Accompanying my 'cooked carrots' on my winter sled- I mean, uh, tray- was some sort of vague attempt at a 'chicken' substance. Realizing quickly that just about everything tastes better with ketchup, I went and retrieved a small bowl of a ketchup-like substance to test out this theory. But instead of it being in a large metal dispenser labeled 'ketchup' as usual, it was in large unlabeled buckets and had to be ladled out.
"I think this is ketchup," I said doubtfully to the friend I was having dinner with, "-or congealed cow blood." I explained that I wasn't exactly sure, because there were no labels that day, and that even though we knew it wasn't real ketchup anyway, the labels made it easier to hold onto my illusions. At that point my friend whipped out a pen, grabbed a recycled napkin, wrote KETCHUP on it, and propped it in front of my small bowl of red slime, and smiled innocently at me.
Giving up on my ketchup theory after the first nauseating bite, I pondered aloud, "Maybe just the skin will be good, or" (pausing here to attempt cutting the 'chicken') "-not MALLEABLE! Whichever comes first, I'm not eating that, I'm scared of it. Is there any meat in here? Wait- maybe I found a piece- no there IS no meat in here, it's just bones! One bone, (stabbing with fork) two bones!"
After that incident, my last resort was, "The pretzels are good. And the bread. The bread is good too." My friend was then kind enough to point out that both of these things came in bags. So much for optimism.
Like I said, just another day at Wayne Hall.
(Written by Jennifer Sinclair, her colleague Satan's Little Helper, and a hardworking staff of 47 and a half dust bunnies.)