Wednesday, August 02, 2006
I was planning on going to Subway for lunch today, but I forgot my wallet. Time for Plan B.
As I sit here, I'm spooning canned minestrone soup into my mouth, trying (successfully, so far) not to drip any onto my shirt. Canned minestrone soup is the culinary equivalent of that annoying kid from your childhood neighborhood who became a playmate only when your usual friends were mysteriously absent. On those exceptionally long afternoons, after knocking on everyone else's door, you'd inevitably find yourself at Minestrone Soup's house, ringing the doorbell. After a few hours with Minestrone, you'd go home, swearing to yourself that you'd never play with him again. But days later, when your regular rotation of friends was on empty again, you'd walk grudgingly over to Minestrone's house because even he was better than nothing, much like canned soup when you're hungry at work.
Sure, canned minestrone soup isn't exactly tasty, but it will cut your hunger on those days when you're starving and are forced to scrounge through your cubbies to find something edible, sorting through old Taco Bell sauce packets, little paper packages of salt, stale gum sticks of anonymous flavor, plastic spoons, expired cold medicine, greasy bottles of lotion taken from distant hotels, and a Tootsie Roll so old it resembles a petrified animal dropping. Miraculously, I found a Tupperware bowl in my cubbie to prepare the soup in, proof that someone up there is looking out for me.
In my neighborhood, Minestrone Soup was named Marcus Nelson. He was a friend out of desperation only. Marcus lived across the street with his lovely white mother. Wait? White? Yes, it's important to mention that she's white because Marcus was black. Well, blackish. I think mulatto is the politically correct word for his race. His white mom got impregnated by his hulking black father, who, by the way, briefly played pro football for the Denver Broncos. We (the neighborhood kids and I) didn't hate Marcus because he was black; we hated him because he was spoiled and sort of a jerk. He was also a coward. He was afraid of dogs for some reason, so, thinking that it would help cure his irrational fear, his mom got him a small dog named Gage. Gage wasn't a mean dog, but Marcus wouldn't touch her, so she never got petted, never got walked, and only got fed when Marcus could summon the courage to throw a handful of dogfood out the back window.
One day she disappeared. No one ever found out what happened to her, but I'm sure, wherever she is, alive or dead, she's in a better place. It couldn't have gotten much worse for her. Marcus befriended the wrong people in middle school and started smoking, fighting, skipping school...basically the things you'd associate with an adolescent black male. At the age of 13, his half-assed suicide attempt (he drank a bottle of peroxide with a friend) did nothing more than get the paramedics called to our neighborhood and earn him a trip to the hospital. Marcus and his mother moved soon after, and the last time I saw him was in an Ogden restaurant about ten years ago. I talked to him briefly, but his voice was so ravaged from heavy smoking that it was a lost cause. Poor guy. I would have gladly bought him a bowl of soup, just for old time's sake.
As I sit here, I'm spooning canned minestrone soup into my mouth, trying (successfully, so far) not to drip any onto my shirt. Canned minestrone soup is the culinary equivalent of that annoying kid from your childhood neighborhood who became a playmate only when your usual friends were mysteriously absent. On those exceptionally long afternoons, after knocking on everyone else's door, you'd inevitably find yourself at Minestrone Soup's house, ringing the doorbell. After a few hours with Minestrone, you'd go home, swearing to yourself that you'd never play with him again. But days later, when your regular rotation of friends was on empty again, you'd walk grudgingly over to Minestrone's house because even he was better than nothing, much like canned soup when you're hungry at work.
Sure, canned minestrone soup isn't exactly tasty, but it will cut your hunger on those days when you're starving and are forced to scrounge through your cubbies to find something edible, sorting through old Taco Bell sauce packets, little paper packages of salt, stale gum sticks of anonymous flavor, plastic spoons, expired cold medicine, greasy bottles of lotion taken from distant hotels, and a Tootsie Roll so old it resembles a petrified animal dropping. Miraculously, I found a Tupperware bowl in my cubbie to prepare the soup in, proof that someone up there is looking out for me.
In my neighborhood, Minestrone Soup was named Marcus Nelson. He was a friend out of desperation only. Marcus lived across the street with his lovely white mother. Wait? White? Yes, it's important to mention that she's white because Marcus was black. Well, blackish. I think mulatto is the politically correct word for his race. His white mom got impregnated by his hulking black father, who, by the way, briefly played pro football for the Denver Broncos. We (the neighborhood kids and I) didn't hate Marcus because he was black; we hated him because he was spoiled and sort of a jerk. He was also a coward. He was afraid of dogs for some reason, so, thinking that it would help cure his irrational fear, his mom got him a small dog named Gage. Gage wasn't a mean dog, but Marcus wouldn't touch her, so she never got petted, never got walked, and only got fed when Marcus could summon the courage to throw a handful of dogfood out the back window.
One day she disappeared. No one ever found out what happened to her, but I'm sure, wherever she is, alive or dead, she's in a better place. It couldn't have gotten much worse for her. Marcus befriended the wrong people in middle school and started smoking, fighting, skipping school...basically the things you'd associate with an adolescent black male. At the age of 13, his half-assed suicide attempt (he drank a bottle of peroxide with a friend) did nothing more than get the paramedics called to our neighborhood and earn him a trip to the hospital. Marcus and his mother moved soon after, and the last time I saw him was in an Ogden restaurant about ten years ago. I talked to him briefly, but his voice was so ravaged from heavy smoking that it was a lost cause. Poor guy. I would have gladly bought him a bowl of soup, just for old time's sake.
