Avoiding Pink Mushrooms

I've shared this with a few people already, but I'll toss it up here - my first official post on the resurrected blog!

We have a Nintendo Wii at the BSU, which has allowed me to spend some time playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl. Some of the purists out there don't like to play with items, but we pretty much always do. There are two mushrooms (at least?) that can be used - one red and one pink.

The red mushroom roughly doubles the size of your character, and I imagine it allows you to do a lot more damage. The pink one does just the opposite - it shrinks you down to half size and leaves you much more vulnerable to attack. The problem is that, since we play on the video projector, you can't tell one mushroom from the other! So it's always a roll of the dice when you grab a mushroom - will you get big or small?

The Pink Mushroom has become a symbol for me - of foods that zap me of my energy and greatly decrease my effectiveness in life. I don't know if it's normal or not, but large amounts of sugar or processed foods tend to really mess me up. Either massive fatigue sets in, or I just get lethargic and don't feel motivated to do much of anything. I've been tested and am not diabetic or anything like that.

"So just consume those things in moderation," you say! Yeah, I've tried that. And in the end, it doesn't work for me - it's pretty much all or nothing. The only thing that has worked in the past is completely cutting those things out of my life. So that's where I'm at today, once again trying to avoid the pink mushrooms at all costs.

It's funny, really. I mean, what exactly is the payoff? It's just a momentary pleasure, a quick moment of enjoyment that just isn't worth it. (Yes, I could certainly launch into a sermon here on the parallels to temptation in general, but I'll save that for another time.)

So if you see me chowing down on cookies or Doritos or slamming down a Coke, you may *lovingly* remind me to avoid pink mushrooms. And for the record, there's nothing pink about coffee :)