Mmm, Cheeseburgers.

I’ve been thinking a lot about cheeseburgers lately. Like, A LOT. More than the average person, by far. I have not done studies on this or even asked around; that’s how sure I am. I think about cheeseburgers at a highly abnormal level of frequency.

Cheeseburgers happen to be part of my top five when it comes to favorite foods, and while I haven’t eliminated them from my diet because I could never ever do that, I have definitely cut back for health reasons.

You see, cheeseburgers and I have a long history. You might think that it started when I was a McDonald’s crew member for a couple of years in high school. Back then I used the heck out of my “free food on breaks” allowance, mostly on burgers and fries. That wasn’t the genesis of my obsession, though.

It all began right here in Knoxville, in 1982. My dad managed a Holiday Inn near the World’s Fair site and we lived there for months before moving into our own home. From part four of the series I wrote called “The Hotel Diaries”:

I have to admit that I ate a cheeseburger with fries EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. In fact, sometimes I ate a cheeseburger and fries for lunch AND dinner. The restaurant staff saw me coming and would ask if I wanted “the usual”. On the weekends, I used to delay breakfast for so long that by the time I got downstairs to the restaurant, they were serving lunch, and “Oh darn, I guess I missed breakfast…how about a cheeseburger?” I ate so many cheeseburgers and fries during our time there that I can still, if I close my eyes, see exactly what the plate looked like as it was brought to the table, and I can still remember how deliciously they smelled and tasted. In fact, I would pay a lot of money (if I had it) to have one at this very moment. With ketchup.

Surely at some point I should have worn out my welcome with cheeseburgers and become sick of them, but sadly I am still obsessed.

It has been a difficult lifestyle change for me over the past nine months or so, to avoid ordering a cheeseburger during eight out of every ten times Jim and I go out to dinner when a cheeseburger is on the menu. The good news is, I have branched out and enjoyed a wider variety of foods. The bad news is, I can’t stop thinking (and talking) about those dang burgers (and fries). In fact, if you were to ask Jim how often I bring up the topic of cheeseburgers and how much I want one on a scale of one to five with one being “NEVER” and five being “EVERY MOMENT”, I’m certain he’d give it a solid 4.75. He gets me, though. The last time we talked about it he sweetly said, “It’s no big deal…you just know what you like and you tend to stick with it forever.”

I winked at him and said, “Sure do*.”

I’m certain I’m not the only one with a food obsession. Even if it’s not over-the-top like mine, what’s yours?

*Totally corny, but that statement is totally true and really happened.