Day Out of Time - Hypohypochondria

Today's Anyone But Me subject was a closeup of the daintily splayed fingers of a diabetic guest helping herself to the spaghetti and garlic bread buffet at a Veteran's Hospital luncheon.

An uninvited guest.

She was perfectly iconic. As I stared at her through the awkward, too-heavy new lens on my new camera, I felt a new sterotype crystallizing in my vision. The middle-aged woman slumping towards senescnence on the arm of whoever is striding by, 'needing' more pillows, having a 'problem' with lights, glare, stairs, or noise, getting 'the shakes' from some quack nebulous disorder that necesscitates her serving herself first to any visible tempting mound of starchy sugars.

"I have low blood sugar" is their 'abracabra'. It makes food appear and makes it magically okay to make a virtue of self-centered cluenessness.

When my baby was underweight early in his life, I never never never left the house without some food in my backpack. Even my own mother, who could conduct seminars in self-absorption, has real chemical hypoglycemia, and she would pass out at the foot of the champagne fountain before blurting out her infirmity in front of honored guests. Plus, being Italian, she and I never eat bread and pasta at the same meal.

Raisins in the purse, trailmix in the diaper bag. It's not difficult.

Is that what these poor dumb cows want, someone to remember to bring food along and treat them like precious children? Because the resulting emotions are the opposite response. In spades.

"If I ever get like that", I said to Husband, "I want you to put a Glock right up against my brainstem and pull. 'Close your eyes, honey, no more having to live your poor pampered suffering life'".

"You wouldn't close your eyes", he said.


The really fascinating part about the Uncontrollably Hungry Faux-Diabetic/Hypoglycemic is that I always spot her in the crowd. And she always ends up sitting at the nicest table, in front of a pile of spaghetti with a hunk of garlic toast daintily held in one pudgy hand.



The moral? I shot myself into a corner with this project.

When I started getting some momentum with the daily portraits, Husband bought me the big confusing camera. It was like setting a plate of spaghetti in front of an invalid who sat up and asked for a second cup of broth.

My beloved little point-and-shoot used to fit in my purse, like a blood-sugar snack.
Now my husband has taken it.

And by the time I get my other camera figured out and set up, I resent the subject no matter who she is. Which is not what I was going for here.


By the end of the luncheon, I introduced myself to the volunteer co-ordinator and finally got myself into the system. I am now officially a Veteran's Hospital Volunteer.

So this blog has done some good. After all.

Mothers, don't let your children grow up to be the type of spoil sport who hijacks attention through blood sugar. Some people have real problems.


(This isn't the picture I was going to use, but I liked this website so much I spent about a hundred dollars here on clothes no one but myself, my mirror and my camera will see. Oh, and you. Hello.)