Today I steered clear of McDonald’s, I eschewed Little Panda Chinese Take-out, and I… uh… didn’t go to Subway. I also misplaced my thesaurus. Where is that thing?
Lunchtime found me at the salad bar, and I loaded up the smallest container with vegetable matter. It’s usually busy in the market at noon, and today was no exception. A garrulous, bald-headed man was at the salad bar too, chatting with someone about the federal deficit. Then he turned suddenly and gesticulated at me with a styofoam cup full of chopped pickles.
“The pickles are good, eh?” he grinned, and I noticed that his red sweater was held shut with an oversize safety pin. “Dill pickles. No garlic!”
“Er… yep,” I remarked cleverly.
“This place is great! Lotsa healthy food here. Dill pickles’re great! Not like those other places… the other places… like greasy foods. Not like here. Other places like… with pizza… and… other places like, uh…”
He trailed off, deep in thought, and I filled in the silence, “Like McDonald’s?”
“Yeah, like McDonald’s,” he nodded vigorously. “That stuff’ll kill ya. Fulla grease. It’ll make ya sick. Yer payin’ to make yerself sick, huh? But this place is great! Lotsa healthy stuff here. Why’d ya want to pay to make yerself sick? ‘Cause greasy food like that’ll make ya sick. I never eat there. This place is great!”
He continued enthusiastically in this vein as he paid for his cup of pickle chunks. Twenty-five cents. After paying, he wandered off to strike up a friendly conversation at the wine shop. I paid for my salad and trudged back to my cubicle to continue working, and I wondered why I couldn’t be as enthusiastic about salad as that guy seemed to be.
Maybe I need more pickles in my life.