Behavior

The blog is called going bananas for good reason. I would arrive home for lunch from first grade screaming if there was no lunch on the table. (We went home for lunch in those days). I was given special permission after months of this to carry a banana with me at school but the teacher took the banana away when I insisted on using it as a pistol to hold up the little boy in front of me in line. Without the banana I was screaming again.

After school, mom would give me a big glass of orange juice. I would then go out to the street to play, take my place on third base, feel woozie, sit down on the curb - and my dad would wake me up from sleeping on his way home from work.

I was not an unhappy kid - life, for the most part, was terrific. But as I think back, I would "crash" - get headaches or become suddenly and irrationally irritable when (I later discovered) I'd use up the sugar in my system.

When I was older, in high school and joined the swimming team, I would throw up after sprints and the end of practice. And as I grew older, I was mildly depressed - most of the time - and very irritable, often.  But more of that later