Are You Going to Eat That Roll?
473 words. Commentary.
I know there are many pressing issues nowadays: an epidemic, the economy, systemic racism, the militarization of the police, and others. But I have a simple issue, one I hope we can resolve quickly and peacefully.
Are you going to eat that roll?
If you are, then perhaps, after waiting a few minutes to let my stomach tell my brain whether I really am still hungry, I will ask the server to bring us more bread. I know it is not good to fill up on bread lest it spoil your appetite for the main course, but I have cleaned my plate and I feel like I want a little something more. My options are to splurge on dessert, or to have more bread. And, since together we emptied the once-overflowing basket of biscuits, corn muffins and plain rolls, I am left with only two possibilities in the bread department: to ask for a fresh supply, or to consume (with your permission) the roll you have so conspicuously left, untouched and bereft even of butter, on the edge of your plate.
I see that you are still working on your main course, so clearly your own appetite is not yet sated. If, by saving that last roll for after you have eaten everything else, you were allowing for the possibility that the meal would not satisfy you (my own lamentable condition), then I salute your foresight and your proactive planning but with some provisos which I will get to in a moment. If, however, you just took that roll out of some notion that we were required to split the contents of the formerly teeming basket exactly in half, I would like to address several potential fallacies.
For one thing, we are not exactly the same size, you and I. I am somewhat larger, and therefore I require more nourishment. That simple fact alone would suggest something more like a 60-40 division of the bread basket. Perhaps I should have mentioned that earlier, when the hour was young and we ravaged the basket together with such abandon.
For another thing, while I admire the lesson taught by the fable of the ant and the grasshopper, this is just lunch, not an exercise in planting and growing and harvesting and storing up for the harsh winter ahead. I agree with applying the fable’s moral on macro activities, but not at a micro level such as by provisioning your lunch plate, for gosh sake, for future contingencies.
And finally—hey! Ouch! If I had known that roll was so hard, I would have simply ordered a fresh basket right up front. But your action raises other questions which I will pursue in a future essay. One is, why did you throw bread at my head? The other is, do you want to split a dessert?
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