Reading What's Eating You

“It’s kind of a chick book. Is that ok with you?”

The woman at the Barnes and Noble thrust the book into my hand. Almost like a dare.

I stared down at the title.

“Eat. Pray. Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia” By Elizabeth Gilbert.

“Great”, I thought, “One thing I’m really good at. Two things I suck at.”

I studied the book’s cover.

I’ve mastered eating. It took four decades, but I’ve arrived at this new place in life where I don’t take a pass on Mexican food or Thai food or the modest 25 grams of saturated fat contained in one before-bedtime snack. Ever. I’m also in full denial. I refuse to acknowledge the health repercussions to all this conquering of my former fear of eating. My friend Reese once told me as he was helping me with my laundry that folding my underwear was like folding doll clothes. Oh those were the days.

The other night on the way home from work, after I’d made a deal with myself to start to work on my food issues, I fully demonstrated that I do indeed know how to eat.

I’d only bought one bag of potato chips while at Wal*Mart. This was part of my “the New Timbo, New Years resolution” drill.

“You can only get one bag I told myself. One!

I’d stuck to my guns. But as I listened to CNN on my drive up the Idaho panhandle, I made the mistake of tuning into the Larry King show. Hosting the folks from all the past seasons of Biggest Loser, Larry interviewed the winners. They kept talking about food and there in my Jeep was that lonely sack of potato chips. The chips began calling out to me.

I made a deal with myself. I’d stop at Dairy Queen in Rathdrum Idaho and I’d get one small order of onion rings. With fry sauce. Saliva filled my mouth in anticipation of those gently fried, delicately battered rings. Meanwhile I continued to listen to the past winners of the Biggest Loser as I visualized those onion rings.

What came next?

Well none of it is healthy. OK? Let’s just establish that now. There will be no tale of empowerment, victory, and happily ever after found hereafter.

Arriving at the Rathdrum Dairy Queen at exactly 8:45 pm, I parked the Jeep and approached the door. A high school-aged, 110 lb, see-through-thing was mopping the floor.

The door is locked. I pull harder. She looks up and points toward the drive through.

Look, my Jeep is a six speed. It is not easy to dip anything into any sauce while driving a 4x4. Especially while trying to shift gears on an icy highway. I began to get pissed about this change of plans, but rather than demonstrate will power, I jumped back into the Jeep and bee lined for the drive-through. The Saliva was in overdrive now. My stomach growled. The anticipation, the fantasy of how good the damn onion rings with fry sauce would be was killing me.

“Welcome to Dairy Queen, can I take your order?” The sweet chipper voice on the other end of the speaker sounds like a bi polar cheerleader. I can tell these things because I have watched a lot of Friday Night Lights episodes.

“I’d like a small order of onion rings with a side of fry sauce.”

“I’m sorry sir but we’ve already closed the grill for the night.”

“What do you mean? It’s not even closing time yet? You’re lobby is not supposed to close until nine.”

“Would you like a Dilly Bar instead?”

A Dilly Bar? She could not be for real. I visualized all the things I could do with a Dilly Bar at that moment.

“You have got to be kidding me! You’ve just lost a customer for life. Do you hear me? Life!” I was screaming into the loud speaker. It did not occur to me until 12 miles later that my license plate and the exact color of the wonder Jeep Little Red Ride Em Good was on at least three closed circuit cameras during my tantrum.

I started grabbing gears, fishtailing all the way past the icy, rutted drive-through lane. Turning onto Highway 41, I grabbed the sack of potato chips.

By Spirit Lake Idaho, I’d consumed half the bag.

I kept listening to the testimonials from the Biggest Loser. And I kept eating.

Guilt and satiation traded places in my head. “I really should stop this lunacy,” I told myself. “You’re binging. You need to quit.”

One of my professors, Author Leslie Leyland Fields just finished editing an anthology on the spirituality of food. Oh if she could just see me now. I was soooooo spiritual.

On Larry King a man spoke about his loss of 160 million pounds. You are ridiculous I told myself. You really don’t need another frickin potato chip!

By Oldtown, Idaho the bag was nothing but crumbs.

So yes I guess you could say I am damn good at eating.

Love? Prayer? Not so much.

In MY case Eat. Love. Prayer: could read: One Man’s consumption of Everything Across Wal*Mart, Central Four Wheel Drive, Castle Superstores and Toys R Us.

AND, if I were to receive a report card from my guardian angel on my mastery of the latter two topics, Love and Prayer, I imagine it would read something like this:

“Tim struggles with spiritual intimacy and is reluctant to broach regular communication with his higher power unless a natural disaster, insurance claim filing, or government audit is imminent. His ability to form lasting and fulfilling relationships is stunted and he is completely incapable of honest self evaluation. He leans toward isolation and introversion and his coping skills are relegated to forming fantasy relationships with athletes posing on cereal box covers and pursuit of escapism via a trucker’s highway atlas.

I held the book close to my heart for the Barnes and Noble’s saleslady’s benefit.

I responded, “Chick book? Not a problem. I’m in touch with my masculinity. I’ve even read a few issues of Oprah-cover to cover.”

I didn’t mention my current crush on a man shown on a Wheaties Box.

The woman didn’t return the smile. “Sure you have honey.”

I briefly considered whether I should invest any further effort in proving to her just how comfortable I am in the realm of chick anything. Up until recently, I was nearly 100% surrounded by women at work. We had to be separated because rumor has it our collective productivity was in decline.

I was also the only guy in the theater for a showing of Catch and Release, because I like Timothy Olyphant and I thought the movie was really about fly fishing.

I’ve even been to a home sales candle party damn it! I’m so way ok with Pier One Imports and Baby’s R Us and Nail Saloons.

Instead I kept my mouth shut.

I followed the woman through the store. She had other titles to show me in my quest for non fiction spiritual writing.

I’m looking back down at the cover of Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia while walking obediently behind her. I notice the cover also has a blurb by Anne Lamott on it. Anne! Oh my god! Well now, if even Anne say’s Eat Pray Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia is “A wonderful book, brilliant and personal, rich in spiritual delight.” what’s not to like?

Alrighty, then. If Anne likes it, Timmy will certainly like it.

I tell the woman ahead of me that I am a big Anne Lamott fan.

“Oh, ok.” Is the only response I get.

I become overly focused on Anne’s blurb. I have a tendency to daydream at inappropriate moments. Oh Anne. Surely you could have done better. The blurb leaves me wanting something more. So many clichés.

I imagine that someday, when I am a real writer, and I’ve had a best seller or two, other authors will ask me to write blurbs on their book covers.

I practice a few as the guide ahead of me makes a sharp left into current events.

“John Wilson’s work, The Naked Truth About Deep Fryers sings with the magic of vegetable oil induced escapism, while also capturing the essence of what it takes to deep fry a turkey in your garage without having to call the fire department.”

“101 Ways to Torpedo Your Credit is an invaluable guide to mastering the troubled waters of current market meltdowns. Cindy Depriest’s hilarious journey to the center of a 550 credit score is a must-read guide for anyone seeking to avoid similar perils.”

“Hot About Hot Wheels, shows once again that Thelma Higgins has done her research. This book is thee collectors guide. Her pursuit of Flames, Petite Red Lined Wheels and Yellow Track stands tallest as a Spiritual Breakthrough and is an inspiration to Obsessive Compulsive Toy Collectors World Wide!”

Oh Anne baby, someday I am so gonna out blurb you.

The Barnes and Noble lady stops, bends down and rising, holds out another book.

“This is a book I recommend to everyone. I’ve given away seven or eight copies and they never come back to me. I guess it gets loaned to another person and then another…”

The book lands in my free hand and pictured on the cover is a bunch of firewood buried in snow. It’s a PNBA book of the year, which means I immediately hate the author. It also looks eerily familiar to the last two decades of my life. “Indian Creek Chronicles: A Winter Alone in the Wilderness.” By Pete Fromm.

Did I mention the closest creek to here is, yes, Indian Creek?

I stare back up at the woman---this lady with short graying hair, as she’s looking back at me intently, waiting for my reaction, has power. She’s “touched” as they say among country folk. She knows. She had me pegged at hello. Who knew? Here all along I thought she was just manning the information booth at the Barnes Noble but now I decide she’s really a physic.

I’m not sure I want to follow her anymore. In just two books of recommendations I have a lifetime of difficult issues sitting in my hands waiting for God, my guardian angel, and a pro bono legal aide to help process my way through. I feel naked. It’s unsettling.

“Do you need anymore, uh help?

I shake my head no. But she’s not done.

But three New York Time’s writer Timothy Egan books later, I am. I now have in my hands “Breaking Blue” (A story about Pend Oreille County’s rich criminal history courtesy of our former Sheriff Tony Bamonte), “The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest (An insightful, sometimes rueful look at a place that embodies both the promise and the problems of the American continent.) and, “The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived The Great American Dust Bowl (A Classic Disaster Tale according to the New York Times.)

I left Barnes and Noble feeling equal parts doom and gloom and elation.

So I’m just warning you now. It’s going to be a long quarter of non fiction revelation.

I can just see the title of the resulting future book cover now: “It ALL started with a case of potato chips and a rejected order of ONION RINGS: The True Story of the 22 day siege at an Idaho Dairy Queen and the Biggest Loser of Pend Oreille County. The Life and Times of Timothy Anderson. By Ms Fri Toe Lay.

This book will come complete with another blurb by Anne Lamott.

“I Think He Stalked Me Once “