Mood Piece March 1 2018

The headline read "Obesity on the Rise: America's Big Problem". He'd seen articles like this before. Honestly, who hadn't? It had been one of the "big health scares" for as long as he could remember. Sometimes they commiserated about how difficult it was to address, other times it featured a debate about what did and did not contribute. This particular article was trying to convince him that it was the hormones in his food that were doing the country in. At this point though, it was hard to follow.

He wondered if maybe the reason no one could solve the problem was because everyone was looking at it in the wrong way. He loved nature documentaries, one of the only things that actually looked good on his new high-tech T.V., and he'd seen quite a bit about strange species behavior. Cicadas went dormant in prime numbered years following some mysterious cue, for example, and birds suddenly picked up and migrated when the environment was just right. He'd even heard about whole forests clearing out right before an earthquake, as if the animals sensed something and knew it was time to get out of Dodge. It didn't seem out of the realm of possibility that a group of animals might take on a strange behavior when their world was changing radically around them.

Maybe that was what was going on here, he thought. Maybe the reason no one could find a real solution to this whole debacle was that everyone was looking to the past, thinking too small. What if the whole country had picked up on something, if people were just obeying instincts they knew nothing about? Like a caterpillar building its cocoon or a rabbit's color changing in the snow. It was certainly an idea. He pondered what it might be; what could be so strange or awful that tens of millions of people would start storing away calories like there was no tomorrow. What could rile up that many people, even to the edge of death?

The bus pulled up; its squealing brakes signaling it was time to leave his paper, and his thoughts, and to get on his way. He took a long drag from his soda and turned his mind to the day ahead. He had to meet his sister for lunch later, he reminded himself. He had forgotten last week and she wouldn't let him again any time soon. By the time the bus was pulling off his strange thoughts had already begun to fade out of memory. Soon all he had in mind was the time until his next stop and just how thirsty he was, now that he thought about it.