Do me a favor and just eat your pizza!
I came home early from walking my dog, shaking and crying. Mom took one look at me and asked, "Honey, what’s wrong?" I cried and told her that I had discovered that the neighbor had thrown out half a box of take out pizza. Mom said, "I think we need to talk."
I was in the throes of another kind of reverse culture shock.
Different Kinds Of Shocks
Yesterday, I talked about the reverse culture shock you can get when traveling from one country to another, and then back again. But there are many aspects to culture, and many things can throw you into reverse culture shock. Not only had I traveled from America to England to America and back, I had also traveled from homed to homelessness to being homed again. That’s another kind of reverse culture shock that takes a while to adjust to.
This pizza incident happened about six months after I left homelessness and England to move in with my Mom just outside of Philadelphia, where I had been born and raised. When I lived in America, I’d never given food much of a thought. I ate what I wanted and chucked the rest. Everyone else was doing it, so I fit right in.
And then fell in love with a homeless Englishman and to prove myself to him, became homeless. Eating became a special event, and never something I would take for granted again. When I finally got rid of the Englishman, I was penniless. There were days I lived on dog food, and days I lived on just cups of tea. My dog and I searched through trash in order to get enough food to eat. My dog found a lot of food for the both of us, and she didn’t mind sharing.
One day, she found a few boxes of abandoned Domino’s pizzas. I hesitated, because I was wondering why they’d been left there, but my dog dug in. I never knew why those boxes had been left there, but we had pizza for days — about as rare as Venus’ arms for me. I still dream about that night, even though I can afford to buy pizza now. I guess I’ve gotten so used to not having piza that having it makes me feel guilty. (That’s a sign of reverse culture shock).
And then to find someone throw out half a pizza? The waste just made me bawl my head off. How many empty bellies could be filled with that pizza? I couldn’t get it out of my head.
Less Waste, Less Stress
Mom has changed her food shopping habits now that I’ve moved in. She says I’ve saved her a lot of money and a lot of stress. We try very hard to only buy what we need and what we know won’t spoil. This saves us room, money, trash space and my sanity. I still haven’t been able to get over the careless attitude towards food some people have. In a way, I’m glad I won’t get over this little bit of reverse culture shock.
Oops. Mom has just told me that she had to throw the deli ham out because it had gone off. And she had bought it specifically for me. Oh, dear…
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