It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that I have a reputation. This reputation has shadowed my husband’s life as well. I slipped into the teacher’s lunch room during my lunch duty today and heard the following:
“Brian, you better not eat those chips in front of your wife.”
Upon further investigation0n, I discovered that my husband was eating a small bag of potato chips that had been left for anyone interested (Yes, we work together). Did I care? Not in the least. But apparently the other teachers thought I did. I was told that it was a joke…that our coworkers were just giving Brian a hard time. But all jokes have some grain of truth in them, right?
I’m not sure when this reputation really look hold, but the past few weeks it’s really become clear:
“We would’ve offered you pizza, but we didn’t know if Emily would let you have any.” (directed at Brian)
“Oh no, here comes a rant.”
“She’s like you…she’s really into eating healthy.”
Granted, Brian and I don’t eat a lot of junk food, we don’t buy school lunch, we rarely eat out, I occasionally share my opinions about the state of the American food system, and I like eating healthy food. But sometimes, I’m really not sure where these statements are coming from. I get pretty annoyed when people think I control Brian’s eating habits-he can eat whatever he wants, but chooses to eat “healthy” foods. As far as I can recall, I’ve never criticized someone else’s lunch and I’ve never said that my food was better than anyone else’s.
To further clarify: we always have tortilla chips on hand. In case I feel like making cookies, I know we’ve always got a bag of chocolate chips. I bought and cooked bacon a couple weeks ago. Sometimes we have a hard time avoiding McDonald’s fries or Dunkin Donuts when we walk by them (which is why we try not to walk by them).
On the other hand, its kind of nice to have this reputation. Many people make comments to us about their food choices, good and bad. They make a point of sharing with us when they’ve made good eating choices. One of my coworkers made a point of telling me recently that his lunch included multi-grain pasta. Our lunches are examined, questioned and discussed. Even when we don’t think people are looking, they are. It’s nice to be a (sometimes) quiet voice for change.
I know your feeling. People do the same thing to Hunni because we eat vegetarian at home and don’t have much junk food at home. But the guy eats McDonald’s when he wants…he just chooses to eat Subway most of the time :-)
My initial reaction was “wow, seriously?” but to be honest, I’m not surprised that you got that kind of response from people. You make a conscious, educated, effort to eat well and I know there are people out there that just don’t get it.
I got a similar reaction when I was talking about cookies with someone. They were all in the mindset that they were evil and to be banned. Me? Eat the cookie but not all the cookies! They looked at me like it was impossible. ::Sigh::
I hope these people quit the jokes and actually pay attention to the good you both are doing for yourselves.