Monday 22 August 2011

food tug-o-war

everybody needs to eat. Sometimes, when we eat it's messy. Sometimes, when we eat it looks like our head has a weight pulling it towards the plate. Let me explain.
You might be saying to yourself, ya it looks like our head is pulled towards our plates when we are hungry and shoveling it home but that isn't what I'm referring to today. What I have noticed lately is a strange phenomenon that has people weighed down by the food not in their mouths but actually outside of their mouths.

so I saw someone eating a sandwich the other day and the piece of lettuce in the sandwich slid out after the bite leaving a piece of lettuce attached to the part in her mouth so it was left dangling there after hitting her chin. Instead of putting that lettuce in her mouth or tilting the head back to try and get gravity on her team she bent forward towards her plate with her arms tentatively coming up to grab the lettuce. It was as if her head suddenly weighed triple its regular weight and she had no choice but to move to the plate.

This is a common maneuver when eating spaghetti as well. everything is happy with the noodles and the sauce and then there is a piece that is longer than its friends and it doesn't make it into the mouth. children know how to combat this, slurping. Adults, who have been groomed not to slurp become victims of the head weight where the utensils are suddenly useless and the head gets pulled towards the plate as if the rest of the body is helpless. It's as if food hitting the chin activates this strange occurrence.


Now, I've seen this happen before where the food doesn't quite make it into the mouth but it doesn't stay with the rest of the food on the plate and ends up on the chin. In these situations it is as if food hitting chin activates the heavy head and cripples the arms from helping. people start diving into their plates into this hunchback position all in the effort to keep their manners and not look foolish.

heavy heads while eating, guaranteed you'll notice it next time. ;)

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