The Many Adventures of Lisa January: When the Dining Hall Salad Bar Passive-Aggressively Attacks
Dear Readers,
I need to tell you a story. It is something very dear me and although it singes my heart to think about, I owe it to student-kind to recount this fateful event.
Let me start by saying that the dining hall salad bar holds a lot of power over my mood and general well-being. However, I solidified this realization yesterday when 3 things…just 3 simple, little, seemingly insignificant things didn’t go my way and I crumbled, from the very core of my soul, into absolute and utter hysterics. The salad bar can do this to you. You approach it with low blood sugar, already making you vulnerable, and all you need is for there to be no more kidney beans for you to start pounding your chest like Tarzan, screaming ‘Imma fucking burn this place to the ground!!!!!’
This will be hard for me, but it is important to share my story so you can prepare yourself for the future and hopefully not become such a devastatingly destructible victim, like I am.
(Note: I haven’t eaten for 6 hours so I am hangry – hungry and angry – and I am NOT messing around). I approach the salad bar and low and behold…
- There are no big bowls for my salad… My heart sinks into my empty, gurgling abyss of a stomach. What do I do now? Use a fucking plate?! ARE YOU JOKING!??? Do you know what happens when you eat salad on plates…?
Okay, so that was the first problem. Enough to get me a little ticked off, to say the very least. But alas, I maintained my composure, strong-willed that I am, and persevered. Unfortunately, what happened next made it even worse …
2. I am a prisoner! Trapped, against my will, behind a girl that evolved directly from snails.
I don’t even know how she is taking so long; It literally doesn’t make any sense. Not only are her general movements in slow-motion, but she painstakingly scrutinizes everything, like ‘hmm, do I want artichoke hearts on my salad today? I like them, but maybe not today. Hmm, well, maybe I could just…hmm, okay, okay ,okay *giggle, giggle, teehee* I guess I’ll take two artichoke heart segments. Hmm which ones should I take…?’ She does this for every one of the fucking ba-jillion toppings!!! KILL ME! And, just to reiterate, I am still phenomenally hangry and I could go on and on and on about ways in which I want to inflict pain and everlasting disfiguration upon her, but…
Yeah, I’m kinda a wimp. I just let the Rage Monster boil up inside of me so when it is my turn to scoop the corn, my hand is twitching so bad, corn flings all over the counter and straight up into the air, some landing in my hair and some on the plate of the boy behind me. “Ahh! Sorry!” I scream, my tension is so high right now, the only volume I can access is subsonic boom. Great, now I’m the psycho-path when really it was all her fault for standing there and meticulously inspecting each sliced black olive before gently placing it on her bed of spinach. It’s a fucking salad! Not Jenga!!!
As you can tell, I am sufficiently pissed off. First, I have to use a plate but now, I may not even get my salad until the apocalypse has already swallowed us all up, in which case this would be my last meal and all I want is MY FUCKING SALAD!!!!!1111 Whew, deep breath. We aren’t even to the worst part yet. I knew this was going to be hard for me. But I am a warrior and tell this story, I must.
So, I go through the line, behind the tortoise stuck in molasses, Slowly McSlowerson, and finally come out on the other end with my plated salad. (Note: I will not dedicate an entire bullet point to this, but I would just like to say that while observing the toppings, 4 additional things really irked me, and maintained my hanger.
A. There are no more carrots (a salad without carrots is like a walrus without his tusks, miserable and lame).
B. The feta cheese has spilled over into the peas and I HATE FETA CHEESE!
C. They accidently refilled the eggs in the beets bin and now all the eggs are magenta and smell like dirt.
D. The spoon for the cubed ham is missing and people are using the spoon for the vegan beef strips for the ham. WHAT THE SHIT IS A VEGAN BEEF STRIP!!!!
Anyway, I get to end of this pathetic salad bar, and you will never guess what happens…
- They are out of vinegar….
THEY ARE OUT OF MOTHERFUCKING VINEGAR!!!!!! GODDAMNIT, WILL IT NEVER END!!!!
At this point, FUCK the salad! I’d rather starve to death than just use oil. I’d rather barbeque and eat that girl in front of me or gnaw my own arm off than just use oil. I am totally and completely losing it. I don’t even hold it back but belt out a salad-bar-shattering scream, so loud, a dining hall attendant has to come up to me and ask me to ‘not do that.’ Fuck you, lady! You don’t know me! I may be potentially dying from rage and you want me to ‘keep it down?!’ NO! This was the salad that broke the camel’s back. It was either vinegar or starve. So, I summoned all my dignity, courage, integrity, practicality, intellect, and I chose…
...starve.
As you can see, the salad bar has a lot of control over my emotion. I’m really not sure how I can fix this and I’m really not sure what I can tell you to prevent this. Awareness is probably the best solution, for through awareness, we can all learn the dangers of the salad bar. And I can only hope and pray that this never happens to you.
PS: If you see that girl that was in front of me, kick her in the shins, tell her it’s karma and then run away. She won’t be able to catch you. Thanks.
Good Luck, Brave Diners!
Love,
Lisa January
spy, this is like the funniest thing ive read in at least since i read your last post. so that would be edging on a week. good work kiddo, mama bird LOLed.
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