Breaking up with Bill

I won’t be using my Topsy Turvy® strawberry planter this year. Even though inventor Bill Felkner insists, in caps and upper case and with a TM, no less, that it’s the “World’s Easiest Way to Grow Strawberries!”™, I just don’t have the heart for it. This is even despite the instruction booklet’s superhot beefcake shot of pudgy, combovered Bill, posing in front of his kitchen cabinets, wearing a manly pullover and proffering a basket of giant red fruit. Are those strawberries? Dear God, they look like softballs. But still, I must turn away. They are not for me. Why? Because to move past the Topsy Turvy’s colorful cover and read the actual growing instructions inside is to enter into one man’s personal shame spiral, and I just can’t take it this year.

I picked up my Topsy Turvy at the thrift store and gave it to myself for Mother’s Day (don’t ask). The first warm and sunny day this spring, I headed out to let the “easy growing” begin. “Laissez le bon temps rouler,” I hum to myself, full of happy, strawberry-colored anticipation. But those easy promises and trademark symbols, I’m sorry to report, turn to an onslaught of pointed fingers about mid-way through “Bill’s tips for success.” I should have grown suspicious when Tip #1 instructed me that I’d need to get myself “in the proper mind-set right up front.” By tip #3, Bill is all-caps castigating my possible cheapskate choices of soil and demanding that I use only GOOD Canadian Peat-based potting soil. He rants: “Bargain-priced potting soil is NO BARGAIN. Please trust me on this one.”

Standing in my backyard, holding my tips in one hand and my planter in the other, I start to feel a headache coming on. Bill’s tone is so, well, judgy. Not that he wasn’t right, of course. I’m just the sort of idiot who would try to pull off Bill’s miracle with NO BARGAIN soil. It is as if he can see inside my soul, um, soil.

After the opening salvo of Tip #3, the remaining tips contain mostly three things: capital letters, exclamation points, and pre-emptive blame. Bill seems sure, given the cheap nature of my soil choices, that I’ll be skimpy in my watering habits, as well. He whinges on for quite a while about that one. And if I watered frequently enough, dear God, this man is now criticizing my speed. “No matter how you add the water, do it SLOWLY,” he growls.

After 10 shouty tips, is he done? No, he is not. He has an all-cap FINAL NOTE in which to tell me that if I were willing to give my planter just a reasonable amount of time and attention, it would provide my family “with homegrown berry goodness.” My head is really throbbing now, and I wonder what he means by “reasonable.” I'm beginning to feel, well, shackled to this stupid ™ planter, and now, sweet Jesus, there's a P.S. I never knew P.S.'s were a thing in instruction booklets, but that rapscallion Bill is hard to stop. “It’s just a PLANTER,” he sternly postscripts, “No more, no less. So it is entirely up to YOU to regularly water, feed and tend it.”

And with that, he signs off, with a signature that I bet is consistent with a homegrown sociopath who has ready access to a trowel and an all-caps function. Seeing his signature, with what I take to be the catch phrase he shares with his millions of shamefaced fans (“Now THAT’S what I’m talking about!”), delivers the final swipe at my self esteem. I have had enough. Bill’s brochure goes in with the worm composter, and his planter is tossed in the trash. I’ll let the bunnies nibble away at exactly two-thirds of each single berry I grow this year, just the way they do every year. At least rabbits don’t have access to exclamation points. 

Shame Cupcakes

I work for a very nice corporate client who was celebrating a recent business success. To mark the occasion, they created a lovely spread of cupcakes in the employee cafeteria. I was on campus covering other stories, and I wanted to get some photos of the event. And then I got sidetracked into an afternoon’s worth of ruminations on shame, joy and how hard women can be on themselves.

I saw a woman approach the table and take two cupcakes. I asked: “Would you mind posing for me by the ‘Congratulations!’ poster, looking happy and holding your cupcakes?” She looked at me aghast, as if I’d asked her to remove several items of clothing and lay herself out on the catering table. “No!” she said, scurrying away.

Undaunted, I wandered into the cafeteria, noticing a woman who had just returned with a plate of the cupcakes for her friends. As she doled them out, I approached: “Ladies, would you mind holding up your cupcakes and smiling for me?” Again with the quick and horrified refusals. Sensing my dismay, one of the women had a suggestion for me. “If you want a picture, go to that table,” she said, pointing at a five-top of guys about 20 feet away. “I bet they’ll let you.”

And lo, it came to pass. The men happily hoisted their treats and smiled obligingly into the camera. They looked as though they were generally happy fellows, possibly extra happy about getting a free cupcake at work. I got the sense that more than one of them might help himself to seconds, if he felt so inclined. If their lips turned blue from the lurid frosting, I doubted they'd care. Cupcakes were happy food, and they were happy about having them. And that was clearly as much thought as they’d given to the entire matter.

I looked back at the table of women, none of whom was willing to have photographic evidence that she had ever, ever eaten a cupcake. Their treats were not going to taste very good. It might as well have been frosting-covered mud pies those gals were wolfing down. And if they wanted a second cupcake, they’d have to sneak down when no one was in the cafeteria, and eat it all in one bite. At least no would have a picture of them doing it, thank God.

I write a lot about food. I write about trending ethnic cuisines and demographic shifts in snacking and what spicy condiment is about to knock Sriracha off its throne. I write about the importance of probiotics to create a happy climate for gut bacteria, the role of fiber in avoiding blood sugar spikes, and why just about everyone needs more magnesium in their diet. But I never write about joy, and I think it’s time I do.

It’s okay to eat food. It’s okay to let others see you eating food. And it’s even okay to eat a cupcake, as long as you savor and delight in every single morsel. If you end up with blue lips and a three o’clock headache, so what. I am not sure where we women lost track of this, but it’s time to reclaim the simple, goofy attitude of the guys at that table: Oh boy, free cupcakes. Don’t mind if I do.