Monday, January 19, 2009

Weird habits of my youth

I used to chew on ice constantly. I'd get a big glassful of it, and sit in front of the TV and crunch crunch crunch to my heart's content. I liked it best when it was dry and frosty.

And, um... I liked chalk. One of my siblings gave the whole family a set of sidewalk chalk as a Christmas toy-- this was when I was a teenager-- and it got stored in the bathroom for some reason, and one day I opened the drawer and there it was and it smelled... really good. So I started nibbling on it. You can't really eat chalk-- dries the mouth right out-- but over the course of a year I slowly chewed up and spit out all five colors. I just loved to munch it. So satisfying!

From the time I turned eighteen I've often offered to donate blood, but I'm usually rejected because my blood isn't dense enough; the red blood cell count is too low. They always tell me I'm anemic and recommend iron pills, but I tried that and decided the disease wasn't worth the cure. I don't have any symptoms from the anemia but I definitely get symptoms from the iron, so forget it. I'll just go my merry anemic way.

One day not long ago I read that one symptom of anemia is a strong craving for ice or chalk.

THAT explains it!

7 comments:

adonela said...

I love the smell of sharpened pencils ...but never did it cross my mind to use them for my afternoon snack.

Joe of St. Thérèse said...

ice was a weapon of destruction in my youth days, lol.

FC said...

Time to eat some liver and those cravings for chalk will dissapear :-)

Rachel said...

That's another perfect example of the cure being worse than the disease!

R.A. said...

I used to eat sand. I still crave it and have to hold myself back when I'm at the beach.

Unknown said...

Well..actually to make the liver tasty, eat it with curry sauce.Yummy!

Rachel said...

At first I thought the sand thing was weird, but now I think I could get into it...

Mery, I'd just eat the curry and leave the liver. :)