It’s my party, and I’ll eat if I want to.
Tomorrow I turn 21. This wonderful rite of passage will be
marked by a marvelous celebration (read: insane party), complete
with mudslides, martinis and pot stickers.
Pot stickers? Did you read that right?
Yes, you did.
Everywhere I turn, I hear people whining constantly that
they’re getting fat or that they need to eat less to get
skinny. How many times have I heard the phrase “I can’t
eat more chocolate, I’ll get fat” among my female
friends?
Well, I have news for you: Birthdays are the one day that is off
limits to dieting.
Birthdays are all about joy. They’re the day that you came
out into the world, and therefore the day is all about you. If
it’s a day to celebrate your existence, and if consuming
enough food and water is a process essential to all lives and to
yours in particular, then why should anyone tell you what to
eat?
It’s your one chance during the year to eat 14 pizookies
in a row, guilt-free. Although if anyone reading this column
actually does that without getting sick first, I promise to buy an
extra one for you.
When else can you eat whatever you want without fear of Aunt
Gertie pinching your flab? Just ignore the number of calories in
those chocolate-covered strawberries ““ Gertie can’t say
a thing.
Tomorrow I plan to consume more junk food than those Harold and
Kumar guys when they went to White Castle. I’ll probably have
a pizookie, Diddy Riese cookies, Enzo’s pizza, a two-liter
bottle of Dr. Pepper …
Actually, re-reading that last line is making me kind of sick.
Maybe I won’t eat junk food after all.
So scratch that.
Instead, I’ll go to a restaurant for my birthday ““
probably Benihana in Santa Monica, where I can not only enjoy
scrumptious steak and shrimp, but I can be entertained by the
chefs’ preparation of the morsels as well.
Holding your birthday bonanza at a restaurant is key because it
means that your friends or significant other will (hopefully) pay
for your meal. Being freed from any financial responsibility, you
can order whatever food you want without pinching pennies.
Honestly, I can’t really afford to drop around $30 on the
Rocky’s Choice dinner at Benihana on an assistant
editor’s salary. Probably not if it were just a regular
night.
And that doesn’t even include drinks. With around $8 per
drink at most restaurants, Daily Bruin Assistant Viewpoint Editor
Brett Noble says that it would probably take a shorter time for
“a snail to struggle across a flaming pit of molasses with
70-mile-per-hour winds gusting against his quivering shell”
than for me to feel any sort of buzz if I paid for drinks
myself.
If you’re lucky, then not only will your friends finance
your birthday dinner, they’ll also refrain from saying
anything if you steal fries off of their plate. Birthday boys and
girls are automatically exonerated from any punishment associated
with mooching. It’s not mooching in this case. Why,
it’s gift giving.
In any case, whether or not you choose to use your culinary
birthday privileges, it’s the one day of the year when
it’s all about you.
So do what you want, eat what you want, and go have one hell of
a good time.
E-mail Fylstra at jfylstra@media.ucla.edu.