On a serious note, I’d like to take a moment to discuss a problem of mine. A friend pointed this out to me this morning, and I have to admit to myself that it is, in fact, true.
I have a problem with take-out bags.
Last night, I met up with Lara and Leanne for dinner at Raga — an excellent Indian restaurant on West Broadway that’s conveniently near Toys ‘R’ Us (you never know when you might need to buy an action figure to play with during your meal). I ordered a spicy shrimp vindaloo, Leanne ordered a spinach thing that had too many vowels in it, and Lara chose a sampler plate with tandoori chicken.
As an aside, Lara often claims that she hates chicken and never eats it. “I never eat of the dirty bird,” she says. Yet there she was with a plate full of the stuff. Ha!
Ha!, I say.
Anyway, by the end of the meal, it looked like there was more than we could finish, so we asked for the rest as take-out. And to cut a long, non-story short, we left it behind on the table.
According to Leanne that was the third time I’ve done it this year. What a waste. All that lovely vindalooey stuff. But perhaps I should take it in stride, for as Euripides once wrote: “Waste not fresh tears over old vindaloos.”
Or as Aesop wrote in The Lion and the Mouse: “No shrimp vindaloo, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”
And as a parting thought, I’d like to share these lines from Shakespeare’s sonnet 30:
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my vindaloo’s waste