Yogurt Nightmares

Why I should not eat sugar and read Twitter before bed!

My college friend Dave Friedman, now law professor Professor David A. Friedman but college friends are allowed to call him Dave, which is very good, is in an epic battle with the Chobani yogurt corporation on Twitter. Not once but twice, he opened a container of strawberries on the bottom Chobani yogurt to find no strawberries! Can you imagine the injustice? The sense of disappointment? Wondering what you will do next? Fight back or just buy another brand of yogurt? In spite of offering to make this right for a year now, the corporation has still not compensated Professor Friedman for his pain and suffering. Our thoughts and prayers are with you, Dave.

But! I had no idea that reading about this would give me nightmares of my own yogurt filled injustice.

I’ve known for a long time that eating sugar before bed gives me nightmares, but that didn’t stop me from eating Swedish fish last night. And sure enough, a nightmare.

Here’s what happened:

I was mysteriously back in the dining hall of my old residential college at Yale, Jonathan Edwards. (How do I remember what college all of my friends were in, in a sudden flashback type of memory that I haven’t thought about in years and years?). A new soft serve frozen yogurt machine had been installed, along with an amazing toppings bar including blueberries, strawberries and pineapples.

I really love frozen yogurt, to the point where I have eaten myself into a near coma with it. In the dream, there were tiny little cups in which we were supposed to serve ourselves yogurt. I filled three tiny cups and topped with all the fruits. I was so happy. Until…

Out of nowhere, a man in perhaps his fifties and a college age young woman appeared at my table. The man explained that he had donated the yogurt machine because his daughter (the young woman with him) was in JE and he wanted her and her friends to enjoy frozen yogurt in perpetuity (what does perpetuity mean, Lord Tyrion?). He was committed to funding the yogurt machine and providing all of the materials for yogurt production, he explained, but my helping myself to three servings would cause a problem for his yogurt-supporting budget. He went on at length, attempting to induce some sort of guilt for taking three tiny servings of yogurt with blueberries, strawberries and pineapple.

Now I am very assertive in my professional life, but in my personal life I am still working on not being a doormat at times. And when I am accosted by strangers, I tend to react with fear and attempt to placate them. Or just run away. Ordinarily, in this situation, I would have apologized for my frozen yogurt fueled greed and promised never to do it again.

But! In the dream, I had made tremendous psychological progress! I did not back down in the face of Yogurt Donor Man’s attack on my character.

“Wait a minute,” I said in the dream, “You can afford to donate a yogurt machine and supply it in perpetuity so your daughter and her friends can have fro yo on demand and my meager three servings in the tiny cups you have kindly provided is going to break your bank? I don’t believe it.”

We argued a bit, and I wondered in the dream if my friend Mark Judge’s ability to stand up for himself in spite of tremendous pressure, including death threats, had rubbed off on me.

I eventually excused myself from the conversation, left the JE dining hall where I once worked as a union dining hall worker, and woke up, wondering if the entire food-shaming episode would give me the eating disorder I’ve never had. Fortunately so far I’ve been able to eat just fine, though I may never look at fro yo the same way again.

There is no grand point to this story, other than that you might want to see if eating sugar before bed interferes with your peaceful sleep. And be careful what you read at night. Twitter is a dangerous place!

This brand has never failed me.