eat 5. We made it, and only ate about 3 boxes together. My Dad came home from work and saw what we were doing. I was getting ready to throw away the rest of the macaroni when he said, “You made it, you eat it.” My buddy left later that day, so I was on my own for eating the macaroni. My dad didn’t let me eat anything else til I finished it, and it stayed in our fridge for a few more days… slowly getting nastier. I eventually ate up all the food, and needless to say, I ditched mac n’ cheese for a bit. Now all I can think, is what I would give to eat another 9 boxes of mac n’ cheese.
It also makes me realize that sometimes too much of a good thing can be bad, and not having a good thing can be worse.