The Sandwich of Destiny

A short blog for Friday. Well, shortish, anyway.

I told you the other day I thought you needed to hear the story of this sandwich. It's a good story.

Many years ago, well, I guess not "many," more like "some," maybe eight or nine, my cousin Jacob and I took a trip Up North. To the wilds of Akron, OH. (Yes, I know, how did we ever survive in this veritable Sin City, you ask, but somehow we did.)

While we were there we decided to do some shopping, as one does, or two, in this case, and we found a store that sold "educational toys." You know those "educational toy" stores. Full of unfinished wooden shapes with wheels that parents feel really good about giving their kids but the kids want absolutely nothing to do with because they're fucking boring toys.

But this educational toy store was different. It had fun stuff in it. It had neato drums and book-bags (I still have mine, thank you very much), and a whole section of coloring books and crayons. Now, I'm a woman of a mature age here, and I still could color until the cows come home. I try my best to limit this activity to the privacy of my own home, because I know if the public-at-large saw a 45-year old woman coloring in a coloring book, well, crayons would be the only utensil she'd ever be allowed to write with again. Because they don't let one have sharp objects at The Home.

After a while Jacob and I ambled over to about three rows of plastic bins, and in each of these bins was a different kind of plastic food. And these foods were so realistic-looking it just made us giggle out loud. There were meats, cheeses, breads, vegetables, eggs. Pats of butter, squirts of mustard and ketchup. And there we were, right in the middle of the educational toy store, giggling, putting together food combinations, and generally having a good old time. And the stuff was cheap, too, and by all rights I should have bought one of everything they had, but I kept thinking, "What am I going to do with a bunch of fake food," and so I just picked out a couple of things I thought were the cutest as a reminder of my trip to the wilds of Akron. I picked up a piece of bread, a piece of lettuce, and a slice of tomato and headed to the checkout with them, plus my green canvas book-bag, a swell coloring book, and a 48-box of crayons.

When I got home I sat the lettuce and tomato atop the bread, right there on my TV. I thought it was cute. Never once did anyone mention that I had fake food on my TV. And so I became very sullen and boxed them all away somewhere.

But cue a couple of years later, when that Abundance of Assholishness known as Mr M happened into my life. He'd just moved to B'burg, and it was the first-ever time I was visiting him at his new rented home there on G Road. There were still boxes and crates everywhere, but he was showing me around, upstairs and down, and finally when we settled in in the kitchen, where the wallpaper still gives me the willies, he scooted a box towards me with his foot. "Here, look through that and see if you find anything you like."

I opened it up and it was like Christmas morning. The box was chock-a-block full of toys. Old tin toys, cars, Happy Meal prizes, wind-ups, toys that hopped, flipped, whizzed, spun, and anything else you could name. I started going through the pieces one by one, picking each up, inspecting it, seeing how it worked, commenting on its utter coolness, and setting it in the "give back" pile. I set everything in the "give back" pile. As cool as the stuff was, this was only my 2d meeting with Mr M, and I just didn't have the heart - or the courage - to bounce in there and say, "Holy shit! I'll take this! And this! And this, and these two, oh, and I want this one and that one, too."

But then way down in the box I spotted something. And something else, and some more - Mr M had pieces of my plastic food set!

I started pulling out foodstuffs. He had a piece of ham, a piece of cheese, another lettuce, another tomato, and - one more piece of bread. Yes, I found out on my second-ever meeting with Mr M that he had that all-important one piece of bread.

After I expressed my utter bliss at finding these items, he graciously gave them over to me.

I brought the items home. And when I moved into the Poderosa later that year, I got them out, unpacked mine, and put them all out on the kitchen counter at The Pod, where they've remained ever since (even though one of my tomato slices fell behind the stove, where it remains to this day).

Mr M's birthday shall happen this weekend. And I can proudly say that on that 2d meeting all those years ago, I knew we were destined to be best buddies. Because together, we completed a sandwich.

Now, wasn't that a good story?

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Played the last gig of Sauerkraut Band season last night. It was very fun. I love those guys. It's always hard, being happy you're taking that last long trip down the mountain for a while, but knowing how much you're going to miss everyone in the off-season.
* Damn. I'm just a sentimental old fool tonight, aren't I?