A rose by any other name

I used to skip lunch because I didn't find the time for it. Not that I had so much to do, or was so good at doing it, but I was just too disorganized to make the time. In recent years, when you look at me, I don't look like a guy who's missed too many meals (I'm not overweight, I'm under tall. There's a difference).

I had a routine when my wife was working in a shop in the Norwichtown Mall and I would pick her up and we'd go home together. While I waited for her, I'd hike over to the supermarket and make myself a salad at their salad bar for my lunch the next day. Lots of lettuce, tomatoes and sliced peppers, some cut up grilled chicken and I had a lunch that I never had to worry about growing cold.

Then my wife's store closed and she stopped going to work (only fair, they stopped paying her) and the grocery store shifted to the premade salads (which are great but you have to watch the 'best by' dates carefully. Actually, that's true of more than just salads. I am grateful we don't have those dates stamped on our foreheads). And then the prices on those salads went through the roof (and don't give me the 'rising price of gasoline' explanation'; this is six months ago) and I've started to get a lot pickier (more picky? more pickier? I don't know what the word is, you decide) as I've conceded that, as a Type 2 diabetic, I have to 'do lunch' on a more regular basis.

The thought that for all those years, undiagnosed, what I called my evil twin Skippy (my imp of the perverse) was nothing more than a hypoglycemic reaction, is disheartening. Yeah, I know it sounds better than ascribing my behavior to Skippy, but it lacks romance and danger. Besides, Skippy used to scare the bejabbers out of friends, family and coworkers (I made up one of those three; when I was a kid, my imaginary friend, Marty (from the Triple R Ranch), ran off with another of my imaginary friends), who would have chosen demonic possession over blood sugar levels given the chance to guess the reason.

Now I eat these sandwich kit lunches. You know where the folks who want you to give your bologna a first name have a small roll and sliced luncheon meat, a slice of cheese and some condiments all of which you make in a pseudo-foil lined tray that you nuke for seventy seconds and suddenly it's lunch. I really like the sandwiches (I keep putting an 's' where the 'c' is supposed to be in 'sandwich'. I wonder what Skippy is trying to tell me?) except I've discovered when you keep the kits in the refrigerator, the rolls get (sort of) damp. And, and I realize these guys made their name in lunch meat but c'mon, there's a lot of sliced meat--let me repeat that, there's a LOT of sliced meat. As for cheese, there's one 'slice' (if that's what you call it) that's about an inch and half wide and five and half inches long. Seems like a waste of time putting it on all that sliced meat and the wet roll.

The cheese and the mayonnaise are made by the same company, who are actually the parent company of the sliced meat guys, but the guy repping the mayonnaise is doing a great job of representing, far better than his cheese-eating fellow traveler. I pride myself on getting the sandwich I make to look like the one on the box though I'm not sure if there's any value to that and I feel better that I'm doing something good for myself, as long as I don't try to think too hard about what actual good might be. Normally, it ain't over until the fat lady sings, but today she sent this little kid. I have the feeling his first name isn't S-K-I-P-P-Y.
-bill kenny