Jim Goldsworthy, Columnist
One of my co-workers recently went out to the parking lot to meet his wife and accept transfer of some cake that was left over from a party she’d attended.
It was an 8-by-12-inch chocolate sheet cake with pink and white icing that featured an image of Santa Claus surrounded by a green wreath. Less than one lengthwise row of slices had been consumed.
“This is from a women’s party,” my friend said, “and this is all they ate of it. Can you believe that?”
I told him I could go one better than that.
Each summer, my church has vacation Bible school, and I volunteer to help with it. I don’t teach, but assist in the procurement, preparation and distribution of snacks. (I slice grapes.)
What I discovered to my astonishment was that of the 45 or 50 kids who were present, at least a third of them didn’t want ice cream.
When I told my buddy this story, he said, “That’s good! Maybe some of them are learning what people are trying to teach them, that too much of that stuff isn’t good for them.” (He has had to swear off anything sugar-related because of health reasons.)
One of our young woman reporters saw the cake and asked me if it was our monthly birthday cake. I told her who brought it in, and why, and added that it came from a women’s party his wife had attended.
Then I asked her if she could believe that so much of it was left.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “That’s how it works.”
Huh? I said the reputation women have gained with regard to chocolate — cake or otherwise — was such that all you had to do was throw it down like a referee does a hockey puck during a faceoff and get the hell out of their way.
“It’s not like that, any more,” she said.
Gee. Kids rejecting ice cream. Women not swarming over something made out of chocolate. What’s next? Middle-aged guys not wanting beer?
Now and then, we get pizzas delivered to the newsroom, or someone brings in a box of doughnuts. I usually wind up walking by our snack table a few hours later and noticing that some of it is still left.
Such a thing wouldn’t have happened back in the old days, when nobody minded taking the last piece of pizza or the last doughnut.
However, I am an old-fashioned type and therefore willing to dispose of that last unwanted morsel with a clear conscience. Then I put the empty box into the trash can ... which is something else not everyone wants to do.
Considering that obesity is now considered our No. 1 health threat, it is good that people are starting to watch what they eat. I’ve decided it’s a good practice, myself, but don’t carry it to ridiculous extremes.
PBS has run a couple of World War II documentaries that dealt with life on the home front, and I noticed in watching them that there were NO fat people anywhere, either kids or grownups.
For that matter, most old-time photos or newsreels don’t show fat people, but that is not to say they didn’t exist. Some rich folks were quite hefty, which in those days was considered a sign of success and affluence. They weren’t called “fat cats” for nothing.
William Howard Taft has been America’s heaviest president so far (332 pounds), serving from 1909 to 1913. After getting stuck in the White House bathtub, he had a larger one installed. A famous photo shows four fully clothed normal-sized people sitting in it with room to spare. (Google “Taft’s bathtub”.)
People weren’t thin back then just because they watched what they ate. Nossir. They were thin because they either burned off their calories or were poor and didn’t eat that much to begin with — or both.
The men were farmers, they worked in factories, they were miners or laborers, they did whatever, and it took a lot of energy. Their wives had homes to run and children to raise, and that was one hell of a fuel-consuming job.
These people were active from can-see to can’t-see and didn’t sit around all day and all night in front of a computer or a television set.
The kids in my generation may have eaten junk and watched TV, but we got off our rear ends and went out to play. We had to be threatened with having dinner withheld if we didn’t come in to eat it. Apparently, there are still kids around who are like this.
A surprising amount of goodies make their way to our newsroom, but their nature has changed over the years.
The public relations people from one of the area’s big businesses visited us a few days before Christmas back in the 1970s, bringing with them a huge box filled with booze.
When we made a fuss over them, one guy said they weren’t doing anything special.
“We bring you this stuff every year,” he said.
We told him that none of us had ever seen such a present.
“Yeah?” he went on. “Every year we come in and give it to Soandso, and he says he’ll take care of it.”
Soandso wasn’t there that day, which probably was a good thing.
“That would explain why we never see it,” one fellow said. “He really takes care of it.”
The next year, they brought us a box of fruit.
As I was writing this, one of my friends from the Gulf War Memorial Committee came to the newsroom to give us a big tray of cookies.
I asked my co-worker — the one who indicated that many young women forswear cake these days — if they still eat cookies.
“Oh, yes,” she said with a radiant smile. “They’re a downfall.”
I was glad to hear that. Regardless of how many strong points a person may have, you cannot trust someone who has no weaknesses.
You can trust me on that.
