Every afternoon after I pick up the kids from school but before I start making dinner, if there is time, I like to sit and read for a bit (20 minutes if I'm lucky). During this time I like to have my happy snack. But the horrible irony of the whole thing is that most of the time I'm reading a book about someone in a concentration camp. How can I sit here and eat knowing the person in my book is malnourished? This thought plagues me the whole time I'm reading. How insensitive of a person can I be? Yet I keep right on eating...who does this?
The line between book and reality is a thin one for me.
This brings up another point. We like to discuss the books we're reading during dinner. The other night I was explaining something about a person in a concentration camp when Bennett interrupts, "Mom, what is it with you and camping? Why are you always reading books about camps?"
"Technically, I don't read books on 'camping'. But yes, I do tend to read a lot of books about concentration camps, don't I. There are many different types of camps my friend, concentration camps as in Nazi Germany, the Japanese internment camps in the U.S, and prisoner camps in North Korea...see, I have an ample supply of 'camp' books. Thus, I have alot to share with you about what I'm learning."
Probably more than he was bargaining for, but I was at least able to justify and explain my seeming fixation on 'camp' books. But there is nothing to explain why I eat when the people in my books can't. I will never be able to get past the guilt of that...but I will also not be able to stop eating my happy snack.
What a horrible irony.
The line between book and reality is a thin one for me.
This brings up another point. We like to discuss the books we're reading during dinner. The other night I was explaining something about a person in a concentration camp when Bennett interrupts, "Mom, what is it with you and camping? Why are you always reading books about camps?"
"Technically, I don't read books on 'camping'. But yes, I do tend to read a lot of books about concentration camps, don't I. There are many different types of camps my friend, concentration camps as in Nazi Germany, the Japanese internment camps in the U.S, and prisoner camps in North Korea...see, I have an ample supply of 'camp' books. Thus, I have alot to share with you about what I'm learning."
Probably more than he was bargaining for, but I was at least able to justify and explain my seeming fixation on 'camp' books. But there is nothing to explain why I eat when the people in my books can't. I will never be able to get past the guilt of that...but I will also not be able to stop eating my happy snack.
What a horrible irony.
