Raw food diet. Tenth grade biology. A boy named David Hatwan.

I don't eat ham.

I RARELY eat ham.

The one time that I will eat ham is when it is thinly sliced and at a wedding reception on little buttered buns.

This is not a joke.


I used to work at Subway. When you work at Subway you receive ONE, count 'em, ONE free six inch sub, a bag of chips and unlimited refills on the cola of your choice while carrying your shift. Often times I would get a ham sandwich with a little lettuce, a few black olives and a crap ton of mayo.


I used to be in tenth grade. And when I was in tenth grade, we were required (by law???) to dissect a baby pig. Was it a fetus? Was it a piglet? Looking back I really don't remember. All I can remember for sure is that, once we had completed the exercises the teacher told us to just continue dissecting and to continue to explore it's inner body. The piglet had died for our education and we should fully exploit the opportunity.

So in a white tile room that reeked of formaldehyde, under the green fluorescence, I cut open it's skull with my blade and pulled out it's brain. I held it in my hand and stared at it long and hard, thinking about how it had the consistency of jello, thinking about what it was I had here.

After a moment or two the realization of what I'd done and the imagery of the infant pig pinned down with butterfly needles in wax washed over me and I started to gag. I never lost it (my lunch - bio was split. First half BEFORE lunch; cut open pig, fool around with guts, wash hands, leave for lunch, come back on full stomachs, tear open rest of pig) but since that day in class, I no longer eat ham.

...unless it's thinly sliced and at a wedding reception on little buttered buns...


A funnier story that also happened to me in biology...........this one, I hope, will make me sound less like a serial killer......


We had tables to sit at. Two people to a table. Black tops, wooden legs. Every table had initials and messages scratched into the part by your pelvis. "F U!" "I WUZ HERE" "Thiz suks". I sat next to a boy named David Hatwan, a tall, thin kid with short black hair and almond shaped eyes. For this class experiment we had a giant pink pig lung resting on a thin aluminum tray in front of us. The point of the project was to insert a wide straw into the throat of the lung (what's it called? I don't know. Did I mention I had the unique experience of taking tenth grade biology twice?). Once the tube was fully inserted we were to place our mouths on the opposing end of the tube and blow and then move our mouths away, thus creating the illusion of breathing.

How interesting.

I suppose a simpler, cheaper, and less smelly version of this could have been illustrated by giving each of us a pink balloon.....a black balloon if the pig was a smoker...

We were instructed - SPECIFICALLY instructed - to blow into the tube and REMOVE our faces. There was dead air in the pig lung and it would probably expel once we'd created the pressure. This air, it was said, would smell disastrous.

David and I inserted the straw together, one of us holding the glass tube, one of us maneuvering the fleshy mouth of the lung. By the sheer luck of boys, David was the choice to place his lips on the tube. David blew into the tube. David did not move his face away from the straw. A strange, foamy, white and yellow substance burst forth from the lung, from the tube and sprayed itself fully across David's pert lips. Shock was painted across his face along with just a SQUEEZE of disgust.

I couldn't stop laughing.


After doing a little research, we've recently discovered that cancer THRIVES off of carbohydrates. My dog just had seven cancerous tumors removed from her body. What is standard, run-of-the-mill dog food filled with? Carbs. So what did we do? We've started making our own dog food.

Once a week we get out a GIANT cauldron and drop in five pounds of ground hamburger and then we use our juicer and run through every vegetable that's on sale at the store. We mix in a few cups of rice and viola! you have a heart healthy stew that is good for the dogs and they like it better than their old crunchy brown stuff.

So yesterday we find ourselves sweating over a giant pot of mush. We cook the hamburger, we cut up the lettuce, we juice the tomatoes and then, as a little special treat.....we chop up chicken hearts and gizzards....

Actually.....to say we chopped them up isn't really fair. We began by trying to juice them. I shoved a chicken gizzard into the juicer and struck down on it with the plunger. The metal grates slowed, almost came to a stop and them varoooosh! pulled it through and spat gizzard chunks into the "pulp" container. There was surprisingly less blood or "juice" than one would think. My kitchen immediately smelled like tenth grade biology. The smell of dried, dead organs. The smell of the weird brown and red wetness inside. I am thinking of David Hatwan. I am thinking of my first biology teacher, Mrs. Kritzberger. I am thinking of my SECOND biology teacher, Mr. Bailey. I am thinking about a kid named Brian who told me he carved a swastika into his pig's forehead when told he could do anything he wanted. I'm thinking about Brian, who told me he named his pig (fetus?) Mr. Pigglesworth.

The process of juicing chicken organs, however, proved inconsequential when we realized that the juicer wasn't so much grinding up the gizzards and hearts so much as it was just SHOVING them through it's gears in big chunks because it couldn't tear through the heavy ligaments. SO....can't toss that stuff in as is! Little Clementine might accidentally choke on it! You gotta man up and DO something.

You shut your eyes. You say, "It's just meat. It's just steak." You grab a big knife in your right hand. You grab a tiny chicken heart in your left hand. You shut your eyes and you repeat, "I am in tenth grade biology. I am in tenth grade biology. I am in tenth grade biology. It is just meat."

The dogs.

They love it.

And if it helps the tiniest bit to fight that bastard child cancer, I love it too.