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Muff
Mag 05
Wrote this little ditty fer me Gastronomy
class... childhood food memory *shrugs* BEFORE the chef was a
chef,
he was an English Lit. major, so, ya, when he grades papers, he REALLY
grades papers, ya know what I mean?? Ya, he doesn't spare the
red
ink *laughs* So, he doesn't hand back papers,,, oh
no. He
just
dumps 'em all in a pile on a table and we all gotta go down and pick
through
them to find our own... naturally ya git ta see a lot of yer classmates
papers when yer down there *laughs* This was a five point
project,
and I go down and start pickin' through the pile, I'm seein' a LOT of
red,
lotta circles, lotta X's, lotta things crossed out, underlined, lotsa
comments
in the margins... I'm seein' a lotta 3.5, 3.8, 4, 4.5, 2.5,
3...
I'm gittin' nervous.
and then I git ta mine.
I almost didn't see the bloody thing 'cause
there
wasn't a lotta red
on it.
In fact, there was only Two bits of red on
it.
One was the grade::
5
the other was one word.
one small word in the left hand margin.
one little word on me whole bloody paper...
on the side, over by itself, he wrote the
word
"nice"
tha's it.
nice
*dreamy*
made my whole fuckin' day *grins*
Figured I'd pass the thing along.
It ain't alla that great.
It's nuthin' special.
it's just... *shrugs* nice.
I gotta go.
Torbjon
Don't drink the water
I grew up in Los Angeles. One thing I remember well
about
L.A. was the water. We had a water cooler, with huge bottles
of
Arrowhead
Spring water delivered weekly to our doorstep. The water guy
was
the only "stranger" that I was allowed to let into the house on those
rare
occasions when both my parents were gone, or, more than likely, those
early
mornings when they were still asleep. The water guy was not a
stranger;
he was a god.
Tap water in L.A. was not something you would want to
drink.
At least, ours wasn't. Our tap water was chalky white and
more
chlorinated
than the public pool. Water from the cooler, on the other hand, was
crisp,
clear, clean, and incredibly satisfying. I loved that cooler.
One day as I sat down to dinner with my parents, I noticed that
my glass did not have cool water in it. My glass was full of
something
warm. Something warm and not clear. My glass had a chalky,
filmy
liquid in it. The liquid was full of lumps and chunks that
floated
in a lazy oil slick pattern slowly around and around, like little
bugs.
Or sea monkeys. It had to be the most unappealing thing I had
ever
seen in my short life.
Not wanting to drink it, I did what any red-blooded American
baby boy would do: I threw a tantrum. I howled, I
screamed,
I begged, I cried. I tried every trick in the book to no
avail.
"Just taste it," they kept saying. "You don't have to drink
the
whole
the thing, but just taste it." I grudgingly grabbed my glass
and
prepared to take a sip, bracing myself for the liquid death laced with
bugs that I knew would follow. I sipped.
Ambrosia flowed across my tongue. A blast of pear, saturated
in sugar, rolled inside my mouth. Sweet fruity syrup soothed
my
throat,
which was hoarse from hollering and crying. I took another
drink,
larger this time. There was no doubt about it; this was a
glass
of
pear juice from a can of Del Monte pear halves, and it was delicious.
Since
then I've been more open minded about the things that I eat.
It
may
look like a glass of tap water with bugs in it, but how will I now
unless
I taste it? |
