Stale Coco Puffs, Ravenous Raccoons, & The Unrelenting Security of Our lives
It's 10:30 at night. It's after dinner and nearing time for sleep. You are mildly hungry - not the sort of hungry that needs a full meal, but enough of a craving that you decide to peer into your pantry and peruse the options. To your dismay, you find there is nothing sufficiently enticing enough to pique your interest. You let the impulse go until a few minutes later you find yourself staring down the shelves of your pantry again. Now that old jam is starting to speak to you a little bit, saying, "hmm, that actually might not be a bad idea." And you're beginning to wonder about Johnny's coco puffs, "they've been there so long! maybe he has forgotten about them?"
Twenty minutes and a bowl of coco puffs, topped off with crusty strawberry jam later, you're wondering, "what the fuck just happened?" What started as a mild impulse for food, a casual scan of the pantry, and a clarity that nothing in the food aisle met your needs ended in a ravenous devouring of Johnny's coco puffs. Now a feeling of regretful gluttony is present that somehow manages to feel all too filling but, at the same time, feels less nourishing than before you had started searching.
What originally was outside your standards eventually gained enough appeal for consumption. It wasn't that the coco puffs changed; it was that every time you went back into the pantry, your expectations lowered. But why should your standards lower? All you are doing in the first place is innocently looking for food, right? Where's the harm in some fun, passive window shopping?
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