Genesis 'Duke'

I experienced something fascinating the other day. It was something that caused me to question my own childhood and adolescent behavior.

After some deeper thought, I found my observations to be well within lines of normal human behavior.

I don’t have any children, but I have a ringside seat at the Ringling Brothers, Chigger & Bailey Circus for 26 performance weeks of the year. I get to hangout under the Big Top for at least 40 hours during each of those weeks. Ninety-eight percent of the time performances are worthy of applause and laughter. The other two percent… Well, it can be like witnessing a motorcycle crash in one of those giant steel spheres. But the performers get back up, dust themselves off, wave at the crowd, and limp off with a reassuring wave of wellness.

Chigger came back from the grocery store after leaving a large portion of her paycheck behind in their cash register. The trunk of her car was filled with a wonderful assortment of food.

The boys helped us carry the provisions into the kitchen and immediately started pulling things from the bags. Not to help put away. They started ripping things open and shoving the contents into their mouths. Horrible sounds of lip smacking, chewing, and grunts of approval filled the air around me. It sounded like someone tossed Michael Vick into a pit filled with hungry members of PETA.

I had the urge to put on one of those padded suits that people wear when training attack dogs. I felt like I needed to protect myself from the teenage and pre-teen zombies that were consuming groceries in the kitchen.

Did I act like this when I was a kid? Did I practically shove my mother into the fridge with the force of an NHL player checking someone into the boards so I could fill my face with newly acquired foodstuffs?

You know… I’m sure I did. Hell, I may have been even worse. Maybe that’s why my mother would occasionally distract me with a new hard rock album that was on sale cheap at the Food Lion.

Yeah, it’s true. Food Lion used to sale vinyl albums back in the 1980’s. The two examples that I remember receiving after Mom’s trip to the grocery store are Quiet Riot’s ‘Metal Health’ and AC/DC’s ‘Flick Of The Switch’.

I don’t know if girls exhibit this type of behavior. I cannot remember if my sisters were around during those times. Perhaps, like a shark, and inner eyelids closed over my eyeballs to protect them through the attack and blinded me during the feeding frenzy.

Maybe this type of behavior all started with cavekids welcoming the caveman back home from the hunt. Those cavekids probably jumped onto that carcass faster than a tyrannosaurus could pounce on a stegosaurus.

It’s more than likely some kind of instinctual thing, I don’t know.