I wrote about this in my other third grade story, but I will recap again for those of you who may not remember. In third grade, my mom had just gotten remarried, and so there were a lot of new changes in my life: new school, new house, new neighborhood, new step-father.
It took me a long time to get adjusted, because I am me and I don’t like change. And during that time, I was eating a little more than I probably should have. Not that I was overweight or anything, because I was still a pretty active kid in spite of my complete non-athletic ability, just… I think I turned to food a little bit more for comfort because it was something familiar for me to hold onto, so I’d sneak extra snacks when I was staying home alone after school and that sort of thing.
Well, one afternoon a new food that I had never seen before marked Hood Cottage Cheese appeared in our fridge.
I have always been more like a cat than a human: very curious about new things and poking my head in where it may not be wanted.
A new food to try was too much for me to resist at home all by myself with nothing to do and no parental oversight.
I told myself I would just try a little bit.
I would eat such a tiny part of it that my mom would never know that I ate any of it at all.
But when I tried it, it was so delicious that I couldn’t stop.
I devoured half the package.
Then I started to cry.
Not only because I ate the cottage cheese like a squirrel packing away extra nuts for the winter, but also because I felt guilty about what I had done to my mom. What if she was saving this amazing new food that we had never had in our fridge before for a special treat? And I went and ate half of it without even asking her?
And even though I was sure she was going to yell at me for eating her cottage cheese, I had to tell her the truth.
I was still crying when I called my mom at work. Like, full blown tears running down my face and choking back runny-nosed sobs.
I couldn’t even speak to her for a few minutes I was so upset.
And my poor mom on the other end of the phone probably thought something terrible had happened to me because of how I was carrying on.
But what she didn’t understand is that to me, that was terrible. I may have only been eight years old, but even at that age, I had a highly developed sense of morality and conscientiousness that has followed me to this day.
Finally she got me calmed down enough so that I could tell her what happened.
To my relief, she wasn’t mad at all. She told me she didn’t even really like cottage cheese anyway, she had just gotten it from Big Y because it was free that week, and if you know my mom at all you know that she can’t pass up anything that’s free 😄
She also told me that since I liked it so much, we could get more.
There was a lot of cottage cheese in our fridge Just for Meâ„¢ after that. And best of all, I didn’t have to feel guilty about eating it anymore.
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