“Okay, that’ll be fourteen dollars.”
Ah, Tresidder Tuesday. Usually a rainy affair, one filled with the scents of salty desperation, missed dining hall hours, and throats filled with the same old cotton ball statements about how “I’d rather have a brick sunk to the bottom of the sea of my belly than eat another piece of Arrillaga chicken”. To be honest, I don’t know why I’m here, in the line for the Hummus guy, when I can just get three free samples from Panda and leave faster than Road Runner through a false door.
Well, maybe that’s a lie. I know why I’m here—I’m here because the Hummus guy doubles as an information broker, and he knows my first name, childhood pet, and the number of eyelashes on my right eye.
It’s enough to make me think he’s trying to hack into my Outlook account, past the security questions, to finally get me to sign up for the Stanford Gleaning Project and get me shipped to the Italian countryside to pick crabapples for the rest of my life.
Well, good fucking luck getting past my DuoPush Mobile, Hummus guy.
And I’m behind this frat guy in line who’s trying to haggle as if Tresidder Tuesday was a bazaar in Qatar.
“Okay, so I left my wallet at home,” he says. “I remember exactly where it is: Behind three leaky Tide Pods, a set of baby wipes, and a packet of Quaker Oats—brown sugar and cinnamon, by the way.
” Quaker Oats. So rustic. “Trust me—I’ll be back next week and pay you double.”
“I’m, sorry, I don’t think I can do that.” Sensible man.
“I’ve thrown up sixteen times this week,” says the frat guy, shaking his first in the air as if holding a wad of cash.
Of dough. Of scratch. New Age currency, fist-shaking.
“That has no monetary value,” says the vendor.
“Twenty-two times I’ve bent over a banister, puking my esophagus out, and you loons won’t let me get a single goddamn Tupperware of hummus?” he says. “What has Tresidder Tuesday become? Back in the day I’d just have to mention a llama-sized spit-wad in the Claw and they’d hand me a Thai Chicken bowl on a silver platter.”
Lamenting done, he disappeared into the crowd. And I was free to sample it up.
