Virgin Territory

In spite of my many accomplishments and adventures, it's not true that I've done everything. Not only have I failed to attempt most of the current crop of extreme activities, but I've also missed many far more normal rights of human passage.

For example, I've never really been on a diet.

Part of the reason for that, of course, is that I'm a guy, and we're eternally attractive and don't have to worry about our looks at all, much less losing them. I spend as little time looking at myself in a mirror as I do working on New Year's resolutions, and I've never owned a bathroom scale in my life.

One thing I may have in common with dieters, however, is sudden cravings and obsessions with food. The times when I've been hungry I find myself thinking about food, although in my everyday life I think about food going in only slightly more often than I do about it coming out, which is to say, rarely at best.

The past couple of nights, though, I've found myself thinking about particular foods. I'm not sure why, I'm not particularly hungry, but it intrigues me nonetheless. Maybe it's some primal, physical response, a way of my body alerting me to needing something. That would be pretty cool, if my body did that.

That would require my body to be able to take inventory, something I'm not sure it's capable of. It would also require my body to have some manner of cross-reference, and that's a step that would floor me. Why my body needs a particular mineral or something isn't much of a mystery, but why it thinks that craving can best be fixed by a pastrami sandwich is.

But that was the other day. Right now I'm thinking about, of all things, cheddar cheese. I think I used to like cheddar cheese, but that was before I gave much thought at all to any food, before I was thirty. I always thought of cheddar cheese as something routinely layered on hamburgers, shredded over a taco, or melted between two slices of bread in a pan, but pretty much took it for granted.

Then, I got married and my wife made some comment about orange cheese, and I quickly wised up. We ate lots of cheese when I was married, fine Italian ones, and I soon learned to appreciate just how tasty and good a truly fine cheese could be.

Which is why it's so surprising to me, now, to want a slice of cheddar.

Maybe it's a comfort food thing, or a retreat, or maybe my body knows something I do not.