My Dinner With Irma

September 13, 2017.Reading time 4 minutes.

“Where should we eat?” I asked my family.

No reply. Not even a look up from their devices.

I stood empty and disappointed like Ferris Beuhler’s teacher… “Anyone? Anyone?”

“How about Chinese?”

This creates a sense of elation in one, deflates another, and I sense a form of tempered ambivalence in the one who just wants everyone to get along.

“Mexican?”

Groans all around.

“Hamburgers? Pizza? The sandwich joint?”

Nothing. But they’re all hungry. And I know they have ideas, tastes, and opinions. I just can’t pull them out when we decide to eat out. So I have to decide and bear the silent, smoldering wrath of whichever one doesn’t like my choice. This is my dilemma every time meal choices are in the offing.

Why can’t people just have an opinion and make up their mind?

Speaking of making up their mind, I had dinner with Irma Monday night. Understand that I live 300 miles from the east coast and 300 miles from the gulf coast. I have strategically and intentionally located myself to be close enough to readily enjoy the ocean without having to deal with those pesky hurricanes. Sure, we have weather issues here – ice and the occasional tornado. But ocean storms typically peter out long before they reach us and leave us only with wind and rain. This Irma though, she became a large, angry woman totally incapable of making a dinner decision – which makes her perfectly suited for my family (let me be clear – not the large, angry part, only in her indecisiveness).

We didn’t really prepare for our dinner date. I didn’t buy flashlights, batteries, bread, or milk. No, my crazy Atlanta neighbors tore the shelves down for those. I’m somewhat of a fatalist when it comes to that kind of thing. If it’s meant to be…

Sunday told us that she would still be a Cat 3 storm when she came knocking on Atlanta. She already had trouble deciding. She skipped the South Beach scene and decided Tampa was more to her liking. As she drove north and made her way across the state line, she turned on a dime and went west deciding Alabama was on the menu. Oh, she blew at us fiercely as she went past – dropped a bunch of trees and left millions without power. Spiteful hussy.

We didn’t lose power at my house. We live in the woods, yet surprisingly had no tree problems either. Two of my girls were home with us and one wayward daughter stayed at her school where they lost power and she had to eat cereal without milk for dinner – a choice made for her. We had fun hazing her by texting pictures of all of the power we were consuming at home. It wasn’t much fun after her phone battery died.

Then darkness fell and our stomachs rumbled.

“What do you want to eat?” I asked.

Absolute silence except the remnants of wind straining the treetops outside.

I wish someone in my life would make up their mind!

*Note: Although our brush with Irma was light, my thoughts and prayers are with all of those affected by her wrath.

I Could do That!

March 8, 2017.Reading time 5 minutes.

Have you ever watched any of those survival shows or National Geographic where someone is trekking through a jungle deep in the heart of Africa against all odds? My favorite was Man vs. Wild. I would sit in my comfy recliner with my bowl full of ice cream while a guy named Bear faced temperatures of -30° and a pack of rabid polar bears and I would think, “I could do that.”

I once watched him squeeze water from elephant poop to avoid dehydration. I could totally do that.

Seriously, that’s how guys think!

We think that if forced into such a situation, our natural instincts would take over and we could do anything. Of course, the first month or two in the wild would force us to shed our extra thirty pounds of office-chair flab to get down to our raw fighting weight. Never mind we aren’t former Commandos with years of training – that isn’t what we lack. We lack only the opportunity. If we had the opportunity, we could discover new lands just like Magellan or lead armies like Alexander the Great. It’s just that we came along too late; there is nothing new to discover. The lack of opportunity is what is preventing us from being bold and daring… oh, and a slight case of bursitis.

But I was recently forced into a survival situation.

My situation started in Walmart. Now I know that can be the very edge of humanity, but I didn’t have to wrestle a 400-pound man in a thong or anything quite so appealing. I had to get dinner. My wife and daughter have been busy with a show, leaving me to spend many evenings as a bachelor.

Let’s define “bachelor” because I was certainly not a good-looking, rich single guy chased by thirty beautiful women. Wrong reality show. No, I was just a lonely man facing dinner choices. I’ve been there before. I have lived in a world of condiments, nachos, and little substance. Granted, it has been nearly twenty-five years. But I can do that!

With errands to run, I stopped at Walmart, which has a full grocery store – two birds, one stone. Saving precious resources already. I meandered the meats and seafood but thought they looked long on preparation and dirty dishes, so I grabbed a what I thought was a name-brand frozen pizza. When I got to the register, my first clue should have been that it rang up for $2.89. Seriously! A large pizza. I should have taken it back to the freezer section immediately. But then I thought, maybe I was about to discover a new delicious, low-cost meal. Maybe it is good. And besides, the frozen food section is way over there…

When I took it out of the box, it looked very segmented. Not at all like the picture on the box. A glob of frozen sauce here, some meat there, and fake cheese in an altogether different location. At $2.89, you don’t get mixing. That internal voice in my head told me to abandon ship and go to Zaxby’s, but being a man, I shunned reason and baked it.

I don’t know what price-point the people at Walmart are afraid of. Maybe the $3.15 pizza guys really have the market cornered. But this thing was nasty. The crust was cardboard, the cheese rubbery and the ranch sauce tasted like the antifreeze that dripped into my mouth once during a car repair gone wrong. I seriously considered calling poison control.

I threw it out and left a scathing review on Walmart.com which I am sure will cause them to change their ways. I made a condiment sandwich and turned on the TV to catch a Survivor episode where they were standing in chest-deep, shark-infested water fishing with twine.

And although I cannot master bachelorhood, I knew in my heart that I could totally do that.

*feature image credit:Lwp Kommunikáció via CCI