It's 11:45 at the Powell Dining Hall. the lights are bright the colors are bleaker than they should be and it smells like nothing, even though I'm surrounded by food. The only thing I've ever been able to smell at this dining hall is ranch dressing, not a thing I want to smell. I suspect they cooked out all the other scents and replaced them with grease (for meat and cheese) or water (for vegetables). I order a taco salad, and my favorite part is picking out the toppings. The tomatoes are a decent red, the onions are a healthy white and the lettuce is actually pathetic and pale, like when your hands have been in water for too long. I order all those along with cheese and sour cream even though they always give me five times the amount of sour cream I can handle. I pass on the hot peppers swimming in their juices, looking like a perfect swamp in a perfect little black container. I go to get myself a cup of soda, mountain dew - the toxic urine colored one. The plastic cup in my hand feels like industry, feels like cafeteria, feels like 100,000 other peoples hands were there, and now its my turn to get my drink, drink it, and be on to more important things. I leave the metal scraping on plastic scraping on plastic scraping on metal food area and head into the bla bla bla ha ha ha seating area. I sit down by the big windows with a couple friends and those windows give the illusion of a wide open space. I start to eat in my falsely spacious area and oh well the foods not delicious the meat leaves orange slime and the vegetables taste like water and onions. The chips and meat and cheese taste like salt. Salty water onions. I end up avoiding the sour cream which makes me feel like a stupid art student because I think it looks like a dollop of gesso. Everyone mentions at least once that the taco salad is left overs from taco tuesday. Thats okay, I wash it down with that drink that could be made out of anything from uranium to lightning piss (anything other than the dew off a mountain).
It all sounds awful but it really wasn't a bad lunch. Back home dinner is the only thing thats ever good, lunch is usually nothing or breakfast or some sort of mixture of cheese and grain (grilled cheese, chips and cheese, cheese and crackers, quesadillas, macaroni and cheese etc.) so I'm grateful for my salty water onions.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Alexis, No smell is a smell......YES.....you described it well. I think I could smell it. I liked the: "pale, like when your hands have been in water for too long." Toxic Dew-----that should be a new brand of RED BULL. Thanks, Good entry! Best, Professor Wayne
ReplyDelete