The Young and The Reckless

I never had any really terrible vices as a teenager. I never wagged school so that I could sit behind some wee-stained toilet block and drown my lungs in tobacco and illegal strains of herbs. I never stood outside the local bottle-o and begged some smelly stranger to buy me a six-pack of Stolis so that I could stumble to the park and wake up in a disused building site. I never went to a nightclub and bought an expensive little tablet from some weedy kid in a baseball cap.

It wasn’t because I was a saint or because I was suffering from some kind of early-onset levelheadedness. It was simply because I already had access to a legal, cheap and highly additive substance: sugar.

My thinking was something like this: why put myself in a sleazy, dark and potentially life-threatening environment, when I could just stage my own private protest against the world by consuming an extra-long packet of Tim Tams, from the comfort of my bean bag?

This brings me to the chocolate cigarette. Could there be a better confectionary product that symbolises teenage rebellion? It’s got everything. It’s cheap, it’s legal to 'smoke' and it doesn't make you want to cough up your liver. The problem is, that whilst real cigarettes are dangerous to your health, it can be equally unwise to eat a packet a day of the fake ones.

So what is the answer?

• Do we need ‘candy crime squads’ who conduct random searches of teenager’s bedrooms?
• Do we need to hold ‘snack food interventions’ for kids who abuse the family biscuit tin?
• Do we need to create slow-releasing fructose patches a teenager can wear as they wean themselves off the cola?

Personally, I would say that all a teenager with a reckless sugar habit needs is lots of compassion and a few healthy role models.  And if that doesn’t work, you can at least write to the person who invented the chocolate cigarette and tell them that their product should come with highly graphic and disturbing health warnings.

Text © Jessica Rosman 2015

The Unofficial Sugar Guide

Sometimes it’s hard to know if you are a full-blown sugar addict because there are very few guidelines on how many candy bars a person is permitted to cram in before their body is tipped over the edge.

Alcohol consumption, for instance, is far more straightforward, with charts, tables and all kinds of guilt-inducing paraphernalia that at least gives your brain and body set limits to work with.

Unless you happen to be an expert in the molecular structure of food particles, knowing how many Oreo cookies one can (if at all) safely consume, is still a bit wishy-washy.

So, in an effort to keep all those little potholed sweet teeth on the straight and narrow, I’ve come up with 6 telltale signs of a sugar fiend:

1. If you wake up and there are chocolate-coloured smears all over your mouth, neck and pillow, and your cat is not yet old and decrepit enough to mistake your face for the kitty litter tray.

2. If you only ever buy lip balms that have been enriched with cocoa, infused with butterscotch or contain traces of bubble-gum essence.

3. If the idea of ‘food waste’ was not brought to your attention by a documentary on sustainable living but by witnessing a friend throw away a half-eaten Mars bar.

4. If you do not have one childhood memory that isn’t somehow related to eating copious amounts of birthday cake.

5. When you find there is chocolate under your fingernails, and thoughts of sickness and disease only enter your mind after you have licked out the bits and eaten them.

6. When it’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon and you stop addressing people by their first names, and instead, start calling everyone ‘sweetie’, 'honey' or 'cupcake'.  

It can be a depressing moment when you discover that an emotional meltdown can be tracked back to an extra large slice of cheesecake or that a night terror was fuelled by too much hot choccy before bed, but better you follow my guide and work these things out, before this sneaky little substance has managed to destroy your relationships, gut flora and mental state.

Text © Jessica Rosman

The Jiggling Stick Insect

When I was born, I was a very long baby. My mum, who is of average height and quite slim told me that she could wrap me around her tummy and have my feet and hands meet at each end. It wasn’t just a cool party trick, it was an early indication that the little baby who could be wrapped around any torso would be incredibly tall.

Sure enough, as the years progressed, I reached the ripe old age of five and the first thing my Kindergarten teacher said was, “My, you are very tall Jessica.” Those words, said in a loud-enough-to-humiliate Canadian accent, have rung in my ears ever since.

When I say tall, I’m not talking about Miranda Hart tall, where people actually mistake you for a man. But I am talking about a body that looks like it has been stretched using some kind of torture device.

People think it is a blessing to be tall and skinny. The trouble is, those who don’t go on to become super-models generally end up looking like The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in an attempt to fit in. The other problem with being a human pencil is that you think you will never get fat.

I know this because I did what every walking bookmark does: I stuffed myself with whatever I chose, be it cakes, candy, ice cream or biscuits and as a consequence my insides suffered. My outside suffered too. Where once I was able to walk the beach without my thighs touching, they soon began to grate together like bits of sandpaper. After years of happily frolicking in the water in just a bikini, I was forced to start wearing men’s extra-long board shorts to hide the hip extensions and jiggling thighs.

If you can imagine a two-metre long stick insect with zero body tone and a drooping stomach: that was me.

And then one day I discovered that my friend had what was known as a calf muscle. It was as if she had just shown me some fancy new brand of shoe – I wanted in. So I started to do something that I had managed to put off for most of my life: I started to exercise.

The calves didn’t come overnight but eventually I was able to wear my legs out in public. And after a few more years of daily jogs I actually developed what is known as self-respect.

But the best part of all was that I could stop dressing like a pre-pubescent male and just enjoy being a girl.  A very tall girl, but a girl nonetheless.

Text © Jessica Rosman 2015