Ditching the KAC for the Peirce Workout

Global warming is a conspiracy, I’m certain of it. Don’t worry, you don’t have to ring the “raving conservative alarm” (which just sounds like a middle-aged white man repeating “America” over a tape of Ronald Reagan laughing). No, I’m just convinced that the “Go Green” campaign is an excuse to make everyone look as sun-kissed as Cameron Diaz, appear as deep and introspective as Leo DiCaprio or feel as fit-yet-scruffy as Brad Pitt. In fact, I believe the depletion of our planet’s ozone layer directly correlates to my regression from a functional member of society into someone who goes outside as much as a person with an allergy to the sun.

After exerting more energy moving into my dorm room than I had for the past three weeks, I realized my laziness was getting out of control. When Peirce alerted the student body of its decision to go trayless, I panicked. I imagined the mockery of my peers as they watched me try to fold my arms around my plates and bowls, achieving a glorious moment of Cirque du Soleil-esque flexibility before losing grip and sending my Kung Pao chicken tumbling past the Fusion station. But as time went on, I realized Peirce wasn’t trying to make me a social pariah, ostracized because my goat cheese and polenta went flying at the slightest stub of a toe. No, the Dining Hall was staging a laziness intervention. Going trayless eliminates the possibility of me sliding an entire Big Cookie onto my tray, dashing some carrots and chickpeas into a salad bowl and calling it a night.

My no-tray lifestyle has not only limited the amount of food I take, but also forced me to get some daily cardio in as well. My biceps are bursting from bearing the weight of a bowl of bowtie pasta with cream sauce and a ginger ale (with ice).  My calves are toned and muscular from running relays from New Side to the silverware station in the servery when I inevitably forget a spoon. After weeks of buoying a mountain of cups and dishes — as well as navigating food lines and clusters of chatting students — my eyes have become sharp and alert. In the event of a collision with another Peirce-goer, my ankles pivot as smoothly as the soft serve snakes out of the machine.

I wasn’t always this sleek and sexy, though. After my six-week job in a preschool for kids with disabilities this summer, I felt I had tackled enough costumes, swing pushes, bodily fluids and “evil queen” voices to earn myself some vacation time. My predilection for food and distaste for leaving my house created some kind of slothful perfect storm. In order to mask the disgust I would have for myself if I truly thought about my actions, I imagined that my suburban Wilmington, Del. home was in fact The Hunger Games’ secret rebel hideout, District 13. In this version of my life, I wasn’t allowed outside, and I had to eat everything in the pantry in order to bulk up for the impending war with the totalitarian rulers, the Capitol. Without my imaginative guise, however, I was just a pre-adolescent-sized girl who spent weeks on end in a few rotating pairs of pajamas, eating Stouffer’s microwavable mac ‘n’ cheese at 11:30 p.m. with a side of ice cream out of the container, laughing alone to reruns of Whose Line Is It Anyway?

That is not a pretty sight. And I’m sorry I had to go there, but I must spread word of the cost of laziness. Some in the Kenyon community might counter my story about the horrors of slug life by suggesting the true problem here is the hassle trayless Peirce adds to their lives, pointing to a bowl of butternut squash soup in their arms that is sloshing dangerously over the lip.

To those antagonistic squares refusing to get with it, I admit that, sure, it’s difficult for you to balance all the food you’re going to devour. But if your increased fitness isn’t enough of a draw to join hands with Mother Nature (or Captain Planet — we don’t discriminate based on gender here), allow the realities of the situation to tie up your heart with guilt and strangle it ruthlessly. Consider the baby polar bear whose fluffy, snowy, downy coat is swaying in the frigid Arctic sea as he desperately coos for his mother, lost amongst the melting, majestic ice floes, damning the human race that couldn’t conserve a few gallons of tray water. He’s having a real case of the Mondays, too.

Annie Sheslow ’15, a potential English major, interacts with Peirce food on a daily basis. The Food Network’s Guy Fieri is her personality twin. Her email is sheslowa@kenyon.edu