Anorexia

    My college career is a bit confusing. I started at the University of Pennsylvania, got fed up after a year and a half (or rather, three semesters) and went home, enrolled at the University of South Carolina studying primarily International Relations (or Studies, but that sounded redundant). I took a 500 level (meaning both undergrads and grad students can apply it to their degrees) class and did very well. The instructor also headed the exchange program with the University of Kent at Canterbury in England and asked if I would like to go. "Hell yeah!" I said, or the academic equivalent, and I spent my junior year abroad. Coming back, I found that I could graduate faster from Penn than from Carolina, so I did.
    Now the reason I was fed up with Penn was that I wanted to study International Relations, and in spite of all the green money Penn asked for, their program was terrible. So I studied the hell out of International Relations at USC and UKC and returned to Penn where I found... I had to study it all again, as I had to have a certain percentage of my credits in my major at Penn. Fortunately, they had improved the program, so at least the courses were mostly interesting. But since I had to cram them all into one semester, it was a bit harrowing. Also I was living in an apartment and cooking for myself all the time for the first time, which might not be expected to end well.
    One day, I was crossing the 38th St bridge, a pedestrian bridge with a bit of an arch to it, and found it difficult. Generally I was feeling a little rundown so I stopped in at Student Health. They found that I was anemic and hypoglycemic and weighed in at 128 lbs on my 5 feet 10 almost. The resident or intern told me that I was anorexic. I told her "Am not!" and she said fine, come back in a month weighing 138 lbs and I'll vacate the diagnosis. The way my eyes lit up should have tipped her off that of all the things in the world that I am, anorexic isn't one of them.
    In those days, there was a very nice ice cream parlor in West Philadelphia called Hillary's. I visited them a lot! And in general I ate more, and better, and richer. I don't actually recall hitting restaurants a lot more often, but I probably did. I may have moved up-market from boxed macaroni and cheese, too. Regardless, I came back after a month weighing 138 or more and the doctor agreed that she had been mistaken. However, now I wish bitterly that somebody had made a deeper investigation. Because if somebody had discovered the celiac disease then, well I would have missed out on a lot of delicious food, so that's a minus. But I probably would have never gotten as fat as I did in the '90s and the '00s, I never would have had the joy of lactose intolerance, and I wouldn't be as worried about intestinal cancer now. Not that I'm all that worried... but still.