Rolf Danner

Somehow I’m having a hard time getting going with the column this week. I tell myself that it’s because I’m a little tired. It’s been a big week with lots of new experiences and there is the added pressure of the approaching deadline. My first choice would be to just avoid this. Can I just get a quart of ice cream and curl up on the sofa? Or how about those Entenmann’s sheet cakes? Last week I told Jeff that one of them used to replace a lonely dinner. One was my limit only because I didn’t want to face the cashier with two cakes and a half-gallon of milk in tow.

Food has always been a great source of comfort to me. It never demands anything except to be eaten. It needs no taking care except being bought, and it is always ready sitting there on the shelves in the market. My mother used to tell me that even as a little baby I was happiest with the bottle. Emptying it in one steady gulp most of the time. Where other babies needed to be coaxed into eating, I just went right to it. Later as a young boy I had competitions with my teenage sister who could eat more baked goods in one sitting. Six Bavarian style pretzels and a liter of milk were considered a good showing. All the while a raving metabolism shot up my height to six feet two by my early teenage years and kept me rail thin through my twenties.

Now this supercharged metabolism has slowed down to a more measured pace, but food is still a source of great comfort in distress. So now I have to learn other ways of soothing. Ways that are not as close as the refrigerator door but have long-term benefits rather than clogging my arteries with cholesterol. Yes, I know all this, but for some reason the sun doesn’t seem to shine as bright today and I ‘m feeling a bit blue. I guess it’s time to go to the gym.

PS: And I did go and I feel much happier for it. Endorphins always beat carbs, if you let them.