#so most reliably good was thursdays teriyaki like... beef strips

[soaringsearingphoenix]

It was a study some college students were doing about teens' sleep habits. I was about 13 i think, and i volunteered, because what they were looking for was "teenagers who don't get enough sleep" so all of us subjects were like

Anyways, for part of tje study they had us spend the night in the psych building on campus. It wasn't the most restful night of my life, because who ever sleeps well in an unfamiliar place? But after doing the cognitive function tests the night before, we'd spent that evening in low light (or, if we had to go to the bathroom down the fluorescent-lit corridor, we wore welding goggles to limit our light exposure.) playing card and board games with fellow test subjects and supervisors, who occasionally administered cheek swabs to test our sleep hormone levels over time. Uno was tricky because it was hard to tell blue and green apart in the dim, blue-reduced lighting. We settled on monopoly (this was also when that guy complemented my Piano Player's Hands.)

My point is, i was given all the tools needed to relax and have probably a decent night of sleep. They did the cognitive tests again in the morning after somewhat monitoring how well we slept (i dont think they stuck anything to my head, but i know there was a camera in the room). So i felt pretty good about them.

But the study was not about the effects of hunger, so they told us that if we wanted any snacks they had some to offer, and encouraged us to eat if we would normally have breakfast. It was like, cheez its, and grapes or maybe oranges, and some other more plain cracker. I saw them on the counter on my way to the test room. There were two boxes of cheez its.

I asked for cheez its, because they are my favorite. I watched the proctor crack open a brand new fresh box and pour a handful of them onto a napkin for me, and i went about my task. I was sat at a computer and did tasks like clicking the space bar when a certain image appeared on screen, or matching words to pictures. I think there was one with faces and names and we had to remember which name went to which face. Anyways, I'm an idle eater, and I already had a habit of snacking while working. Plus, the task was pretty engaging so before i knew it I reached over and my cheez its were gone. So when the proctor swung by again, asking if I needed anything, I requested more. By the fourth time she honored this request, she gave me like twice as many as before.

That may have been the final portion I got. It may have been more than that. I truly do not recall. This was almost ten years ago now and even at the time I was in a bit of a daze from a first-night-somewhere-else kind of sleep. I was also not particularly keeping track of the cheez its. I was Dilligently doing my tasks.

So i'm not sure how many times I asked before she frowned, left the room, and came back a moment later to say

"We're out of cheez its"

Now of course, in retrospect there were other participants in the study. Maybe four others were there that night, i'd seen them, we'd played board games. It's more than likely I wasn't the only one eating them. But something about the way she seemed surprised to have run out of them so quickly, and the fact that i hadn't actually seen the other participants that morning (they were doing tests in separate rooms), my sleep-addled recollection of that moment was the certainty that this was because of me and me alone.

Surely it's unlikely that I ate two entire boxes of cheez its myself. But I don't know that for sure. I was a growing teen. I had no sense of passing time. I was barely even paying attention to what i was eating. And i'd been plenty hungry - after dinner, we hadn't been allowed to snack the night before, so as not to contaminate the cheek swabs. As absurd as it sounds, i remained vaguely convinced for years after that I alone had eaten all their cheez its, or at least most of them

But no, it wasn't a reward system. Eating cheez its is its own reward

thinking about the time when i was doing alertness tests for a brain science study and i ate like all the cheez its in the building