When I was a kid in Catholic grade school, we studied the lives and often gruesome deaths of the early Christian martyrs and saints. One day, our religion teacher, a nun who must have gotten her teaching credentials from the Himmler School for Nuns, gave us a rather curious homework assignment: we were to imagine we were living in those early days of the church, a newly converted group of Jesus followers, persecuted, living in hiding, eventually caught by Roman soldiers, and promptly turned over to the authorities. Furthermore, we were to write an essay declaring which manner of death we would choose in order to sacrifice ourselves for our faith.

I thought long and hard about the assignment, which had thrown my nine-year-old psyche for a loop. I mean, if it came down to a choice of denouncing my religion and living, or remaining a faithful Catholic and dying, I was obligated to choose death. It would mean I would go straight to heaven, bypassing purgatory and on my way up, giving the finger to Satan lounging in the fires of hell below. But it also meant enduring hours or days of unimaginable torture as my captors attempted to convince me to abandon my religious principles, followed by the inevitable end.

I asked myself if I had the strength to see this test through or would I break from the horrific physical pain and betray Christ? After some consideration, I came to the conclusion that I would last all of five minutes, maybe, under torture; I’ve always been a coward about pain. But what if there was no torture at all? Sister Mary Evan Braun hadn’t said anything about torture; she had only said to choose a mode of death. Ok, that was a little better, but what form of death would I choose? I was at a loss.

During afternoon recess, I conferred with some of my colleagues, who seemed enthusiastic about the task at hand. Most of the boys looked forward to writing about violent ends. They spoke about dodging stones hurled at them, like grenades in a game of GI Joe, until the rocks with their names on them found their targets. Or going one-on-one with a hungry lion, perhaps riding its back, clutching its mane before the great cat shook the rider off and had a leisurely Christian lunch. Even better, how about being pushed off a high cliff, enjoying a brief flight and experiencing what birds took for granted before the force of gravity introduced them to the stony ground below. I guess the boys saw these types of deaths as heroic endeavors, sure to make them legends for the ages.

The girls chose less energetic modes of dying, but by no means less violent. The majority of the girls thought a stoic, dignified march to the gallows, fiery pyre, or chopping block would befit an early Christian martyr, and who knew how many souls they would convert with their serene, saintly example. Bonus!

I started to panic. My friends were no help. The essay was due the next day and I had no idea what grisly demise I would choose. Would being fed poison a good enough way to die for the church? Getting stabbed over and over? I shuddered. I could see no painless way to go. It never occurred to me to make something up just to get the paper done, but whatever. Worrying about the assignment suddenly made me very hungry. I couldn’t wait to get home and dive into a snack of cake and ice cream, or milk and a few dozen cookies, or a huge stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or…

Like a bolt of lightning the answer came to me. I would choose starvation! It was only right; it was the perfect, ironic way for me to go, as my gluttony for sweets and unhealthy fast food knew no bounds. It would be my way of atoning for a lifetime of committing one of the seven deadly sins, so that was one more credit in the “Grace” column for me. And, most important of all, there was no blood, no pain, no fuss, no muss.

I could see it all now: I would be thrown in a dank, dark, filthy dungeon in the bowels of the city, my only companions the bugs and rats whose home I had invaded. Sitting on the slimy floor, the scattered bones of those unfortunate souls who had inhabited the premises before me silhouetted by the slender shafts of light coming from the tiny barred window above, I would wonder how long I would last. Probably a very long time, given my girth, I figured. I imagined my captors checking up on me every month or two. “Hey, girl, you still there?” they would call down to me. “Still here!” I would reply every  time. Who knew; maybe I would live for years and my jailers would realize it was a miracle, be converted, and free me. As they carried my frail, thin (at last!) body to the surface, I would finally die, but not before whispering, “I forgive you,” in my most dramatic, Academy-Award-winning style. My captors would be sorry and weep bitter tears of remorse. The end.

I’ve occasionally thought about that homework assignment through my sometimes food-deprived years. Of course, my nine-year-old self had no idea how painful hunger could be. In my early twenties, I went through a period that I call my “anorexic mentality phase,” when I gradually stopped eating solid food. I really couldn’t call myself a true anorexic because I never became underweight, but I lost so much weight that everyone who knew me remarked on it. Even my mother, for once in my life, started telling me to eat because I was too skinny. What a novelty. It only made me eat even less and exercise more.

I don’t know how I didn’t keel over. I existed on diet soda, black coffee and cigarettes. My breath could melt steel. Breath spray and sugarless breath mints could always be found in my bag. There were times, even after my body had adjusted to the lack of nourishment and my stomach didn’t rumble any more, I would get a sudden, severe stab of pain so intense I would double over and grab on to something to prevent my dropping to the floor. As my food deprivation continued, I began to faint on a regular basis. I fainted on a packed #7 train one morning on my way to work. Very kind strangers helped me and made sure I sat until we arrived at Grand Central, where they walked me to a bench on the platform and had an MTA employee stay with me to make sure I was all right.

I may have gone on in this fashion, ending up in the hospital or morgue, if my cat’s dinner hadn’t looked so appetizing to me as I prepared his food bowl one night. I wish I could tell you I resisted the impulse to taste what looked like a disgusting potage of mystery meat in brown gravy, but I’m not going to lie to you. Yep. As repulsive as it sounds, I ate cat food. Whether it was because I was starving or because it really was tasty, I found kitty’s meal wasn’t bad at all. I had to open a second can for him; I devoured the first one.

The next day I started eating again, a little at a time. I discovered my body rebelled violently against solid food after being deprived of it for so long, so I had to introduce a miniscule amount of nourishment for the first few weeks. In no time at all, though, I was back to my old eating habits, which led me to my bulimic phase, but that’s a story for another time…

I almost forgot – I got a B+ on my death choice essay, which really pissed me off back then. In my estimation, I should have gotten, at the very least, an A minus, if not a solid A, just on originality alone. Nobody else chose starvation and I doubt anyone in the class agonized and took the assignment as seriously as I did. I’ve often wondered which mode of death Sister Mary Eva Braun would have chosen. Creative and macabre, I bet.