Sort of becoming a man.

Part one: college.

The year was 2008. Barack Obama had been elected as the first African American President of the United States of America in the nation’s 232-year history...and I had just hit sixteen, the big one six. One milestone saw a man with cheekbones, charisma and vocal chords carved from leftovers at Mount Olympus realise his dream, whilst the other saw a man become the most powerful human on the planet...or something like that. The World was my oyster, I thought. Turns out it wasn't.

All being 16 is (apparently) good for, if we’re avoiding the big old horny elephant in the room, is being able to join the Armed Forces, buy liqueur chocolates and go to college. The first was a definite no for me; an irrational fear of bullets – I say irrational, but being scared of chunks of metal that fly through the air at 4,000 feet per second seems fairly rational in hindsight – combined with a woeful record at Laser Quest didn’t bode well for serving my country just yet. So the latter two seemed like better options. Next stop: college.

College seemed cool in prospect; it was a new beginning for me which was what I needed at the time. Besides, maybe I’d meet other like-minded people who loved to binge drink the cognac out of liqueur truffles. It was also my first real brush with Linguistics and studying the power of English Language, inspired partly by the eloquence of figures like the newly elected American President. This was what I was looking forward to, but I also took Chemistry, Human Biology and Maths with Stats at AS Level before dropping the latter at A-Level, presumably because the only probability statistic I ever cared to know was that if a car hits me at 30mph there’s around an 80% chance I’ll live, and I was fine with that.

Human Biology brought more nausea out of me than it did the best; poking my index finger through a pig’s aorta whilst trying to stay out of the “splash zone” of blood, as my teacher had so termed it, didn't really scream out “long-term career prospect” to me. Chemistry was superb – what’s more, I was actually decent at it – but English Language was where my heart really lay. The module was taught by two teachers: half was taught by one of the most inspiring figures I have met in all my life and the other by a man who repeatedly impersonated a dolphin and let us put it on YouTube. Brilliant. These were my kind of people, my classmates as well; the kind of people who flexed their creative and crazy muscles almost to bursting point. I loved every moment of and it couldn't be much different at university – could it? So it was decided: I was going to study English Language & Linguistics at the University of York.

I learnt a lot from my two years at college: I’m not a particularly extroverted person, I wasn't really mature enough for my age and that my college caretaker was actually, genuinely called ‘Richard Head’. Dick Head. My infantile teenage mind was blown into a thousand shards, all of which were giggling at Mr Head and his unfortunate first name. I also spent a lot of nights in first year, like most 17 year-olds, looking for a local watering hole to binge on alcohol until I learnt a lot of invaluable lessons about how I can’t actually drink 30 pints in one night – as I was repeatedly reminded one night in A&E – and that even two pints turn me into Delia Smith on a cold night at Carrow Road. But, nevertheless, these were lessons learnt at college and I even managed to come out with ABBB at A-Level. 

In three months time, I would be en route to York, a thriving hotbed of academic success set in what, on first appearances, seemed to be Soviet Russia with a lake. It’s not that I don’t realise that Soviet Russia has lakes, but the Student Ambassador, who escorted me round campus on the open day I’d attended, couldn't seem to sell it enough. “You won’t get a lake like this anywhere else,” he resounded, “living and learning around by the lake is just so peaceful.” he maintained. The truth is I’m sure Lebanon has a lot of nice lakes, but I’m not about to kick-start a peaceful lifestyle in Beirut.

Why I thought good health was my kryptonite. And why I was dreadfully wrong.

One month into 2013, and all of my New Year’s resolutions are now only endings to the sentence “In an ideal world...”, but for one.  Body sodden with alcohol and mind sodden with drunken ambition, on New Year’s Eve I decided that this would be a year of attempted self-improvement. This would be when I would ‘get healthy’; years of routinely packing away Oreos before nestling into my own arse-shaped imprint in the sofa would eventually take its toll, I thought to myself.

Fruit and veg. had never been my favourite duo – for starters, settling down after a night-out to a bowl of guavas and watching Countryfile on Sky+ has never really appealed to me. I think it stems further back though, from childhood. 

I have vivid memories as a child of being engrossed in episodes of Recess on ITV – Spinelli got in some serious shit with The Ashleys, Vince was being awesome at everything and King Bob was just being a straight-up dick – only for my focus to be interrupted by an onslaught of adverts promoting ‘healthy eating’. ‘Healthy eating’, what was this?

I had no opinions on the adverts themselves. In fact, I didn't mind some of them – they provided a welcome break from the stress of children’s television. However, I did decide was that some of them scared the life out of me.  You say you want seven year-old me to eat leeks? Then maybe you should ditch the 6-foot talking leek, beady-eyed with terror – presumably as a result of drugs. They didn’t make me want to eat vegetables; they made want to destroy every living plant known to man before they rose up from the ground and started abducting children.  

Fruit and veg. wasn't the only problem. I’d actively avoid fibre – being force-fed All-Bran like a prize-pig at your grandparent’s house for ten years tends to have that effect. (Let me stress: I love my grandparents.)

Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating – when am I not? – but I survived twenty years without ‘healthy eating’. It would be a hard habit to kick; I needed a plan of attack. Rather optimistically, I aimed to get my five-a-day, take multivitamins, jog once a week and drink only water where I could. The latter two went out the window when I realised they required effort, but the former two are still going strong.

It’s odd: you can spend your life without being introspective about how healthy your lifestyle is, but any attempt at change reveals any shortcomings. And this is me; one month into my laissez-faire health-kick I feel an awful lot better within myself, now I’m not so scared that my change will be in vain. Vegetables aren’t stoners anymore and multivitamins aren't quite the cyanide pills I thought they were.

In Aesop-fable fashion, I've gathered one moral from this story: everything I have ever thought I had formed a valid opinion on is wrong. Fortunately, my naivety about my lifestyle was probably the last remnant of my adolescence, and now I feel like more of my own adult. Shit, suppose I should go get a job or something then.