Party Food

Chalk Sunday up as just another wasted day in a wasted life.

This morning I realized there was some pepper jack cheese in the refrigerator, a left-over snack from Saturday’s party. I also found some gingersnap cookies.

I wanted some but I hesitated a long time before eating any.

It’s been years since I tasted a gingersnap even though I like them.

The problem is that my mother always snacked on gingersnaps with cheese as she sat at the kitchen table and chewed me out for hours and hours telling me how disappointed she was in me. In fact I think the phrase I heard more than any other as I grew up and well into adulthood was, “John, I’m so disappointed in you”.

And here I was this morning confronted with a brown paper bag of gingersnap cookies and a block of cheese.

Ah, the memories.

Who the hell else in the whole wide world finds cheese and crackers traumatic?

A moral dilemma?

A challenge to his manhood?

Being a Christian proved of no help at all with this. The word gingersnap is not even mentioned in the Holy Scripture. It’s a bitch when a man (who at least sometimes tries to behave in accordance with Scripture) runs into a situation with no Bible verse to lean on.

I had to wing it.

“Mama’s been dead for 15 years and I want a gingersnap with cheese,” I thought. “Damn it. I’m going to eat me a gingersnap”.

And I did!

Hey, slaying dragons isn’t the only thing a man can do to demonstrate his courage.

At the party Saturday night I encountered another uncomfortable situation involving food – in this case a key lime pie.

You see, I have this slight quirk, a minor idiosyncrasy, an tiny eccentric mannerism. OK, call it a crazy obsession -- I find it almost impossible to eat in public

My teeth went bad years and years ago destroying underlying bone structure in my face. Hence I am a sloppy eater. I drool and slobber and spill things and dribble.

This makes me a trifle self conscious. I don't want to disgust people. So, unless with the closest friends, I avoid eating where anyone can see me. In a group I usually just sip on a cup of coffee and join the conversation as everyone else eats. My family is so accustomed to this behavior that they ignore it – or maybe it is all in my mind and nobody ever pays the slightest attention to what I’m eating or even if I am.

Well, during the party I got really really hungry.

Don’t these good, life-long friends and dearly beloved children EVER go home?

But they were all talking and laughing in the living room.

Nobody at all was in the kitchen.

The last slice of the key lime pie beckoned me. Pale green luscious filling topped with an eight-inch snowy cloud of meringue. More alluring than a Playboy centerfold.

Everyone appeared deep in conversation.

I picked up a fork and that last slice of pie. I turned my face to the wall so just in case anyone came into the kitchen they wouldn’t see me eating.

But someone did.

I didn’t hear her come in but the lady who baked that pie came up behind me.

Startled, I jumped and shuttered and turned away from her.

Guilt paralyzed me; I felt as embarrassed as if she’d caught me masturbating or strangling a bunny or writing on the wall with a permanent black marker.

I stammered something or another incoherent and fled the scene of my crime…

Now, an objective evaluation of this situation would simply conclude that I’m crazy. But ….

Here’s an aside: it is not politically correct to call them crazy, my e-friend Eric coined a proper term; such people are to be referred to as: “Mental Health Consumers”!

Anyhow, once again I’m confronted with a situation for which the Bible offers me no help whatsoever. Nothing in the Old Testament dietary laws covers eating without being seen. And while the Scripture does make certain allowances for kooks (Comfort the feebleminded) nothing addresses my particular mind set.

The facts I know and the things I feel do not necessarily mesh.

I suspect that in certain situations, God lets us cope on our own as best we can. That does not mean He doesn’t love us; it means He expects us to grow up.

So, as I seek the path to spiritual enlightenment, there a few more gingersnaps in the bottom of the bag…

Don’t you be watchin’ now.