As I get older, I find that my appetite has dramatically lessened, especially in hot weather. This is the direct antithesis of when we were teenagers and seemed to be constantly eating! I imagine we needed constant nutrition to fuel our rapid growth and to fuel our overload of hormones. Tim especially seemed to have a life-long insatiable appetite. I used to call him “Big eater boy”. In the school cafeteria, he would finish his lunch, then wait by the place where the lunch trays were deposited after eating. He would grab any untouched leftovers and wolf them down. As a point of interest, I remember we used to use chocolate pudding and mix it into our milk to make chocolate milk. Throughout most of our school years, lunches were 25 cents and milk was 2 cents. The milk came in miniature glass milk bottles from Bell Dairy in Norwalk. I remember when we were in the 2^nd grade; we had a “field trip” to the Bell Dairy in Norwalk. The whole place smelled like sour milk and ever since then I have had an even less taste for milk.  Of course we never thought about it at the time, but if I had kept at least one of those little glass milk bottles, they would be a highly sought after collector’s item these days no doubt. If I would have listened to our grandmother when we were kids who always said, “The things of today are the antiques of tomorrow”, I would probably be very wealthy today. On the other hand, I’m so sentimental (10 % sentiment and 90% “mental”), that I would probably never sell anything that I had either owned or used. I had a picture of a Bell Diary milk bottle I obtained from EBay a while back and I wish I could have found it for this story. Unfortunately, it is lost in the vast bytes and bits on my hard drive! Oh Oh, another one of my famous “side tracks” One of Tim’s famous eating records when we were kids was one Saturday morning when he ate 15 slices of toast and 6 bowls of Puffed Wheat which forevermore tagged him with the moniker of “The Puffed Wheat King”. Hey, how come they dropped the phrase “Shot from guns” on the Puffed Wheat boxes? Yeah, here we go again, probably another conspiracy by the Commie Demo”rat” gun grabbing “girlie men”! (Hey!!! It’s 5 days from the election cut me some slack!) Another memorable “glut moment” of Tim’s was one Easter our grandmother got us a whole box of Juicy Fruit gum! I think it was something like 10 5-stick pack packs or something. Tim opened about 5 gum packs containing 5 sticks each and rolled each stick into a large glob that looked like a cinnamon roll (see sketch below), and put the whole thing in his mouth and chewed it! I can hear our mother now if we had gotten caught doing this! I can recall one of many examples or my overindulgence. When I was in the 4^th grade, our class had an Easter egg decorating contest and I made a clown face and won the “Funniest” Category. The prize was a giant chocolate Easter bunny filled with shredded coconut. It was so tempting, that as soon as I got it, I immediately started to devour it! I ate about 95% of it and remember pushing the last inch or so of it down into the bottom of the package. It never occurred to me to save what little remained to eat later. More than likely, I wanted to hide the fact that I gluttonously “polished it off”. Although after eating it in class, I’m not so sure it was a “secret” at any rate. Thinking back, it baffles me that the teacher didn’t say anything to me about waiting until I got home to eat it! I’m sure she paid the price for her silence by my resulting “sugar high hyperactive behavior” in class the rest of the day. I was overly hyper enough without added sugar, but with all that sugar added, I must have really driven everyone crazy (more than usual)!!!! As usual, I was way ahead of my time having ADD and hyperactivity long before it was discovered and named years later. If I were a kid today (many think I still am), I would be OD’ed on Ritalin for sure and seeing the school psychiatrist on a daily basis!!!! In those days I was rarely punished by any teachers for being “hyperactive” because in those days I don’t think anyone knew how to react or treat it on the high level I no doubt had. The normal reaction was no doubt stunned amazement, a feeling of utter helplessness, and constant frustration. Things, our mother certainly felt constantly. Out of total frustration our mother always said to me. “You’re enough to drive a preacher to drink!!!” (Indeed, yet another instance when I recite to Tim, “And we wonder why they drank?”) Our mother used to hide all the pop and candy and other sweets in a feeble but vain attempt to try and keep my hyperactivity at home under some kind of control. Of course, I would always find the hiding places and indulge resulting in totally out of control “hyperness”! Whenever I would find the “stash”, our mother out of total frustration would say, “May God strike me dead if I ever get anymore pop and candy!”  She lived way beyond our childhood, so obviously God didn’t take her up on her threat. To this day, I’m still addicted to chocolate and sugar and now use it to try and get though a day with a little “sugar high”. Fortunately today even when I’m not taking the medications, I rarely get too “hyper” since the older I get, the less energy I have to fuel it, even with a “sugar high”. Countless people who know me are rejoicing and counting their blessings no doubt J !