On Desserts, and the Lack Thereof

I think for me, the hardest part of Lent--harder than not posting stupid trivialities to Facebook, or pwning n00bs in Medal of Duty: Modern Battlefield Assault--is the constant feeling of hunger. Not from fasting, or lack of food, or lack of meat. Simply from the lack of sweets. My body seems to have some mechanism, in which I don't actually feel satisfied until I've had dessert. It doesn't have to be much. But the sugar somehow tells my brain, "ok, you're done eating now." Without that trigger, I never feel satisfied, no matter how full I get.

The mechanism for this was always clear to me, as a child, and yet my mother, for some reason, needed to be schooled in the basic principles. I clearly remember one dinnertime meal when I informed her that-after having finished the meat or pasta or whatever we were having, and leaving the vegetables untouched--I was completely stuffed, and couldn't possibly eat another bite. Of course, it was entirely coincidental that I happened to fill up right before getting to my veggies.

Shortly afterwards, the ice cream came out for those good boy and girl who had cleaned their plates. I informed my mother of me desire for ice cream, too. "But how can you have any ice cream when you're so completely stuffed full?"

She thought she had me, but that was really only a sign of her ignorance. I, of course, being the good, charitable little boy that I was, corrected her error, and informed her about the basic anatomical lesson that all little boys who wanted dessert but not vegetables knew. "My dinner pipe is full, but my dessert pipe is still empty." I mean, duh. How could she not know about the different pipes where food was stored? How could she not know that dessert went into a different bodily compartment than dinner?

Sheesh.