I hate jello

Every year my parents make their pilgrimage from their home in rural Michigan down to their Mecca--their winter home in Florida. On the way, they stop at the Cleveland Clinic for medical evaluations, eventually making their way to North Carolina where they take us out to dinner a couple of times before proceeding further south.

They have to close up their home on the farm since they will not be returning until spring, so my mother always cleans out her refrigerator and brings all opened food along for the journey. If she can get us to take some of it off her hands she will lighten her load and make room for more once she gets set-up again in her other house. Her goal is to market the food items to us so we will want them.

For reasons I cannot imagine, she always tries to sneak several boxes of jello in with the crackers, walnuts, sometimes cereal, once in awhile apples, and this time a honey bear with honey leaking out into the bag it is fortunately packed in. Not a fan of her low sodium, low fat choices, we are limited as to what we will accept as viable food offerings for our pantry. And yet, there it remained . . . the jello.

I tell her, like I do each time, "I hate jello." She says to feed it to the boys. I remind her that they do not like it either. She wonders why I have deprived them of this essential food. I tell her it is because I don't like it. She reminds me that I ate it as a child. I tell her I ate it because I had to. She points out that mixing jello with cottage cheese and Cool Whip will do the trick. I tell her we don't eat those foods either. She slowly puts the jello boxes back into her car.

Maybe it was growing up in the '60's and '70's, but jello seemed to figure prominently into every family gathering, church picnic, and school event. If there was a party of any kind, there would be jello. If a kid got hot lunch at school, there would be jello. If someone went to the hospital and the opportunity to eat in the cafeteria arose, there would be jello. It was the go-to-quick-fix for a busy mother. Clear jello, jello with fruit cocktail in it, jello mixed with cottage cheese and Cool Whip. Jello was the staple of everyone's diet. Its bright, primary colors would beckon to me as I would have to decide between the jello or the pudding. I would choose the pudding any chance I got.

I stopped eating jello when I stopped drinking Kool-Aid. I started to read books like Diet for a Small Planet and stopped eating red meat for a number of years as well. Nutrition started to matter to me as well as making ethical choices. I could not determine what health benefit could be obtained from eating jello. My mother said it was for our hair and nails. My hair and nails were fine. I wonder what health benefits could be derived from the processed, canned fruit in the sugary syrup that would often go into the jello, or the myriad of other artificial food products of the day, like Velveeta, but I digress.

Jello, with its vibrant artificial dyes, makes a great paint for preschool children. The candy-like aroma will enhance the artwork that will hang on the outside of the refrigerator as the yogurt, the "jello" for this generation of children will be ready for snack-time when the artist gets hungry. Greek yogurt that is high in protein with no artificial ingredients is my favorite snack of choice these days. It goes well with raw almonds or granola. Cool Whip not required.

rule breaker

Waking up later than I should have and feeling rather worn out, I decided to pull it together anyway for a Friday at the preschool. Getting a substitute is often more difficult than going to work, I reasoned, and I felt a whole lot better than I had the day before when I not only felt like I was going to throw up, but eventually did.

Walking down the hall toward the kitchen with my bleach bottles in hand, I was confronted by a coworker who asked why I was there. I had not drank enough coffee by that time to comprehend even the most basic of questions so I simply stated that I was there to work. She crossed her fingers at me as though I were some sort of vampire as I continued on with the task at hand. I always fill two bleach bottles about a quarter of the way full so we can spray toys, the changing table and anything else that needs to be kept germ-free, at least in theory.

Reaching the kitchen I heard others making comments about how surprised they were to see me at work and wondered why I was not observing the 24-hour rule, a rule that states that one is not to come to school until 24 hours have passed after one has exhibited signs of illness. I heard myself say out loud, "I didn't think this rule applied to me." I still have no idea why I said that.

My "illness" seemed to be no more than a fast-moving virus that created havoc with my digestive system for awhile until it tired of its game and moved on. It gave me a day off from eating, while I tried to remember how many years it had been since I had even gotten sick since I am not prone to this sort of thing. I remembered a food poisoning incident that left me begging for God's mercy while clinging to the coolness of the bathroom floor tile in the middle of the night years ago. I also remember getting the flu immediately after getting a flu shot one year, something I have refused to do ever since even though a well-meaning doctor insisted there is no correlation.

What seemed to confuse me more than anything else was why no one was asking me how I was doing. "How are you feeling, Mary Ellen?" was what I was expecting to hear. "We were concerned about you when you left work early," I thought they would say. But instead I felt like I would be held responsible for the next person making a quick retreat to the bathroom to do what I had done in the stall closest to the window the day before. If there was a sudden outbreak of sickness, it would be all my fault. Me--the instigator of disease, the culprit of a flu epidemic.

So in an effort to maintain order and not condone my lawless attitude, I was sent home to "rest." All peace would then be restored until the children would show up with their runny noses, persistent coughs and pale faces that indicate less than the picture of health as their parents hurriedly drop them off insisting that they are fine. A few parents over the years who have trusted me enough to be their confidant have admitted to me that their little darling actually threw up in the car on the way to school but were feeling so much better now that . . . well, the 24-hour rule just didn't have to apply to them, did it?

red

It seems we have a natural proclivity toward making comparisons with one another. Why we think we can measure what someone else has gone through with the same standards we use for ourselves is a mystery. Each one of us is different.

This concept has become abundantly clear during my recent unpleasantness with the dreaded root canal. It does not take me long to realize that in a conversation involving dental procedures, there are many interpretations for what-is-not-a-big-deal all the way to what-is-the-worst-pain-ever. And I tend to find my tales of woe heading for the worst pain ever category far more than others.

So I did some research and found out that there is scientific proof for my sensitivity to dental pain! It is because the mutation that provided me with red hair is the gift that keeps on giving and with it comes a different way of caring for my teeth.

Knowing what I know now about how a redhead requires more pain killers to mute the obvious pain of dental work explains a lot about how terrible my experiences at the dentist were when I was a child. I remember being given more than one shot to numb the pain which seemed to annoy the dentist who was already impatient that I was most likely crying. Not that emotional little redheaded girl with all of the cavities again, he may have thought. But yes, there I was, scared to death, knowing I had eaten too much candy and awaiting the pain that came along with it.

As my gums started to recede, exposing nerves that could not be touched with sharp, pokey sticks used by dentists, nitrous oxide became the answer to my problems. It allowed my chalk-like teeth to be filled and filled, and I would be warned again that coffee would stain them and I would smile and nod knowing good and well that I would never be giving it up. I had been warned as a teenager that because of my open bite, braces were recommended (I only have two teeth that actually come together for chewing) or else by the time I was 40 I would be eating my dinner through a straw. This of course never happened.

The day came when nitrous was not enough. It was as though I had become immune to its effects and it was too dangerous to give me more. So I was sent to a dentist who used pill sedation as his method of pain relief for those of us who needed it. This worked quite well at first. I would take one pill at home and the second one at the dentist office about an hour later. I would go into some kind of "twilight" zone and reemerge with cleaned, fixed teeth. After doing this about twice, I woke up in the middle of the procedure while the dentist desperately tried to administer more pain medication. Alas, I had become immune to it as well.

All that remained was IV sedation which consists of being strapped into a chair that becomes more of a bed with all of the seriousness of surgery. This dentist assured me that as long as I did not start shooting up street drugs like heroin, I would not develop an immunity. So far he has been correct.

Developing an infection in my crowned tooth as one root lay dying (incidentally, one of the teeth that I use for chewing) became an emergency situation as it needed immediate attention to relieve what I believe to be perhaps the worst pain I have ever been in, or at least second, after a breast infection that . . . I will spare the details. I knew that I would be able to endure as whatever it is in the IV started flowing through my bloodstream giving me a warm feeling that increased until the room began to spin and I would take another journey to a place where there is no tooth pain. I would then be escorted from the dentist's chair, helped into a vehicle and awaken in my bed hours later having no idea how I ever got there. I then would get into these conversations with people who do not require more than a simple shot for their dental needs and wonder if they think I am being overly needy, too dramatic, or something other than normal when I admit that my procedure is far more involved and way more costly.

But what can I do about it? I have red hair.