I stand before you today as a malnourished soul. I know, it is sadness. :(
Yes, it is certainly strange that despite the fact that my family does apparently pay the electricity bills, I have no food. If you are wondering why, I shall elaborate.
Within the past year, our ancient refrigerator got tired of suffering from my mom's abuse, (as she continued to spill sticky substances, leave food spoil, and extend her clutter to the far reaches of it's capacity).
Thus, for eight long and painful months, we had little means of refrigeration. We could only keep things in a small picnic cooler. Such began my ice-cream deprivation; I was in a black hole of misery.
Times have changed since then, as we were finally able to purchase a new refrigerator relatively recently. I celebrated with a large bowl of magically delicious Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey.
But alas, my fun was cut short. I came to the horrible realization that my mom was no longer accustomed the the operations of a refrigerator. Either that, or opening the door, putting the food away, and closing the door could now be considered a hard form of manual labor.
(Don't get me wrong, I love my mom dearly. Bashing her in this post isn't really my intent. But, this is the way things are. Forgive me if anything I type seems to come out wrong.)
Anyway, two days ago, I felt the need for lunch. Given the circumstances, it is not readily available! You see, in addition to my refrigerator woes, my mom has an emergency storage of a mass amount of canned food. Mind you, this is in case to supermarket somehow collapses soon, so I am not actually allowed to eat any of it. And I have a theory that she numbers them and counts them off every morning, noon, and night. MY definition of an emergency is "there is no non-contaminated food in the refrigerator and nothing that hasn't gone bad in the pantry...oh my, only canned food remains!" Unfortunately, this is an "unacceptable" excuse most of the time.
It gets worse. Basically, there is a lot of food but nothing to eat. Allow me to quote from that wonderful movie entitled "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". It speaks such words of wisdom. -
Everything in this room is eatable. Even I'm eatable. But that is called cannibalism, my dear children, and is in fact frowned upon in most societies. ~Johnny Deep (as Willy Wonka)
You see, just because something can be physically eaten does not mean it should be physically eaten. This is especially true of things that lurk in our poor refrigeration system.
On that fateful day, I opened the refrigerator to see if there was anything that I could consume for lunch. Nothing. Well, nothing substantial or non-spoiled anyway. So, I moved on to the freezer at the bottom. I figured it would be more promising considering that, in the past, all that my mom ever brought home from the supermarket was a plethora of T.V. dinners. Yet, due to her prolonged lack of experience in managing cumbersome equipment like a refrigerator, such things were no where to be found. Instead, I was left staring at a side dish of frozen mashed potatoes (which looked rather crunchy) and rotting shrimp (dumped us by grandmother-the crazy one). I determined that the crunchy mashed potatoes would be my safest option.
Since that was not nearly enough to satisfy my unwavering hunger, I mustered up all my courage to brave the pantry. At first, I found nothing but my mom's high blood pressure medication, cold medicine, and paper plates. Then I finally came across other foods that were not in the emergency food storage. It included canned cooked ham, canned tuna, and "manwich", all presumably from the very late 1900's! Hence why they were not in the emergency food storage; eating them would cause an emergency!
When I began to grow weary from my quest, I discovered ramen (the kind you make on the stove). My doctor would be appalled at these two starches in my hand. Still, it was the best my dismal kitchen had to offer. Yet, bad karma befell me again as I approached the stove. Little did I know, a startling surprise awaited me. I had to clear the stove of a bag of moldy bread, but that was nothing compared to the real shocker. An entire bag of grapes had been left to ferment atop the burner. What lay before me was a bag of half-grape and half-liquid substance, swarming with gnats, flies, and other bugs. Deductive reasoning led me to believe that this was not a fail attempt to make "wine", as my mother does not drink. Besides, I am pretty sure that only a slobbering drunkard would find this scene slightly appealing. So, I left it up to my mom to clean up her mess and threw the crunchy potatoes and the ramen (now soaking in a bowl of water) into the microwave.
If you never hear from me again, please assume that I have died of food poisoning.
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