Primal With A Side Of FABULOUS page 104

[BeckaSki]

Gay Panda, were you in my grocery store this evening? I popped in to get some lettuce, and I saw an individual in the produce department wearing thin gloves. They weren't gloves enough to be warm, but would be enough to help eliminate unknown substances from touching the hands of the wearer. Perhaps gloves are the solution to your OCD grocery store problem?

[Gay Panda]

They weren't gloves enough to be warm, but would be enough to help eliminate unknown substances from touching the hands of the wearer. Perhaps gloves are the solution to your OCD grocery store problem?

I just don't want to give in to my OCD. It's so dumb. I know that I'm not going to catch swine flu from the cart, but my brain still entertains the possibility at every store. Wearing gloves and disinfecting the cart feels like I've gone from humoring my neurosis to caving in entirely.

But I WAS in the store this evening, however! I contemplated the produce and decided that I'd spent too much in the meat department to justify buying anything else. Oh well.

[Gay Panda]

PART ONE: Gay Panda loves those stories that crop up in the news now and then of a bottle washing to shore with a message inside. A bottle dropped by a schoolboy in New York traveled over two thousand miles to be plucked from the water by a Portuguese man and son; a World War I soldier dropped a love letter to his wife in the year 1914, and that bottle was not pulled out until 1999 by a fisherman who researched the family and found a daughter still living to whom the letter was then delivered.

Gay Panda considers leaving the magical bamboo forest to drive to the ocean with a Coke bottle and a tight stopper, and a roll of ivory vellum with baroque design inside. My message will be scripted in gold-flaked ink and done in my best handwriting, which in the past received compliments from my third grade teacher. This is one of those facts that should be left OFF your personal ad, should anyone be reading Primal With A Side Of FABULOUS for dating tips. But just so everyone knows, Gay Panda has beautiful handwriting. And won the science fair twice.

What is the message I will cast to the ocean? Ducklings, a hundred years from now someone will find my Coke bottle caught in a fishing net. He or she will excitedly slip out the roll of ivory vellum, now yellow with age, and admire my handwriting and the luxury ink with which I scripted my message, and read only three words.

I WANT POTATOES.

In Whole Foods yesterday evening, I walked by the dessert counter with hardly a twitch. I dismissed the cornbread with mild regret. I did not fret about swine flu because I tricked Lady Friend into coming to the store with me under the guise of holiday shopping. It is the holidays; grocery shopping is shopping. Gay Panda not only has beautiful handwriting, but guile. Guile is also something that does not belong in your personal ad. A third of your prospective dates who read it will not know what it means; a third will mix up guile/guilty and think that you are a felon; and another third will know what it means and be understandably concerned as they wonder what you might be lying about in your ad.

So Lady Friend caught imaginary swine flu from the cart while I shopped unmolested. We were both hungry and this made her bitchy, so she wiped her hand on my sleeve to transfer swine flu germs to me. Now I have to wash my jacket, and revenge will be mine. Gay Panda can wait. I made it from August to December without telling her about my secret journal, so now I will just wait until next summer when she screams at a spider. And then I will say, “Remember back on December 20th of last year when you got swine flu all over me at Whole Foods? Well, who’s laughing NOW?”

[Gay Panda]

PART TWO: So after she infected me and a slap-fight ensued by the sliding doors, we went to the deli. It is a prerequisite for employment at the three Whole Foods in my area that all deli workers must be stoned. So it takes an excruciatingly long time to get service, and while Lady Friend stood there getting more and more infected from the cart, I collected other items from nearby aisles.

And then I saw them. Is there anything sultrier than a heaping tray of mashed potatoes in a hot bar? No. I defy you to name what could possibly be more attractive than a fluffy white pile of perfection, gravy steaming to the side. You can’t. There was nothing sexier on this earth, and I wanted them desperately. Just a little container with gravy squeezed around the lid from overfilling it, and I hated that I could not have this with the fire of ten thousand suns.

I WANT POTATOES.

It was dinnertime and I was hungry. Yesterday I had more carbohydrates than usual, and my body wants more. What could a little container hurt? And look how fine they were, beaten to perfection with little swirls on top! The tray was fresh and untouched and I wanted those potatoes so badly that my mouth watered. I went back to Lady Friend as the stoned employee sliced the roast beef, and I puffed out my lower lip to show her how many sad faces were being circled on my feelings charts.

“NO,” she said. We debated. Weight loss. Potatoes. Weight loss. Potatoes. I trudged back to the hot bar and stared at them.

Gay Panda has beautiful handwriting and guile, and also resolve. It is resolve that pulled me through the 142,000 words of the science fiction book that I wrote. It is resolve that got my bachelor’s degree while working a minimum wage job every night to pay tuition. I was going to accomplish these things and nothing was going to stop me! Resolve is also something that does not belong in a personal ad, because it will make you look like you are showing off your vocabulary. Personal ads are about selling yourself, but if you talk up your product too much, then people will assume you are conceited or terribly insecure, and neither of these traits is attractive. So do not say that you have beautiful handwriting, guile, and tons of resolve. Save it for the second date.

Why am I not eating mashed potatoes right now? I want to brag that it was my resolve, but no one likes a braggart, and no one likes a liar either. I would be lying if I said it was resolve that forced me away from the hot bar. It was not. It was Lady Friend, who rammed the cart into my ass as I stood there considering the potatoes. I squawked and stumbled away from the tray, and she hit my ass again with that filthy, germy cart. In addition to having to wash my jacket, I now have to wash my jeans. She drove me away from the hot bar and down the vegan aisle as punishment.

In conclusion:
A: Lady Friend is a horrible person who infects me with swine flu. The next time she is terrified by a teeny-tiny spider, I should amble to her rescue.
B: Lady Friend is a wonderful person who saves me from potatoes. The next time she is terrified by a teeny-tiny spider, I should race to her rescue.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I await your votes.

[Griffin]

C: Lady Friend is a wonderful person who save you from potatoes. The next time she is terrified by a teeny-tiny spider, you should amble to her rescue because that's what friends do - laugh at their friends when they are uncomfortable around spiders. (Ask Mrs. Griffin about the spider I brought home in a jar when she was pregnant with the first Griffin Offspring)

[drssgchic]

D: Lady Friend is a wonderful person who saves you from potatoes. The next time she is terrified by a teeny-tiny spider, you should race to her rescue, scoop up said terrifying creature, and promptly offer to Google spider recipes. After all, many societies understand that to truly vanquish an enemy, it must be consumed. And a little extra protein never hurts.

[Gay Panda]

Griffin, I like C.

I've seen this woman fearlessly order down a seventeen-hand horse bucking right in her face. I've also seen her run away screaming from a teeny-tiny spider. She cracks me up.

Oh, I like D, too, drssgchic! I think if I said that, she would slaughter ME for extra protein.

[Sigi]

Just ROFLMAO at all of the above.

As someone who also has a fear of spiders - though not entirely irrational, as a few of the beasties I have found in my house have been the size of a saucer and like to lift their front legs and waggle menacingly at me (:::whimper:: - I must vote B.

C is mean - bad Griffin!

D made me throw up a little in my mouth - bad drssgchic!

The idea of hot fluffy mashed potatoes and gravy being available at a grocery store is intriguing to me. We do not have such options where I live. The only place I've seen hot mashed "potato" and "gravy" available over the counter is at KFC, and even the staff there do their best to dissuade one from purchasing the stuff. I once contemplated having just a small container of "potato" to taste it, sans gravy, and the teenager behind the counter shuddered and suggested I Really. Shouldn't. Try. That.

I'm afraid I must defy you, Panda. Such a fluffy white pile with steaming gravy at a grocery store would leave me suspicious rather than drooling, as I don't trust others' mashed 'taties nor their gravy. I'm also afraid it might inspire me to run around to the vegie section, select a few perfect spuds, race home, cook them up, and mash them myself with enormous piles of fresh butter, gobs of creamy milk and far too much salt. This might in fact happen every time I walked past the deli counter. I could never go to that section of the grocery store again.

[ottercat]

Spiders are our friends! I used to keep a plastic cup labeled "Spider Relocation Program" in the kitchen along with an index card for speedy spider removal. Then I moved and left my 8-legged friends behind.

[Gay Panda]

I'm afraid I must defy you, Panda. Such a fluffy white pile with steaming gravy at a grocery store would leave me suspicious rather than drooling, as I don't trust others' mashed 'taties nor their gravy.

I can vouch for Whole Foods mashed potatoes!!! They aren't quite as good as making it at home, but they're close enough to please this panda. Or they WOULD have been, if Lady Friend hadn't nailed me with the cart.

It's normal where I live to have a hot bar. I'd never touch the pizza slices they sell, but the potatoes and gravy I could gobble.