[MRM]

I worked in a hospital kitchen to put myself through college. The dietary aide jobs were pretty desirable because they paid well for manual labor, so most of the kids who filled in the evening shift part time jobs were sons and daughters of middle managers. One of the kids on the shift with me was the son of the head of security and a shirt-tail relative of the head of the dietary department. He was born with Type One diabetes and was on a strict diet. Except he wasn't. Most of the people on the evening shift were students working through the local college, so we didn't have any extra cash for things like Coke and candy bars. Since this kid wasn't going to college and either still lived at home or moved into a cheap apartment with some friends, he had plenty of spending money. Consequently, every break where my close friends and I took the free iced tea or coffee offered by the hospital (we could top the iced tea off with some lemonade, so we felt like bandits when we put a dash of iced tea in a big glass of lemonade) he would stop off at the vending machine and get a candy bar. One evening as he was taking bites out of a full-sized Snickers, someone asked him about his diabetes and eating a candy bar. He nonchalantly shrugged his shoulders and allowed as how he had a short life expectancy anyway, and that eating candy bars like that probably meant he would die in his 30s. We were both probably 20 or younger at the time, an 30 seemed like a senior citizen to us back then. As I watched him take another bite of his candy bar, I wondered why he would sacrifice his health for a trifle that didn't really do anything for him - a treat that my friends and I did without gladly, never even thinking we wanted a Snickers or were deprived of having one. It just seemed like he got nothing out of it and hurt his health.

Not all that many years later I got through school and was married and working when my embryonic family and I traveled back home to stay with my folks for a weekend. My mom mentioned that Brian had passed away from complications relating to diabetes. He was in his 30s, just as he had predicted.

I still wondered why he ate so many candy bars and drank so many Cokes on break. I concluded that diabetics can chose to commit suicide by sweets.

Having said that, Paul, have big bowl of oatmeal for breakfast and a nice steak for supper. Don't give the Gubner the satisfaction. You and Cindy should outlive her, masks and vaccines or not.