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Eating In Inappropriate Places
What perhaps is the one place in your home that you would never consider scarfing a sandwich or a chocolate eclair? Is it the bathroom? Well, that's the rule in our home, for the fear of cross contamination is too great. That chocolate eclair could easily become a chocolate e-coli if not handled properly, and no food belongs in the john.
There are some places that eating has always been the fashion, albeit I don't quite understand why. For instance the movie theater. Popcorn has had a long history of consumption while film viewing, but these days it's gotten a bit out of hand. I was recently at one of those new hyper-theaters. The type where you've got the great stadium seating, electronic ticket machines, arcade center and buffalo wings. Buffalo wings you say? They pretty much sell you any food that you'd find in a fast food restaurant these days in the movie theater! Ice cream, nachos, nonpareils, buffalo wings and somewhere crammed into the concession stand you'll also find a seven dollar bucket of popcorn schmeared with imitation butter. The butter by the way is the refined goo from the theater floor. But the one thing that they don't provide is a cafe with seating, so people are schlepping stacked trays of snacks into the theater as if they were at the China 2000 Buffet during a grab all you can eat special!
So I'm sitting in the theater smelling buffalo wings for the first twenty minutes of watching some kid flick. Is this really necessary? Couldn't these people have squeezed in a salad fifteen minutes before the flick? Maybe I'm a bit too nutritionally conscious these days, but is it possible that we'd be able to shut our mouths for just an hour and a half any more? We're not talking about skipping meals here folks. Just for the length of one movie, is it possible that we just STOP eating? This way we don't have to be subjected to whiffing the fumes from my rear seat neighbors nachos with extra jalepenos? But perhaps even a worse fate....for those who bring their own snacks to the movies...can you please put your damned cheesy poofs into a plastic bag that doesn't crackle so loud that I don't feel as if the movie "Ice Age" is in senso-round?
I was shooting some b-roll of a college class recently. Hey, you need a cup of coffee to stay awake for the lecture on Sociology in an Anti Social World? I don't blame you. But I actually witnessed a student who brought in four of those salad bar plastic trays filled with pasta, a sandwich, a salad and a slice of carrot cake. His entire tiny flip down desktop was crammed with food and paper bags. He was eating in this classroom as if he was watching a ball game rather than a professor. I felt like dumping a bag of peanuts on his head, but instead I passed him a beer. I mean at this point why not? A little extra luxury heaped upon your four-coursed course will only make your class room experience more fulfilling.
I have to admit that I'm guilty too of eating on the run. All right, not on the run, on the road is more honest. I constantly am eating in my vehicle. Partly because a lunch break has become as extinct as the woolly mammoth from "Ice Age," and also because I don't wish to wake up another half hour earlier to eat a proper breakfast at my kitchen table. However, I feel as if the automotive industry encourages us to eat in our cars. My Suburban has something like nine cup holders built into it. With those accouterments I feels as if I could have High Tea at 4pm. Would someone just build a crumpet toaster into my next truck!? I'm not the breakfast bar eating type. No, I complicate things by eating a tub of cottage cheese, coffee and various hand held fruits while I drive. It's a real juggling act. So please don't call on my cell phone while I'm commuting into work...there could be a real disaster....Breakstone on my windshield, coffee on the dash and a broken banana in my lap! (Insert your own sick mental image here.) I swear I was almost sideswiped by a schmuck eating a crousandwich on the Cross County Parkway the other day. So if you eat and drive, please put one hand on the wheel and the other on your Ding Dong, er, Yodel.
However, there are worse things that you could do than eating while driving I suppose. I actually caught a guy in a Volvo shaving while driving the other day! Thankfully he had the forethought to use the electric type shaver rather than the cream and brush variety. Perhaps we should all give some consideration as to when and where we are eating or shaving for that matter. I've always understood that oatmeal is good for your skin. So I have decided to combine all of my taboos. From now on I'm going to be spreading a bowl of Quaker Oats on my face while shaving over my bathroom sink. Then I'll eat the oatmeal that gets shaved off, thus having breakfast at home rather than in my car for a change!