Hunger

Have you ever been hungry enough that it becomes painful to watch someone else eat while you are not?

Have you ever been hungry enough that it becomes mezmorizingly painful to watch someone around you at a sporting event, fair, parade, carnival, mall, or on a bus eat food while you have nothing to eat?

Have you ever been hungry enough while waiting for your food in a restaurant that you can’t help but stare at the table next to you that got their food and are shoving their faces but you still have to wait?

Have you ever been hungry enough to be tempted to take the food that people have left sitting on their plates at a restaurant?

She was hungry too…

I had brought a youth I work with to a counseling appointment. While she was talking to the counselor I waited in the lobby. There were two other teenage girls in lobby who had both been there for female exams checking for stds and pregnancy. I could tell from what the two girls were saying to each other and on the lobby phone that their lives were hot messes. One was calling to get a police escort to her mom’s house to get her clothes because her mom had a restraining order against her daughter. The other teenage girl totted around with her two younger kids a girl around 6 and a boy around 9. It was easy enough to see that these two young kids were rail thin and used to being totted around and a part of much craziness.

I half listened to the two teenagers loudly talk about their lastest boy drama and half minded my own business. I was texting and reading a book and they vaguely noticed my presence but it didn’t seem to bother them or affect them at all. At one point I remembered that I hadn’t eat lunch but I had an open bag of twizzler bites in my purse so without thinking I grabbed a little handful and started eating them while reading. The moment I popped the first one in my mouth the 6 year old girl who up till that point hadn’t acknowledged me came and stood right in front of me about one foot from my knees. She didn’t say anything just stared and watched me eat. I knew what she wanted and I had to hold my laughter in as I pretended I didn’t know just to see how long she would stand there or what she would do next. She stood there and stared without moving or flintching a full two minutes before plopping down right next to me and giving a huge sigh said “I am sooooo hungry.”

At that point I busted out laughing and said would you like some to which she said an emphatic yes. So I gave her a handful of twizzler bites which prompted everyone else in the lobby to jump to their feet and run over saying can I have some too. So there we were all waiting in the lobby while eating our little handful of twizzlers while they all made exagersated enthusiastic comments about how good the twizzlers were and how they were the best candy they had ever eaten and could they have a little more.

This thin six year old girl who was so hungry she couldn’t sit by and watch someone else eat fed everyone.