Homework
I can't sleep. I tried for a while, but work today just left too much lactic acid in me. I dutifully lied there for like an hour, and then I started thinking about lying there, and anyone who's experienced even a single night of sleeplessness knows where this train goes. So I'm trudging to the bathroom, and opening the cabinet, and just as I'm reaching for a fistful of large-animal tranquilizers to boil down into a tasty reduction, I remember that someone gave me this assignment like weeks ago, and thought that working on it might, I don't know, make me sleepy or relaxed or something. The assignment was to list five foods that remind me of childhood, or of being a kid--and if you can find a difference between those, you've taken too many improv classes.
So here goes. And I'm going to do this with a minimum of weepy explanation:
1. Marrow bones.
2. Welsh Rarebit on English muffins instead of bread.
3. Chocolate cupcakes with lime frosting instead of birthday cake.
4. Seckel pears from the tree in the yard.
5. A carrot that I pulled straight from the ground and wiped off and ate without washing.
Hmm. My left eye just twitched, but I'm still not tired. Let's do some more:
6. Little ice cream cups with "sundae" topping that you lick off the paper pull-back lid to get it all, then you eat the ice cream with a flat wood spoon. I got these from the dairy at Cornell and later, after my parents got divorced, I was allowed to get Hostess fruit pies there, too. But not before. Yeah, you don't need me to figure that one out.
7. Salmon patties. I don't know what ethnicity these are. Think burgers, then make the burgers out of canned salmon. Way, way better than they have any right to be. My grandma would make a plate of them and before the plate hit the table, they'd all be gone, courtesy of my really big for a little kid teeth.
8. Apple pan dowdy. Ask your oldest male relative.
9. Crab legs. All I could eat. Now I know they were frozen.
10. This isn't really my usual funny shtick, is it? It's like my normal edgy-but-an-okay-guy-underneath thing has combined with my tiredness and work angst oh and plus this goddamned ridiculous idea of food from when you were a kid, thanks a lot, into something even I have to admit is a little melancholy, no matter how much I try to buoy it up with snide asides.
11. Then again, maybe it's just bittersweet to me, since I'm the one remembering my childhood, and not you/yours. You're just reading about a kid eating carrots. I know--cry me a fucking river.
12. The skin on chocolate pudding.
13. French fries at a diner with a friend of mine who put ketchup on them and when his mom said "maybe Dan doesn't like ketchup on his fries," responded without a pause "who doesn't like ketchup on their fries?" The truth was, I kind of didn't.
14. I want to write about my first great oyster, but refuse.
15. The cupcakes were my choice, by the way.
16. Maine lobsters, in Maine. I think I was 2.
That'll do. I actually am a little drowsy now, and that didn't even take that long. Plus, I won't feel like I'm walking through gauze all day tomorrow. At least if I fall asleep now.
Or, okay, now.
Dammit.
So here goes. And I'm going to do this with a minimum of weepy explanation:
1. Marrow bones.
2. Welsh Rarebit on English muffins instead of bread.
3. Chocolate cupcakes with lime frosting instead of birthday cake.
4. Seckel pears from the tree in the yard.
5. A carrot that I pulled straight from the ground and wiped off and ate without washing.
Hmm. My left eye just twitched, but I'm still not tired. Let's do some more:
6. Little ice cream cups with "sundae" topping that you lick off the paper pull-back lid to get it all, then you eat the ice cream with a flat wood spoon. I got these from the dairy at Cornell and later, after my parents got divorced, I was allowed to get Hostess fruit pies there, too. But not before. Yeah, you don't need me to figure that one out.
7. Salmon patties. I don't know what ethnicity these are. Think burgers, then make the burgers out of canned salmon. Way, way better than they have any right to be. My grandma would make a plate of them and before the plate hit the table, they'd all be gone, courtesy of my really big for a little kid teeth.
8. Apple pan dowdy. Ask your oldest male relative.
9. Crab legs. All I could eat. Now I know they were frozen.
10. This isn't really my usual funny shtick, is it? It's like my normal edgy-but-an-okay-guy-underneath thing has combined with my tiredness and work angst oh and plus this goddamned ridiculous idea of food from when you were a kid, thanks a lot, into something even I have to admit is a little melancholy, no matter how much I try to buoy it up with snide asides.
11. Then again, maybe it's just bittersweet to me, since I'm the one remembering my childhood, and not you/yours. You're just reading about a kid eating carrots. I know--cry me a fucking river.
12. The skin on chocolate pudding.
13. French fries at a diner with a friend of mine who put ketchup on them and when his mom said "maybe Dan doesn't like ketchup on his fries," responded without a pause "who doesn't like ketchup on their fries?" The truth was, I kind of didn't.
14. I want to write about my first great oyster, but refuse.
15. The cupcakes were my choice, by the way.
16. Maine lobsters, in Maine. I think I was 2.
That'll do. I actually am a little drowsy now, and that didn't even take that long. Plus, I won't feel like I'm walking through gauze all day tomorrow. At least if I fall asleep now.
Or, okay, now.
Dammit.
posted by dwg at 9:35 PM
1 Comments:
I can appreciate this assignment of yours. It's the reason why I got inexplicably happy the other day when I forgot to eat breakfast and had to eat one of those Handi-snacks from a vending machine, you know, the ones with the fake, plastic feeling orange cheese and the salty crackers. Plus, of course, that clever little red stick, ever the useful tool for spreading the cheese. And oh that cheese, it takes me back to the days of morning recess, kickball games, and trapper keepers.
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