30 Hour Torture

Every year, many IA students participate in an event called the 30 Hour Famine. They fast for 30 hours, and collect pledges to help fight world hunger. It starts near the beginning of one school day and ends when the following school day is over. This year, I was in Mrs. Saxsma's English class during the penultimate period of the second day. I didn't fast, but the people who did had already gone about 26 hours without eating. When we walked into the classroom, we were assaulted by a strong smell. Apparently, someone had asked permission to use the room to store some food that they had needed to bring in for after school. Mrs. Saxsma said that anyone fasting had permission to move to the other side of the room to try to avoid the smell.

A few minutes later, we had continued talking about the World Literature 1 essay we are in the process of writing. Mrs. Saxsma said that she had an example of a good paper for us to read, and she again apologized to those participating in the 30 Hour Famine. When she handed out the paper, we saw why. It was called, "The Effect of Food in Midaq Alley and..." some other novel that's no longer in the curriculum. The essay was about three pages long, and it was about how several male characters' attitudes toward food were representative of their attitudes toward women. One character always ordered the same thing at restaurants, and was also faithful to his significant other. Another character, however, preferred to try different kinds of food from day to day. It went into quite a bit of detail about what foods the characters liked...making it that much more difficult for those who were starving anyway. And the word for this in English is "torture" and it is spelled t-o-r-t-u-r-e.

When I asked her permission to write about the event, she said that "it was totally accidental though."