I Did It My Way... The Wrong Way

Life is often filled with little regrets. Some are generally harmless. For example, I am not proud of the outfit I wore in high school that involved purple pants. Other regrets are a little more significant. For example, that outfit also involved suspenders.

Little regrets can linger in your mind, partnered with the popular refrain: “if only I could go back and do it over...” These regrets are not earth-shattering, but they do serve as a welcome reminder that you are, in fact, capable of making some pretty stupid decisions. For me, one such incident occurred during my stint as a deejay at my college radio station.

I stumbled onto the airwaves through a deft combination of pure luck and dumb luck. My voice was somehow approved for radio broadcast, despite the fact that, to this day, people over the phone call me “ma'am” (I think I passed puberty on a technicality.)

I started out small, running the Classical Hour, a weekly bloc when the station managers threw caution to the wind and allowed classical music to be aired. I got the gig by being both a student in the music department and the only person on campus willing to take the position.

After showing off my chops by rocking the airwaves with Beethoven and Vivaldi, I finally broke through and got to host other shows, usually working with some of my friends. It was a lot of fun, but there was one show that should have turned out a lot better than it did. It was Super Bowl Sunday, and my co-host and I decided to put together a big show to lure an audience – something larger than the roughly zero people who listened to us in the first place.

Of course, nobody was going to listen to us during the game, so we set up a big halftime show. My friend managed to snag some free stuff to give away, and we put posters all around campus. The stage was set. All we had to do was put on an exciting show, give away prizes, and take advantage of the ratings bonanza to let students know our awesome show was on every Sunday night. It couldn't fail.

So here's how it failed. The second quarter ended. My co-host and I came right on the air, filled with excitement and ready for our first big giveaway; it was probably just a crappy t-shirt, but never underestimate the appeal of free stuff to a college student. We asked a simple trivia question and told people to call in to win. Sure enough, the lines lit up. People were listening! Success!

I picked up the first line, heard the correct answer, and awarded the first prize. That should have been it. All I had to say was “Congratulations and thanks for listening,” and the show would go on! Instead, I went with: “Can we play something for you?”

We were already limited in time, and we needed to make every minute count. Yet something inside of me decided: let's take requests! The caller paused for a moment, and said, “Sure – how about Stairway to Heaven?” Eager to please and clearly incapable of thinking, I said, “okay!” I cued the song up without my co-host having any idea what was going on. So, when the song we were playing ended, I fired up an eight-minute song that does a slow burn for the first seven.

As the opening strain began, the reality of the situation struck my co-host and she turned her head in my direction. I don't recall if she actually said, “what the heck are you doing?” or if that was merely how I interpreted the stare of death shooting out from her face. Either way, eight agonizing minutes later, halftime was over, the game was back on, and any chance we had of winning a repeat audience faded into oblivion.

Admittedly, this hardly qualifies as my biggest regret in life – it probably isn't even in the top fifty. Still, it feels good to get it off my chest. To my co-host, I offer a belated apology. If only I could go back and do it over...

What Not to Eat

When I was in high school, I ate many lunches from the school cafeteria. These meals ranged from fairly edible to merely recognized as food by law. Needless to say, the cafeteria food itself was never the highlight of lunch time. That honor belonged to the snack I'd purchase to supplement my meal.

Back then, I had a particular weakness for apple pie. Not the all-American standard with a crisp lattice crust covering a filling of fresh, succulent apples. My obsession was the Drake's version, which was a sugared pastry shell surrounding apple tidbits covered in a thick plasma-like substance that was fried to perfection – just like grandma used to make 'em.

 

Looking back, the only thing more disturbing than my daily intake of this fiendish treat was the fact that I regularly ate two of them. Not just two individual pies – because that's what each wax-paper-wrapped packaged contained – but two entire packages. Every day. I imagine my daily intake of fat back then was equivalent to my monthly intake these days.

 

But hey, there were apple bits in there, right? It wasn't entirely unhealthy. I mean, it's not like I was just gulping down bagsful of sugar straight up. That was only done on special occasions in the form of Fun Dip, the ultimate coup from the sugar industry. It's just a bag filled with flavored sugar. But you don't just dump it all down your throat; that would be absurd. Instead, you retrieve it with a small stick made entirely of sugar... until you've eaten the stick and are left with half a bag of sugar. Then you dump it down your throat.
 

It's hard to believe that Fun Dip is still being made. You'd think there would be at least a dozen health-conscious groups out there saying, "Umm... you know that Fun Dip is just sugar right? That's it. It's sugar dipped in sugar. I don't think that's entirely nutritious. In fact, what's the opposite of nutritious?" And yet there it is. I'm amazed they haven't made some kind of spin-off product, like Fun Dice – flavored sugar cubes that you roll from a cup made entirely of sugar. Yahtzee!

 

"Snacks" such as these (and I use quotation marks to distinguish these products from snacks that at least bear some resemblance to actual food) were part of my childhood and teenage diets. And yet, while I could certainly stand to do a few more sit-ups in the morning (there are numbers greater than zero, right?), I wouldn't consider myself an unhealthy adult.

 

Somehow I made it through. And yet I now feel a tinge of hypocrisy as I lord over the snack selections of my kids. It's not as though I force them to eat only organic snacks that are like twigs and leaves, but without the flavor. However, I will veto countless foods that found their way into my system at one time, such as Pop Tarts – another food I look at now and wonder: what was I thinking?

 

Does this mean my children will grow up healthier than I did? Possibly. After all, I did grow up in a household where we made fruit punch almost every night for dinner from a powdered sugar mix -- a drink so artificial that it didn't even pretend to have nutritional value, unlike certain other drinks with their superior "natural flavors" (whatever those are supposed to be). My family affectionately called this drink – and I'm not kidding about this – red slop. So not only did we choose to consume such a product, but we went out of our way to emphasize the less-than-natural quality of it.

 

Still, I don't think this makes my kids better off overall. If food was the only factor that determined one's health, I'd probably need the jaws of life to get through a door frame. However, if I can get my kids to realize now that there are lots of great foods that are relatively good for them, then I feel a little bit better about their health down the road. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a jar of peanut butter that's not going to eat itself.