If you’ve read anything I’ve written in the last few months or had the “pleasure” of meeting me in person, you’re aware of the fact that I’m attempting to get back into the shape I was in a few years ago. While my main motivation is health and longevity (I want my wife to be able to spend as much time as possible with me), I also want to be prepared in case I get invited to a beach party over the summer. That is why (with prompting from my younger brother) I decided to take a shot at the Paleo diet,a way of eating that emulates what early humans ate. While I’ve had some success with the diet (and will write more about that in due time) this is not a tale of success but rather, a tale of utter failure.

I want to start out by saying that my inability to stick with the diet wasn’t entirely my fault, at least not present day me’s fault. Due to some sort of distortion in the time space continuum, I was exposed to the influence of childhood Ethan.

While present day me is motivated by things such as success, professionalism but most of all caution, childhood Ethan is a force of chaos motivated only by having fun and eating everything in sight. It goes without saying that childhood Ethan’s views on a diet that eliminates the things he loves most in the world are particularly negative. The fact that present-day me would adhere to such a nutritional regimen is further proof to childhood Ethan that the future is going to suck for him. That being said, present-day me has something past me does not…present-day me has freedom.

What occurred last Friday at 8:30 PM Central European Time can only be described as my past trying to influence my present as a means to make me see what life would be like if I combined my childhood aspirations with my adult abilities and freedom.

“Those cupcakes look pretty good,” he said as I wondered around in the grocery store with a rumbling belly (note to those seeking a healthy diet, stay away from the grocery store during tummy rumbles).

“What’s your point?” I asked, knowing very well what he was getting at.

“Mom and Dad would never let us have more than one cupcake at a time. Who’s to stop you now?”

I looked over at my wife who’d accompanied me, hoping she’d step up and take responsibility for my actions. Because she couldn’t hear childhood Ethan, she just saw me looking somberly at a package full of chocolate covered cupcakes as if some internal struggle was occurring (I’d call it a struggle if childhood Ethan actually had to work very hard to convince me of a cupcake feast, but the fact of the matter is he didn’t).

Because she’s not a controlling kind of person (and also because she was giddy from the wine we had at dinner) she just shrugged. She wanted no part in arguing with her husband (who happens to be a grown ass man) over the appropriate amount of cupcakes one should eat.

Childhood Ethan’s influence had taken root completely, however and so instead of picking up one single 4 pack of cupcakes, I also grabbed a mixed package of chocolate and chocolate chip muffins. Throw in a liter of 1.5% milk and I was ready for the night of my life. The one thing that childhood me didn’t take into account (probably because he wouldn’t discover this quality until he was in college) is the fact I that I tend to forget the whole “with great power comes great responsibility”.

Drunk on power (and the beer that also slipped through the fissure running through my diet), I got home and within fifteen minutes, I’d consumed 3 cupcakes and three muffins alongside a couple glasses of milk. I’d like to think I maintained a bit of class while chewing through the sugary treats, but my wife said it was quite barbaric and a little frightening. When all was said and done, the kitchen counter looked like a pastry war-zone as crumbs and wrappers dotted the landscape.

Like tends to happen with the mass ingestion of carbohydrates, I felt super full but pretty happy for a solid 15 minutes and then I fell into a cake coma until the next day. That is when the second component of present-day me that childhood Ethan failed to take into account came into full effect as my abused digestive system decided that enough was enough. While it did it’s best to pull nutrients from the grossness I’d crammed into my mouth, it eventually gave up and decided to punish me with a horrible stomach ache the entire next day. With stomach aches comes a lack of motivation and a general hatred of the world around you, so I blew an entire Saturday laying around and cursing the science fiction elements that led to my current predicament.

Childhood Ethan was no where to be found at this point, which pissed me off. Seeing as the situation had occurred in the first place, it was obvious he didn’t learn his lesson or else a child version of me from a few days after the original childhood me decided to visit would have arrived right before the cake disaster happened in the first place.

If there’s a lesson to be taken from this incident, it’s that we as people are different, both mentally and physically from who we were back in the day. If we do make judgment mistakes, it’s a lot easier to blame supernatural scenarios involving our pasts influencing our present than actually coming to terms with the fact that we’re all pretty dumb.