When Your Garbage Tells A Story

It was August 28, 1998 and I was 2 months pregnant with my first baby. I'd had trouble eating much of anything for several weeks. I became obsessed with food as I constantly needed it, but just as constantly hated it.

One date night, Todd and I had gone to the Olive Garden for dinner. I had some manicotti that was a little taste of heaven. It was the first food in a long time that I enjoyed and kept down. Two for two! After that night, I craved manicotti for days. But the Olive Garden was a good 45 minute drive away from where we lived. So I decided to try a TV dinner substitute instead. We headed to Cub Foods and found the closest thing we could to manicotti: Marie Callendar's Stuffed Pasta meal.

I was practically drooling with anticipation the whole ride home. I was so hungry, and here was something that sounded really good to eat. Hastily I took the food out of its box, read the directions and popped it in the microwave. Antsy with anticipation, I watched the timer count down the seconds till all my dreams would come true. (You might think I'm exaggerating, but that's really how I felt at the time). The moment the microwave beeped, I pulled out the dinner tray and SPLAT! dropped it on the floor because it was too hot.

Oh the devastation! The utter despair! The complete and total tragedy! I knelt down next to my deceased dinner and wept. At that point Todd knew I'd lost it and promptly offered to rush back to the store to purchase another one. Perhaps because he was a kindly and obliging gentleman, perhaps because he feared to stick around and find out what the sobbing lump he called his wife would do next.

Somehow I pulled myself together. After fighting the urge to eat it straight off the floor, I appeased my raging hunger with some tater tots Todd had put in the oven earlier.Fifteen minutes later, Todd burst through the door ready to be my knight in shining armor, TV dinner in hand! He undoubtedly found me with a tater tot in my hand and ketchup on my face. Meekly I answered the confused and dejected look on his face. "I don't want that anymore," I said.

And ever since that day, I have NEVER been able to stomach the mere thought of eating stuffed pasta. Even from the Olive Garden.

Just now I found the receipt from that day among some old sheet music. Amazing how of all the random garbage that somehow survives ten plus years and two moves, that that particular piece actually represents a change in my life: The day I went from loving cheesy stuffed pasta to hating it. Would that all my garbage could tell such tales.