The Memory Hole

bullet belt.

Circa fall 2004 - spring 2005.  freshman year.

We were playing airsoft at the time.  Evan was one of the regular players.  We went to the nearby CQB place, and I noticed Evan had a belt which he claimed had real bullets.  His dad was a cop, you see, and he had access to real bullets, or something.  Now that sounds fishy but apparently four years ago I believed him rather than figuring that more likely they were fake bullets from some hot topic belt, but I digress.

I snapped at him and gave him a ton of shit about how it was really dangerous to be playing with real bullets, how if the primer somehow got struck in the wrong way he could kill somebody, and I didn’t want to be involved until he took them off.

He took off his little bullet attachments.  I probably didn’t really care.

vegetarian dinner.

I’ve written a lot about freshman year, I guess that’s when things were at their newest and the most happening-est.  I’ve also already written about eating, and the dorm cafeteria, and girls, and well, my point is, this post is going to be a combination of all these things.

It was definitely freshman year, probably Spring semester, so that’d put this in the Spring of 2005.  It involves myself, John, and our mutual female acquaintance Iris.  I had met her originally through my scholarship thing, since all of us who got the scholarship were forced to do a summer orientation together (note to self: that’d be a good one to post about later, too).

I’m not sure how John got into this social group, but the dude has an uncanny ability to ingratiate himself with any group that includes women so I guess it makes sense.

Anyway, it’s not like I was super close friends with Iris.  Or maybe I was, I don’t really remember that clearly—I think we would often IM each other.  Oftentimes we’d go eat at the dormitory cafeteria together, too, but it wasn’t like a daily ritual—maybe once a week or so, if I’d have to guess.

For John, I’d imagine it was pretty much the same, he would often be part of the group that would eat at the cafeteria.  Now, I can’t recall whether Iris was a complete vegetarian or just espoused a more veggie-filled lifestyle, but if I’d have to guess, I’d say she was a full-blown vegetarian.  Which probably didn’t leave her a lot of options at that cafeteria.

That shitty Sodexho (or Sodexo now, I agree, that “h” was totally superfluous) cafeteria.  All my other friends and I weren’t even vegetarians and we still loved to bag on how bad the food was.  I mean, all of it was bad for you in the health sense.  Greasy, mass-produced with low-quality ingredients, all-you-can eat to encourage binging, et cetera.  But a lot of the time, the dishes were just, well, uninspired as well.  I mean, sure, they always had burgers and plain cheese pizza as safe bets, but anything with any variety tended to be on the side of suck.

So one day, while we were probably talking about how crappy the food was at the cafeteria, Iris starts to tell us about these microwaveable vegetarian meals she eats.  ”They’re great!” she said energetically.  John and I were something more skeptical.  First of all, vegetarian meals of any kind were not conjuring up images of deliciousness to us two carnivores.  Go meat or go home.

But even if we could stomach going vegetarian for one meal, something that came pre-packed in a microwaveable container that was ready to be eaten after a few minutes of zapping didn’t sound too good either.  Heck, I wasn’t health-minded, but it didn’t even sound healthy. I know all those pre-made meals are typically loaded with sodium and preservatives and other shit that is almost certainly going to give us cancer in a few years.  Why would I subject myself to vegetables if they weren’t even good for you?

A tepid, microwaved meal that also happened to be vegetarian.  I wasn’t seeing a lot of upsides to that, I’ve gotta say.

She promised it would be great, and that someday she would have us try one.  We acquiesced, figuring that “someday” was a nebulous enough term that we might not ever actually have to eat one of these vegetarian microwaved meals.

And thus time wore on.  At some point, I had discovered that you could access a schedule for what the cafeteria would be cooking every night.  I made sure to go when I knew they’d be having a dish I really liked.  Like I said, there weren’t many that I liked, but there were two “specials” that were my favorites.

The first one was chicken nuggets.  Now, I know that sounds pretty lame, but what can I say, I’m a fat guy and I love chicken nuggets.  I remember they’d serve them in those little red baskets from the “grill” area of the cafeteria (the one that usually had cheeseburgers, grilled cheese and french fries).  May god strike me down if I am lying when I say that I consumed roughly 5,000 chicken nuggets on any night when they were serving them.  Okay, god’s probably gonna strike me down in the form of grotesque obesity even if that statement is true, but anyway.

The other dish I liked was a little more inspired.  It was buffalo chicken pizza.  This is something that actually seemed pretty unique, especially when most of their pizzas there sucked.  It was a pizza with big, hearty chunks of chicken all over it, drenched in buffalo chicken sauce.  Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that inspired, but it was tasty and another thing I’d load up on if they were serving it.

So, as it just so happens, one particular week, I happened to peek at the schedule, and I could not believe my eyes when I saw what was slated for Friday night dinner.  I almost wept tears of pure joy as I saw the combination: “Chicken Nuggets/Buffalo Chicken Pizza.”

…No words… They—they should have sent a poet…

It was beautiful.  Most college freshmen probably looked forward to going out and getting wasted, laid, or some combination thereof on a Friday night.  I looked forward to chicken nuggets and pizza.  Does it surprise anyone that I am overweight?

I looked forward to Friday all week.  Finally, Friday afternoon.  Just a few more hours.  As I sat in my dorm room it was almost as if I could smell the salivation-inducing odors emanating from the kitchens in the cafeteria.  That’s when the worst thing happened.

A message popped up on my computer screen.  It read something like this:

Iris: Hey!  I bought you guys those vegetarian dinners I talked about!  Let’s have them tonight, okay?

Fuck.  This could not be happening.  I immediately consulted with John about what to do.  While I doubt he was anywhere nearly as passionate about the shitty, greasy cafeteria food as I was, he wasn’t too excited at the prospect of having to forego eating real food in order to try these meals that Iris had purchased for us.

There was some reason that this suffering couldn’t be delayed.  I think maybe the meals were only good for a certain amount of time, or she was going home for the weekend, or something like that.  Either way, dinner had to be that night, and she wasn’t letting us escape easily.

Time ticked on and the day rolled into night, and she had cajoled us into at least saying we were coming to eat.  Neither of us had the heart to tell her straight up that we truly did not want to eat the food, but the situation was getting increasingly dire.  I remember riding the elevator in our building up to the tenth floor, where she lived.

That was a little weird in itself, since in our building the floors were divided by gender, and thus she lived on an all-girl’s floor.  It felt a little bit like I was in a place I shouldn’t be, like I was just waiting for the RA to pop out from behind a corner and scream, “MEN?!  ON MY FLOOR?!!!” and then throw us down the garbage chute or something.

Well, actually, our dorm buildings didn’t have corners, but she sure as hell would have popped out from somewhere.

John and I ended up in Iris’ room, where the meals were already spinning in the microwave.  We pleaded with her, “Iris, you don’t understand, these are the best dishes the cafeteria serves, if we don’t go to dinner tonight we miss out.”  She was a nice girl, but she was also showing a rather unrelenting side.

She seemed confused, like it truly baffled her that we didn’t want to eat these delicious vegetarian microwaved meals.  ”I picked out each meal for you guys individually,” she said.  She showed us the boxes, and I don’t know exactly how John felt, but I knew she wasn’t winning me over.  Mine was like some mushroom thing, that’s all I remember.  Mushrooms.  I didn’t really like mushrooms at all back then, and even now, I wouldn’t really make a meal of them.

I remember she started to get just a tiny bit annoyed at our reluctance to eat them.  Truth be told, I don’t know why we didn’t think to eat them and then still go to dinner afterwards.  I guess there would have been less room for the delicious nuggets and pizza if our stomachs were all crammed up with stupid vegetarian food.

Honestly, even if it wasn’t chicken nugget and buffalo chicken pizza night, the meals didn’t look appealing at all.  I’ve since gotten over most of my food squeamishness, but at that time I was still way more on the picky end of things, and I wasn’t even sure if I could eat it.

Eventually, I guess my hunger pains got the best of me.  I think it was when she started to show a bit of anger at us for not wanting to eat it.  I responded in kind.  I yelled, quite loudly, “IRIS!  IT’S FUCKING CHICKEN NUGGETS AND BUFFALO CHICKEN PIZZA NIGHT!  IT’S THE BEST FOOD, AND I’M NOT GOING TO MISS IT FOR THIS VEGETARIAN BULLSHIT!” Or something along those lines.

I was joking—well, maybe not completely—but I still did raise my voice and I actually remember thinking, “oh no, I’m on the girl’s floor, they’re gonna think there’s some assault going on here or something.”  I think she got the point though.

And so John and I left.  We didn’t eat the food.  I’m not sure if she made us take them with us, so that we could eat them later, or if we just left her with all those crappy vegetarian meals to deal with herself.  I felt bad, especially about the yelling, even if it was in jest.  But you can only humor a person so far.  There’s a difference between someone being nice and someone hoisting their niceness onto you where it becomes contrary to what you actually want to do.

We went to the cafeteria.  The food was glorious.  I regret nothing.

steak night.

Freshman year of university. The only year I was living in the on-campus dorms, which were different than living in the on-campus apartments, because you were required to have a meal plan.

The logic behind it made sense. In the apartments there were full kitchens, so it was plausible that students were cooking their own food. But in the dorms, they didn’t want students to starve to death, and even if parents just gave their kids a bunch of money to go buy food, very little of it would probably be put to that purpose. 99% of it would probably go to booze or illicit substances, with the remaining 1% spent on impulse-buy munchies at 7-11.

But in truth, the meal plans themselves were huge scams designed to line the pockets of Sodexo, our school’s food service contractor that ran basically everything that served food on campus. They were extremely expensive, if I recall correctly the cheapest plan was way north of another thousand dollars added to the already expensive dorm rental fees.

They were also designed so that they weren’t really that good of a value. Like, okay, if you spent $1000 upfront but could eat every meal every day on campus for free, maybe it would work out. But there were always weird rules, like you could only eat a certain amount of times per day, or only at certain places, or things like that.

The one my mom got me was pretty decent, I could eat two meals a day at the dorm cafeteria, I think all seven days a week.  But it didn’t stack, so I couldn’t eat one meal on Monday there and then eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner on Tuesday.  So if I ever chose to eat out elsewhere, that was a “lost” meal that I paid for but didn’t receive. I also didn’t get any allowances at any other of the Sodexo food vendors, it was the cafeteria or nothing.

The cafeteria wasn’t terrible, it’s been the topic of a few posts already here. After subsisting on it for a year, though, I can happily say I never wanted to eat there again. The food was also really greasy and bad for you, almost surely responsible for untold numbers of Freshman 15s every semester.

It was buffet style, and they had different stations, a pizza station, a grill station, a pasta section, et cetera. I think I wrote about this before in the vegetarian dinner entry.

Anyway, there was one shitty night. Thursday night. Steak night. For some reason, on Thursdays the cafeteria would forego its typical food for steak night. My first week at school, a few people told me about it excitedly.

“Oh man, just wait until Thursday. It’s STEAK NIGHT! If you eat at the cafeteria one night a week using your meal plan, make it steak night!”

These kids that told me this didn’t seem to be alone, either. Thursday night was the one night a week where it was pretty much a given that you’d be waiting in a line out the door to get in for dinner service. Sometimes, it was a really long line where you’d have to wait upwards of half an hour.

But I’m going to let you in on a little secret: steak night fucking sucked. After you waited in the long line, you were given a ticket for your entree. The cafeteria was usually all you can eat, but I guess steak is too expensive for that, so you were only allowed to get one serving.

Now, I’m not a huge steak fanatic, but it was pretty much in the same class as the other low-grade shit that Sodexo served every other meal of the day. I can’t honestly imagine that this steak cost much at all, since it had the texture and appearance of an abused tire. And it wasn’t just a bad cut of meat, it was also tiny as hell, I guess again due to cost issues. You got about three bites of meat, along with a potato, I think.

You did have an alternative to go for a chicken breast, and after a while I ultimately just began opting for that every week as the year wore on. Chicken’s chicken, it was nothing spectacular but at least it wasn’t a colossal disappointment like the steak was.

To make it even lamer, when it was steak night, the steak/chicken distribution took up one of the other stations, I think it was usually the grill (burger/fries/sandwich/chicken nuggets) station, which was typically my favorite station, so you not only had to eat your one little serving of crappy steak (or chicken), but you couldn’t get the other stuff that was at least decent.

I never understood why students would get so amped up about steak night, nor why Sodexo even bothered at all.

Fuck steak night.