Of course The Spear is referring to the thrice-daily (and
maybe more frequently if you’ve got the stamina) task of ‘chewing’. You see, The Spear has been having a bit of a
bad run at it lately, and it has led to some interesting results.
Several days ago The Spear gave himself a bit of a nip on
the inner lip while eating what he considered to be at the time, a relatively
safe garden salad. Ouch, no biggie. He moved his crosshair to the fruit salad
which anxiously awaited its fate.
Over the course of the next two days, The Spear managed to
bite the same spot on his lip again - three times – the ever swelling size of
which ensured much larger, meatier mouthfuls.
He howled with pain; his doner kebab turned red with blood; he spent
half a day with a saliva-soaked tissue hanging out of his mouth. Oh the humanity!
So today, keen to avoid biting off the entirety of his lower
lip in a feat of unintentional auto-cannibalism, he has taken to chewing at around
25% of his usual mastication rate – that is, he is chewing four times slower
than usual, as if trying to soften up an extra-large mouthful of hubba-bubba (grape
flavoured, naturally). For lunch he very slowly devoured a chicken schnitzel sandwich.
What he has found is that, when hungry and with a tasty bite
of food in his mouth, The Spear finds it agonisingly difficult to chew slowly. His natural instinct, like the mouth-pit of
the great desert-dwelling Sarlacc from the Return of The Jedi, is to gobble up
his prize as soon as it enters his mouth (laser blasters and all).
It’s as if his cerebral cortex, the thinking part of his
brain, finds it a herculean feat to pacify his reptilian brain-stem into
submission when it comes to the rate of primary digestion. Even though he knows his toasted chicken-schnitzel
sandwich tasted delicious, the mental effort involved meant he was thoroughly
unable to enjoy his meal, and he left the lunch-table with a certain - but
clearly misguided - antipathy towards schnitzels in general. By the end of his sandwich he no longer felt hungry,
but he did feel like punching somebody in the face.
It makes The Spear wonder just how much of his behaviour is
directed by the non-thinking part of his brain, and if similar attempts to
override its baser functions in other aspects of his life lead to the same sense
of frustration. Like when he does indeed
wish to punch someone in the face for instance, but the rational part of his
brain battles the brain-stem (or is it the mammalian part of the brain which instills
rage?), ultimately making him walk away to avoid the ultimate deterrent of a
romantic weekend on a bunk-bed with his old mates in the slammer.
The Spear is also struck by the possibility that the inability
of one to successfully chew slowly when hungry may be a sign of someone who is
more susceptible to other impulses of the stem, such as promiscuity or obesity.
Certainly there is some pleasure to be had in submitting to
the inner-reptile every now and again – people ‘snap’ all the time, occasionally
in spectacular fashion - but just not when you’re bordering on looking like Angelina
Jolie fresh from the Botox clinic and you’re one bite away from lip sandwich.
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