No Lunch Today
I don't celebrate lunchtime. I rarely eat lunch and if I do eat anything between midday and two o'clock it usually tries to find its way back to freedom and the outside world. I put this inability to eat sensibly, down to an experience from many years ago that has shaped my eating habits ever since.
It was lunchtime so we all traipsed off to the student dining hall. Waitress service would you believe. I didn't approve of the idea of people clearing up after snotnosed kids but what could you do? It was a tradition. It was also the end of my relationship with lunch, because whenever I sat down, a waitress uniformed woman whose soul mission in life seemed to be to please, would rush over.
This was flattering in the extreme. What more could a young man ask of life? Hot food served by a dedicated woman.
Well a dedicated woman with more than one eye for a start. I don't just mean that she was blind in one eye although she undoubtedly was. I don't mean that she had a prosthetic eye, a glass eye or whatever you want to call it. I mean that she had an empty space where an eye had once been. No eye patch, nothing but an empty, sightless socket. Once I'd spotted that socket, I was finished. I certainly couldn't think about food.
"That woman's got an eye missing."
"Yes I know. It's a mess isn't it? These pickled onions are good aren't they? Don't you want that beef? If you're not going to eat it, pass it over. I'm starving."
No one else seemed bothered by the empty socket. They ate everything the woman put in front of them and then they ate my lunch too.
After a week it got so bad that I'd stare at the tablecloth, scared to look up in case I spotted the woman and her empty eye socket.
"Don't look up Milt, she's coming over."
But it was no use. I couldn't stop myself. That damn eye socket always required my full attention. I'd look up fascinated and my stomach would turn over and knot up in revulsion. After a couple of months I broke the lunch habit and made do with cigarettes and coffee. It's a habit that's been with me ever since.
It was lunchtime so we all traipsed off to the student dining hall. Waitress service would you believe. I didn't approve of the idea of people clearing up after snotnosed kids but what could you do? It was a tradition. It was also the end of my relationship with lunch, because whenever I sat down, a waitress uniformed woman whose soul mission in life seemed to be to please, would rush over.
This was flattering in the extreme. What more could a young man ask of life? Hot food served by a dedicated woman.
Well a dedicated woman with more than one eye for a start. I don't just mean that she was blind in one eye although she undoubtedly was. I don't mean that she had a prosthetic eye, a glass eye or whatever you want to call it. I mean that she had an empty space where an eye had once been. No eye patch, nothing but an empty, sightless socket. Once I'd spotted that socket, I was finished. I certainly couldn't think about food.
"That woman's got an eye missing."
"Yes I know. It's a mess isn't it? These pickled onions are good aren't they? Don't you want that beef? If you're not going to eat it, pass it over. I'm starving."
No one else seemed bothered by the empty socket. They ate everything the woman put in front of them and then they ate my lunch too.
After a week it got so bad that I'd stare at the tablecloth, scared to look up in case I spotted the woman and her empty eye socket.
"Don't look up Milt, she's coming over."
But it was no use. I couldn't stop myself. That damn eye socket always required my full attention. I'd look up fascinated and my stomach would turn over and knot up in revulsion. After a couple of months I broke the lunch habit and made do with cigarettes and coffee. It's a habit that's been with me ever since.
wherethewildgeesego
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Posted by Milt at 7:30:00 am
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