Girl Scout Sabotage

It would seem that the peanut-butter-filled Tagalongs are the bane of my existence this year. They're the only food that tempts me.

Today, I saw the red box on top of the fridge and, at a glance, thought that the whimsical slogan on the back of the box said "Oh, what can a girl do?" as if trivializing my conflict and alluring me to succumb to its charms. I did a serious double take, only to find that it actually said "Oh, what a girl can do!"– a simple positive tag line to encourage girls to achieve. It was definitely suspicious.

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Well they're gone now. The three boxes that were in my house are no longer an issue: one is in Minnesota to be enjoyed by a college student during finals, one in the pantry to be saved until Easter (my parents love me) and as for the one that had been sitting there taunting me after all the other boxes were gone because I couldn't contribute to its demise– well, I gave the last two devils to my father and soon enough I was broodingly watching the cardboard blacken in the fireplace and disappear from my life. 

Or I would have, if we had a fireplace. I just flattened it and put it in the recycling. But either way, temptation has left the house, my friends! And despite the fact that I chose a pretty wimpy food to give up for Lent this year, I'm troubled by how much trouble I'm having with it. I still have to penalize myself for my earlier sin. An extra day of self-denial somehow doesn't seem like enough... I'll think of something. 

I Have Fallen

Well it didn't take long. Although, if anything could do it to me, it would be Girl Scout Cookies. When a little neighbor and her mom come knocking at your door with 3 boxes of cookies that you didn't know your father had ordered, you kind of stop thinking. 2 innocent Peanut Butter Patties (or Tagalongs, as they are officially called now) were all it took, and I didn't even realize my sin until my mom can home with 4 more boxes she had bought separately, with a box of peanut butter ones to send to my brother because I couldn't eat them. I literally fell onto the cold kitchen tile and rolled around in distress, cursing my mortality and entreating forgiveness. Wait, isn't this a secular blog?

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I think for Catholics, the important part of Lent is not the strict self-denial regimen, but the reflection and charity aspects of these days. I mean, they don't even give up stuff for a full week. But since Sundays aren't that special to me and since I answer to no God, it becomes more of a personal challenge for me, like a fitness routine. Being good at it makes me feel closer to Yoda or Chuck Norris than to God.

That said, part of the strangeness is that one of the first thoughts that entered my head when I realized my failure was of the garden of Eden, and the Temptation of Eve. I felt as if, by unknowingly giving in to this temptation, I had singlehandedly set back all the work of feminists worldwide, reenforcing the womanly weakness stereotype set by Eve, Pandora and the like. Even more frustrating was that I was tempted by Girl Scout Cookies, a symbol of female empowerment, making me feel that my own sex was sabotaging me, further nullifying all of the progress both they and I have supposedly been striving for all these years. How could the Girl Scouts do this to me??

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But alas, I am no Eve, and the source of my downfall far more ordinary and less healthy than the ambiguous Forbidden Fruit of legend. I'm just a girl who was driven to a moment of forgetfulness by the prospect of a delicious and nostalgic snack.

This error is made all the more painful by the fact that just yesterday I spent considerable time on the stoic refusal of the Peanut Butter Sandwiches my forensics coach had bought for us at the tournament. I had been doing so well.

The further irony of the whole situation is that right after I had consumed the treacherous wafer, I read the chapter of Invisible Man in which the narrator is seduced by a mysterious rich white woman that he definitely should not have slept with, and is racked with nervous guilt for weeks about his misdeed.

I mean, I thought that kind of parallel between fiction and reality only happened in, well, fiction. The book was obviously trying to tell me about my crime and warn me not to sin again. I still didn't get it.

The Gist

Well, I guess I'm a little late on the draw here. Already 16 days into Lent and I'm just starting this blog. Shame.

Well, for the next 24 days I will be blogging, hopefully with some regularity, about my experiences with Lent, and living without something that I use pretty often otherwise. 

Some background: I am not Catholic, nor do I really identify as any kind of Christian, but the idea of 40 days of self deprivation is quite a nice sentiment. Give yourself a pat on the back for that one, Catholic Church. It begins on Ash Wednesday, the day after Mardi Gras, and continues until just before Easter Sunday, Easter Eve, or apparently, for the Roman Catholic Church, until Holy Thursday. Many people don't count Sundays in their self-denial, and there are plenty of other little differences between traditions, but since I'm not doing this for religious reasons, I'm just gonna not eat peanuts until Easter and call it a day (well, 40 technically wacka wacka). So Easter Eve - 40 days = Ash Wednesday

So the whole thing is, people wanted to celebrate the day of Jesus' resurrection, Easter Sunday, then to remember Jesus' 40 days in the desert, they decided to spend the for 40 days beforehand in a period of self-reflection, prayer, charity, sometimes acts of penance, fasting and/or giving up certain luxuries. Then, because they would be spending 40 WHOLE DAYS without their beloved _______, they decided that they had to have an annual 24-hour blowout and just indulge themselves for a day before embarking on their righteous journey of sacrifice. Thus, Mardi Gras was born! And for those who don't know french, Mardi Gras translates literally into Fat Tuesday, with which you also may be familiar. The French do Mardi Gras for real. 

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So the idea behind Lent is to give up something you love, or are accustomed to, for 40 days. Well, living as a middle class, white girl in a hip college town with no allergies or religious restrictions, pretty much nothing is forbidden from me. So the concept of living without anything was not unheard of, but certainly unexperienced. Yeah, I knew about the starving kids in Africa, I'd seen homeless people in my very own community, but I could not empathize with them in anyway, because I had never truly been denied anything. 

The Beginning: 2011

Many people give up a certain food or related item for Lent, which I stick to as well. My first year, I gave up pretty much everything. Yep: veganism. It was surprisingly easy for me, although my parents were about ready to disown me by Easter. I didn't really miss eating all those animal products, and even considered continuing with it afterwards. I didn't. I also didn't get vegan powers, to my despair. But I did become vegetarian at the beginning of the year to prepare myself, and I haven't eaten meat since. 

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2012

The next year, I stopped drinking anything but water, which I thought would be too easy, as I almost never drink pop, milk, or juice, and coffee repulses me, but it proved to be way more difficult than veganism. Why? Because of my passionate love affair with tea. I have a cup of chai every morning, and often some herbal tea in the evening, which is TECHNICALLY water, in a way, but that would be cheating. I didn't suffer form caffeine withdrawal or anything, but it was so difficult to get away from those habits. And I REALLY love chai. 

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2013

This year, I didn't know when Mardi Gras was until a few days later. So I had to think of something I hadn't eaten in the past 36 hours, and I decided on peanut products. Which is pretty specific, compared to previous years, but hopefully it won't be too easy. So I'm living these 40 days like so many children in this country with peanut allergies. No peanut butter, no peanut M&Ms, most granola bars are out, as well as a considerable portion of Asian cuisine. I have decided that my allergy is not airborne, and that foods "made in facilities that also process" peanuts are okay. So far, other than some snacking restrictions, it's been uneventful. I've been eating too much Nutella, which we don't usually have, and is definitely less healthy than peanut butter... but it won't be around for long. 

You can be a peanut too!

The act of deliberately removing an entire group from my diet has been an exciting challenge for me, it makes me feel healthier, and it alleviates some of the feeling of being a stereotypical American citizen inhaling anything that comes within range of my face, like kirby. As a citizen of the first world, I think I should experience being without something, in order to keep some perspective. Otherwise, I just feel fat and lazy and privileged.

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Living without things is something that many Americans do not experience, but so many people do. So Lent, if not meant to increase religious devotion, offers some sense of perspective in a world that is, often, too easy.