Waiting for hungry, part 1

I called this blog "Waiting for Hungry" because of a hunch I have about the nature of my problem. I think there is something screwy about my understanding of "hunger" and "hungry."

I suspect that it has been a long time since I've actually felt hunger in the normal sense. This will come as a shock to anyone who has watched me eat. Many helpful people who have watched me say that I eat like a starving man: too fast, too much, too messy, too loud. (Thank you, Helpful People. In a future post I will thank all of you in excruciating detail for that helpfulness. It's not your fault that your helpfulness hasn't, until now, helped one bit. It's my fault. Really. Thanks again.)

One rule, universally recommended by Helpful People and Zen masters alike, is "Eat when hungry." I follow that rule, after my peculiar fashion: hungry all the time, I eat all the time. That can't possibly be what the HP and ZM intended, can it?

Perhaps the problem is that there are multiple meanings to "hungry." Maybe two entirely different words both look like "hungry." They are identical twin words who dress alike and love playing tricks. They are Mary Kate and Ashley, or Fred and George. No, better say they are Thing One and Thing Two. I need to grab them both in mid-somersault, wrestle them to the ground, and tattoo an indelible blue star on one of their noses so I can permanently tell them apart. I lunge. I grab. Got em!

Yes. Upon further inspection, there are two. There is Hungry Type One, meaning "I want to eat," and Hungry Type Two, meaning "I need to eat." And I, despite an IQ well into three digits, have stupidly and tragically gotten the two "hungries" mixed up.

Never again. Hungry Type Two gets the blue star, and I will follow that star. I'm going to see if I can recover my longlost sense of "need to eat" hunger and put it to some use.

Scale check: Yesterday, 304.2. Today, 302.4.