My mom often jokes with me and asks, “Annie, do you eat to live, or live to eat?” I already know the answer, but do you? Step into my time machine and I’ll show you.

Every night before I go to bed, I enjoy myself a little “Midnight snack.” I’m sorry, that was a typo. “Midnight feast.” When I first started this habit, my mom would try to discourage me from eating so late into the night because eating late supposedly makes you gain weight. But this didn’t stop me. I continued snacking on cereal, Cup Noodles and leftovers until finally my mom gave in. She now prepares food for my fourth meal of the day on a regular basis. The ironic thing is that most of the time I’m not even hungry when I eat at midnight. I just miss the feeling of having food in my mouth, so I go searching for a snack in my refrigerator.

Just a few months ago, we had our annual Code Red drill during third period. We were told a couple days before that the drill would be in the middle of the day and to be prepared for it. Most of my class came prepared with laptops, GameBoys, pillows, etc. But leave it up to me to be the exception. I waltzed into the room with a Safeway bag overflowing with a family size bag of chips, a bag of sour tape and assortment candies and a large bottle of Starbuck’s mocha frappaccino. In fact, I was so excited for my period of feasting that the night before, I barely got a wink of sleep.

Flash back two years to my freshman year when my locker was my sanctuary. On the top shelf (yes, I’m dorky enough to organize my locker), I had my binders, textbooks and a planner. This was normal for most students, but the bottom shelf was the secret ingredient to my heavenly locker. I had chips, candy, granola bars, gum, iced tea and bottles of water. But there’s more! In my PE locker, I stored a Safeway bag of approximately 10 energy bars just in case I had sudden hunger pangs during practice.

Even in middle school, I had an attachment to snacks. During the fire drills, they would usher all the students onto the field and have us wait there for what felt like three hours (it was probably only about 20-30 minutes). When the annoyingly blaring alarms turned on in the middle of class, most students jumped out of their chairs and walked quickly to the door eager to spend time missing class work. I, on the other hand, took the few seconds before I had to rush out the door as an opportunity. I immediately shot my hand into my backpack and snuck pieces of candy and snacks into my pocket. Even when the fire drills were not planned and I didn’t know if it was a real emergency or just a false alarm, I would repeat the same procedure. Looking back on it, I realize how reassuring it is to know that when posed with the threat of a disaster, my initial reaction is to eat food (if I remember correctly, they call this the food or flight response).

Ever since I was a child, I’ve viewed food as a security blanket. Whether it was my backpack, my duffel bag, my pocket, my hands or my mouth there was always food in it.

So to answer my mom’s question, I definitely live to eat, and next time you’re in class and you hear the sound of munching, it’s probably me.