Apr 08 2010
Food: Yes, I eat it…
I have been eating great. I’m reasonably certain that all of that non-compulsive food control is a direct result of my allergy medication, but so what? It’s All Good.
Err, until I am somewhere in northern Kentucky and it is 11:45 PM local, 12:45 AM my time and it occurs to me if I don’t eat something Right Now, I’m probably not going to eat again until sometime tomorrow morning.
Inexplicably, this panics me.
I am on a highway and the car—thirteen years old—still drives like the rock solid humming machine it has always been. The sunroof is open so I can see the stars and the dashboard is all cockpit-like inside, and it’s just so freaking awesome how and where it is I find myself that occasionally I’ll pick up my cell phone and slam it into my face hollering, “Calling all Cars! Calling all Cars…”
Just because I can.
It’s a nice night and I’m in a pretty good mood and as I recall, that’s what guys said when they reached for their microphones in a hurry. Back in the day.
I settle on a fast food franchise that’s been sectioned off from a truckstop store and it’s all about too-bright fluorescents and self-popping colors. The menu is frustrating because I’ve been eating intentionally for a change which means that there’s nothing on it that I or anybody else on the planet has any business eating.
There is an enormous and angry woman behind the register and she’s seriously pissed. She’s miked into a head gear thing that reminds me unfailingly of Janet Jackson circa her oh hell yes go Janet! Control! years. Apparently her headset is telling her something she does not want to hear, because she presses a button which I can only hope is a mute button and lumbers around, yelling to nobody in particular:
“I told you already, I’m outta Whopper meat!”
There are two other dudes manning the Whopper assembly counter, deftly loading and unloading meat patties into microwave oven stations in order to heat them and/or fuse them to their accompanying processed cheese slices. Neither of them are particularly interested in what to me is a looming crisis of epic proportions.
I look at the woman and nod, letting her know I understand, that I see.
She nods back affirmatively as if to say, “Yeah, mister… not on my watch.”
I ended up ordering a non Whopper item because I didn’t have time to see how it all played out. I was happy though about the drama– the question so blithely posed. Because it forced me to consider what it meant to run out of Whopper meat. How one might go about resolving that problem— was it something as simple as a mere trip to the freezer, or was it something bigger, like an AM emergency delivery from the food supply semi?
More specifically: What would that supply chain look like on a Visio diagram and would I still be hungry when I saw it?