It shouldn't surprise you to know that when I was a child I prepared for my Brother a hearty meal of broken-up pieces of styrofoam, the flavour of which your house is likely insulated.
It was sometime in the early 80's when my parents or my Dad decided it was time to "finish" the basement in our young home. I was there for practically all of it. He had used the white styrofoam to place against the concrete and the itchy fiberglass variety next to that. You could imagine there being a lot of left over insulation of both varietals, and this I put to use.
Initially I had gathered up all the excess fiberglass and made a pile of it, in which I - wrapped up in my "skidoo suit" with the hood pulled tight - would pretend I was swimming in a vast unending ocean. You see I always had a great imagination and had become quite constructive after being weaned on the likes of a master craftsman by the name of Mr. Dressup.
Itchy and full of the dirt which accumulated over a busy basement floor complete with sawdust, I swam to the shore (basement floor) and dried myself off. I was warned days earlier when I was found walking along the insulation of the inside walls that the fiberglass was itchy and bad for me, but I had to find out for myself!
I didn't really learn my lesson until my second day of swimming when I got the damned stuff in my eye and scared my mother half to death when it was too painful for me to move my bloodshot eye within it's socket. So me - full of insulation and dirt - followed my Mom to the upstairs bathroom for a flushing of my eyeball. It was then, with the discomfort of water streaming into my sensitive eye that I decided my days of swimming in a vast ocean of fiberglass were over.
During this time of upgrading the basement my Brother Brad was at my side, and to keep us busy and out of trouble our Dad had fashioned a box from scrap pieces of wood laying around and said that we could help by picking up the pieces of styrofoam. I don't know about you, but my first encounter with this white material was bliss. First of all, it reminded me of Popcorn, it was slightly compressible and broke easily into many pieces. It had the functionality of "craftpaper", only on a higher level. Oh the possibilities.
Being anal at a young age I had cleaned this box our Father made to a degree worth of eating from and collected the refuse of styrofoam and broke them into smaller uniform pieces, which to me, resembled the Popcorn my brother cherished oh so well.
Out of curiosity and amusement I presented to my Brother this box of carefully sculpted insulation under the pretence that it was Popcorn.
To my pure and utter amazement he not only tried it but began eating it with gusto, and to the point that I was afraid he would run out.
So I, (still reeling from his display of satisfaction) not wanting to see my Brother go hungry, gathered more less manicured pieces of styrofoam to add to his plate. I watched joyfully, convincing myself that it wasn't that bad for him, and that he would simply poop it out like the stone of a plum, from which I had found out 1st hand years earlier. I continued to watch as he ate the styrofoam and listened to the characteristic scrunch and squeek of polystyrene polymers rubbing against teeth.
At one point I nearly laughed and gave myself away, but I held my composure and let him carry on doing what he was obviously enjoying.
It wasn't until many years well past puberty, that I relayed this story on a hot humid evening in the State of Quintana Roo, on the eastern part of the Yucatan Peninsula. far from the scene of the crime during a dinner in honour of his Matrimony.
My Mother was oblivious, as was his new Bride.
