Do you recall when you were a child wondering exactly what your private parts were for? Do you recall wearing something that just made you feel absolutely beautiful or handsome? Do you recall the first time you felt like you were never going to be good enough for someone? Well, Katya does. The character that Lara Vapynar created in the story, Puffed Rice and Meatballs, discusses how her encounters throughout her life have always made her feel like she wasn’t worth much, like she was unimportant.
Vapynar starts of her story as Katya’s lover asks’ her a question about her childhood and she gave a story about her first sexual encounter. She was very hesitant to tell her lover this story and even changed the story to have a happy ending instead of a depressing one because her lover didn’t seem very interested, besides wanting to unhook her bra, he just wanted to hear a story for his pure entertainment. The sexual encounter that Katya told her lover was when Katya was little she attended a preschool and one day, during their nap time, a kid she was…show more content… Katya put the sweater on and immediately felt beautiful because she had found that the sweater made her look like she had developed her breasts. Katya wanted to show off how beautiful she felt and so she met up with her best friend, Vera. They went to a convenience store to buy puffed rice. Katya was worried about how she would react when a guy would look at her, so she decided to just ignore their looks. Her worry ended up not being a problem because later at the convenience store, one of the storeowners used her as a tool to push an angry mob out of the store. Katya in that moment felt as if she was important, until the storeowner used her as a tool. Later that night, she threw out all of her foreign clothes and made sure she would throw out the beige sweater as