When frustrated, upset or stressed out, people respond to food in two different ways. Some people can’t eat. They feel full up to the top of their throats and nothing solid will go down.
Other people eat to capacity, stuffing their faces till all the little spaces in the emotional part of their brains are saturated.
I am the second type.
So, last night at about 8:30, after an evening of babysitting for my granddaughter Lila, 4, and grandson Remy, 3 months, I set out to drive from Brooklyn to my home in Connecticut, about 45 miles away and about 5-6 blocks from their house I hear “click, click, click” and I feel a lttle lopsided at the driver’s seat and I know without looking that I have a flat tire.
Yep. Got out — luckily — in a parking space just before I was about to make the left turn to take the highway, turned right instead because I know there’s a service station 2-3 blocks away and surely some nice young man will change the tire for me.
But apparently the young people at this station have safe, secure jobs and plenty of assets in the bank and have no need to earn an extra $$whatever they think I might give them, and they told me to call AAA, which I did.
Then, when the man from AAA came and tried to get the “doughnut” tire out of the trunk, he broke off the screw that holds it in place.
So now I have no tire and no way to get the doughnut tire.
He borrowed some tools from the service station and after several attempts to get the spare he told me he couldn’t get the screw off, that the doughnut was there for life and that I should put air in the tire and drive to the local 24/7 tire store and get a new one.
Geez! My tire is brand new and besides I don’t want to go to the tire store and I’m tired and cold and now I WANT TO EAT. ANYTHING!!!!
But I didn’t have anything in the car to eat. I was eyeing the Yogurt Truck which had parked itself at the gas station. Imagine, in this day and age, a yogurt truck selling “healthy” frozen yogurt, (rather than that fat-and-calorie laden ice cream), that you can get covered with fudge sauce, sprinkles, chopped cookies or other wholesome items.
But I realized I don’t want just anything. It was cold out and I had forgotten my sweater at my daughter’s house and besides, ice cream isn’t filling and neither is healthy frozen yogurt with nutritious sprinkles on top.
I needed to munch something. Potato chips, pretzels. Stuff like that.
So I looked the AAA man in the eye and gave him my best Mom “you can do it if you try” look and said in my best Mom voice “you can do it if you try, I just know you can.” So he borrowed another tool and sure enough, after a while he did it!
He fixed the tire, blessed me for having an AAA card. I didn’t have any gold stars or stickers to give him so I gave him some extra $$, because he was so determined.
A few weeks ago I blogged about having food in the car for emergencies (I was stuck in a horrible storm then). But do I listen to my own advice about having food in the car? Or to the advice of people who told me what food I should always have in the car?
NO!
I wasn’t really hungry. I was upset, frustrated and stressed out, needing the kind of food I want to eat when I feel that way. So the real problem is how to have that kind of food in the car all the time and only eat it when I need it.
I’m not sure how that can work. I’d probably eat the stuff at any old time and then I would have to keep replacing it and if there’s one thing I don’t need it’s to consume extra calories of eat-this-when-you’re-upset food.
I did have some Ricola sugar free lemon-mint cough drops. They had to do.
But when I got home just before 11 p.m. I ate a large bowl of popcorn.