Food that Talks Back

Last week, the winter season decided I needed to suffer for a while, so it gave me a lovely cough and an ever-flowing nose. With finals coming up, I decided to take lots of medicine to try and get over my cold before I tortured my brain. As part of my treatment, I got my favorite cough drops (the really delicious Breezers cough drops that are good enough to be eaten like candy). However, I got a surprise when I opened the bag for the first time to soothe my burning throat. The wrappers were covered with little words. At closer investigation, I read things like, "High five yourself," "Turn your 'can do' into a 'can did'," and "You've been through worse." My wrapper was giving me motivation! That pleasant surprise pretty much made my day, and I looked forward to finishing one cough drop just so I could unstick another and get inspiration from the wrapper.

This got me thinking about what other foods might be saying to me. Those fries last night might have warned me that eating them was probably going to cost me an extra trip to the gym or that apple a few days ago might have applauded me for eating healthy and promised to give me vitamins. The carrots from work might have screamed, "Pick me, pick me! I'm healthy and help you see!" (Apparently they're good rhymers.) Then they would be frustrated when I choose the smug cookies instead.

Maybe it's a good thing food doesn't really talk, but it sure made being sick a little more enjoyable.

Have an Ice Day!

I absolutely love going to college at Brigham Young University. It's a great place with lots of great people. However, sometimes going to college is dangerous. Now, I'm not talking about singed eyebrows in chemistry lab or broken noses in basketball class or anything like that. I'm talking about the ice.

Coming to college, I had to adjust to actually walking through snow. In high school, all I had to do was drive to school and make it inside the building before freezing. All my classes were in the same building or just across the street, so I never really had to worry about wearing good shoes or making sure to layer up. Everything changed when I came to BYU.

Freshman year I had to learn to wear the right shoes during the winter if I wanted to keep all my toes and to wear as many layers as I could without looking like I'd already gotten my Freshman 15. Every day I had to walk up a hill to get to campus, which was fine until the snow came and it became more of an uphill ice rink. Fellow students linked arms and went slowly up the hill together. If people fell, someone would help them up because heaven forbid we be late to a class. It was hard work trudging up that hill in the snow, but it was kind of fun because everyone banded together to help each other make it to class.

The winter of my sophomore year was the worst. All of campus was a sheet of ice, and students were falling left and right. Some even had injuries like broken limbs from taking nasty falls, all in the name of trying to get to class. But school had to go on, so we buckled down to face the dangerous ice and shuffled, slid, and scooted to class.

So this year as the snow starts to fall and the sidewalks become slick as butter, I'll be strapping on spiked cleats, cladding my knees with volleyball pads, and praying to make it to class with nothing more serious than a red nose.