Childhood Trauma: Part VI - Un-Lunchable

If you’ve kept up with my Childhood Trauma posts (1, 2, 3, 4, + 5) you can clearly deduce that my parents were careless, tired souls who endured 30+ years of having the life sucked out of them by me and my miserable siblings.  That seems harsh, but we were a bratty pack of preacher’s kids.  So you can imagine the amount of time my parents spent praying one or more of us would be kidnapped or run away.

Anyway, we sucked.  So, when it came to feeding us, my parents were as cheap as possible.  Seriously, my parents' frugality makes Suze Orman look like Richard Branson.  Raising 5 kids on a pastor's salary means a world of hand-me downs, leftovers, and sibling babysitting that never ended well.

In my parents’ never-ending battle in cutting corners and neglecting us kids, there were certain grocery items that were never in our house.  (i.e. - chips, sodas, fruit roll-ups, etc).  Therefore, as an adult I have become a junk food binge eater.  Much like not throwing trash at beggars at intersections, I have to show restraint and not devour entire bags of chips in single sittings.  And to this day, my desk and pantry at home almost always have some sort of children’s themed fruit snack in them.

One time, I was drunk at a friend's house who was throwing a party and hid in the pantry and ate an entire box of her Fruit Roll-Ups.

At the time and in retrospect, it was the best idea ever.

SIDE NOTE: On the VERY rare occasion my mom would buy Doritos or any other luxury snack, she would hide them in her closet or under the bed.  I figured this out and had she stored up more snacks, I might not have ever come out of that particular closet. ;)

One of the most devastating repeat offenses of my childhood was most definitely the Lunchable… and later, the advent of the Lunchable Deluxe (that came with a flippin Andes Mint)!!!  Mom would say ‘you can just cut up cheese and luncheon meat and bring your own crackers!’ The fact that this would be complete  elementary social suicide never crossed her mind. However, it haunted my dreams... repeatedly.  

I think my incessant whining left her with one of two choices: break down once and buy me a Deluxe Pizza Lunchable for my next school fieldtrip or kill me.  She was probably just too tired to dig a hole deep enough for my fat little corpse. 

So, basically, in efforts at saving money, my parents destroyed any chance of their youngest son of ever having any sort of self control whatsoever… 

PS – a while back I was grocery shopping out of boredom and I bought a Lunchable. I guess my mom had it right, those little boxes have enough sodium to take down a miniature horse!