500 words a day

537 words - 6th August 2009

Eating was my main role and goal in life. It was the first thing I thought about when I woke up, it was the thing that I dreamt of more than anything else. When I felt sad I thought about what I could eat, then and later on. When I was happy I wanted to eat as a celebration. If one of my friends came round and was upset. I wanted to cook them a meal – to share obviously. This had been the case for as long as I could remember. I remember my Mum starting me on solid foods and how pleased she was when I ate my first jar.


‘So quickly, my boy, so quickly. Look Isaac, he’s eaten it all!’


I felt so proud and spent the rest of her life (sadly only 8 more years from that first solid foods day) trying to hear that pride and pleasure in her voice again. She liked to show me off to the neighbours. I remember when I was only 5 how she demonstrated my strong cheese eating skills to the Zimmermans. No, don’t worry Irene, he loves the cheese, all cheese. Bring out the strongest one, yes mouldy as you like.


See, I told you – as I sat proudly in front of the cleared plate, cheese smeared around my face but no a drop left on the plate.





He likes to eat steak too, she proudly claimed at the Finkenbaums Barmitva. He simply adores it, rare as you like. Last week we went to a sushi bar for crying in a bucket and my boy ate more than his Father – not that he eats much though she said holding out an arm in my Fathers direction and frowning.


My Father you see was the exact opposite. He ate little; he was obviously skinny, in the same league as my Mother was fat. She needed a special chair to support her weight and we had to have the doorways of the house widened so she could fit through without touching the sides. He cold slip through the bars of a prison or if you’re not careful Isaac, my Mother often shouted to him as he left the table after consuming only the smallest of meals – you’ll fall through that crack in the floorboards.


Sadly these grim predictions of skinniness-induced-death came true. My Father died when I was just 10, when he was sucked in to the path of a car by a passing lorry. The lorry was going quite fast but most people, most small children even, wouldn’t have been sucked in at all. It was just that he weighed so little, the policeman told me and my mother, he weighed so little and the suction dragged him in front of the car. It couldn’t stop, your Father’s body was snapped in two. He wouldn’t have felt very much though, after the snapping, it would have been fairly quick.





He wasn’t proud of my eating. But he was OK with it. Whenever my mother turned to him and loudly proclaimed about some new freakish food based achievement, he nodded, looked at me, raised his eyebrows, and then went back to his crossword. He loved the crossword.








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Steve Wybourn





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