I was 10 years old, walking across a zebra crossing with my beloved sister, four years my junior. Having lost her ice cream to the pavement I instinctively shovelled the top scoop of mine onto my sister’s. It was one of my sister’s fondest memories. I recall a boy shouting “elephant” as he cycled past. I didn’t have the heart to tell her.
Without doing myself a disservice by having to explain my disposition; for context, my first word was “more”. More food, more milk, more lollies, more Barbies, more ceramic mugs, more experiences, more, more, more.
Put it this way – I remember my mother asking me about the Stanford marshmallow experiment as a youngster. The 1972 study on delayed gratification gave children a choice between an immediate reward of one marshmallow, or two if they waited a certain period of time. The theory goes that the children who waited had better life outcomes, as measured by SAT scores, educational attainment, and BMI – that old chestnut.
At the time my answer was simple – in theory, you’ve got two marshmallows available, so why couldn’t I have an immediate fix? And why make me unnecessarily suffer? And who’s to say a higher BMI is “bad” in a moral sense?
My sister, on the other hand, was indifferent to both scenarios. She was the type to eat a McDonald’s burger sans the patty, cheese, onion, and pickle. Her
