There is an ad on television, to promote school meal programs, that relies on the stomach growling of young kids to illustrate that they are hungry. I am all for meal programs for these hungry kids, it’s just that I don’t think that stomach growling is a universal sign of hunger.
You see, I am a reverse stomach growler. That’s right, my stomach is most likely to growl after I have already eaten. It’s not even a close thing. At least 90% of the time, my stomach growls when I am full. This even makes sense. My stomach growls when it has something to work on. I don’t know how the rest of you can have stomach growls when you have nothing in there to make the sounds.
I’m just saying if adults relied on stomach growls to tell if a child is hungry, they might run into a bit of trouble.
When I was younger, for instance, if a teacher had discovered my stomach growling, they might put me into a meal program, even though I was already fed. Then they would notice that my 6 brothers and sisters didn’t have stomach growling symptoms.
The principal would be called in and they would conclude that my family was deliberately excluding me from food but not my brothers and sisters. Such a sick home environment would not only result in me being taken away from my family but the rest of my siblings might be taken away as well.
Then I would be forced into the meal program despite my protestations that I’m full. “Look, Larry, I can hear your stomach growling. We know what’s best for you.”
So I would eat an extra meal that later would result in my stomach growling so they would feed me some more. Soon I would be a very overweight young kid.
Some might wonder why I was still in a meals program despite being very overweight. But then my stomach would growl and they would all say “Of course. This must just be his natural weight when he is fed enough.” That stomach growl could be used as justification for all the bad things that came about.
Not all stomach growls mean hunger pangs. I’m tired of being thought of as weird.
