Pancakes for Breakfast

I have a prodigious appetite, or at any rate, I used to have one. As a child I learned early that in order to get second helpings, I needed to wolf down my first helpings very quickly. There were very few foods I disliked, but even those, I ate - just not with as much gusto.  My mother always used to warn me that I would become fat, but I was willing to take the risk. Being the austere person she was, my mother rarely kept sweets around the house.  She would go grocery shopping on Friday nights, while the rest of the family watched the Flintstones, and would usually come back with a package of Fig Newtons (my Dad's favorite) or Windmill Cookies among the groceries.  This was our allotment of sweets for the week. The rest of us did what any sweet-deprived group of people would do - we descended upon the cookies like locusts, and by the time the groceries were put away, the cookies were gone. The one exception to our spartan routine was when my mother would make pancakes for breakfast. She would fry up batch upon batch of pancakes until we could eat no more.  I was usually good for 2 or 3 helpings, slathered in butter and drenched in syrup.  I preferred my pancakes looking like islands in a sea of syrup.   My brother was also a great pancake lover. My sister never got into the spirit of the thing, but she married a pancake lover. I remember one particular morning that marked my family's apex of pancake gluttony. It was after we were all adults, on one of those rare occasions when the entire family was gathered together. We were all seated around the table as my mom fired up the griddle. The griddle was an industrial-sized monstrosity that plugged into the stove and actually covered one half of the stove's surface. Mom brought the pancakes to the table as they came off the grill , initially parceling them out to each of us.  My sister was the first to drop out after only one serving.  My husband and father dropped out after a couple of servings, but the three of us remaining had just hit our stride.  My brother, brother-in-law and I devoured batch after batch of pancakes, piping hot off the grill.  At one point Mom had to stop and make more batter. I don't remember which of us ate the most, but I can say this: I have never put away that many pancakes before or since, and I am pretty sure that it was a record for my brother and brother-in-law as well. My husband talks about it to this day.  It was truly epic. These days I subsist on low calorie foods.  I don't allow myself too many splurges.  But every so often I will order pancakes for breakfast. It's one of the things that makes life worth living.