Earlier this week, I was watching the local news as I often do to see if someone would mention my name – not that there is a reason they should, but you never know. Before the commercial break, the station ran a promo promising a story that would “change the way you eat lunch forever.”
Just then, the cable went out. By the time it came back on, I was only able to see the last minute of the newscast. No one made any mention of the earth-shaking story that I had missed and the news simply gave way to some syndicated sitcom. Frantically, I flipped through the major stations looking for the story, but I must have missed it. I tried all the cable news channels: CNN, Headline News, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC and The Food Network, but none of them had any coverage on any sort of lunch-changing developments. I turned to the internet next, but I had no luck there either.
What was going on here? Had the channel I had been watching picked up an exclusive scoop? How could that be? This story was obviously inconceivably huge; why couldn’t I find it anywhere else? I became paranoid. Perhaps this news was so big, so life-changing, that some very important people had decided that it couldn’t get out. Was it a mere coincidence that the cable had gone out just then? Would newscasters begin to “disappear?” This thing was out of control.
I needed to find out what was going on. The next afternoon, I sat in the dining hall for hours trying to see if there was anything different about lunch. I brought a microscope and examined every bit of food, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I observed other people and they didn’t seem to be doing anything differently either. Had they seen the story? I thought of approaching people and asking them how their lunch was while winking knowingly, but I worried this would only entrap them and myself in some sort of massive conspiracy. I wondered if there was some codeword I needed to use with the servers that would give me access to some secret back room where “the insiders” ate while chuckling at the uninformed masses who ate lunch as if nothing had changed, but I had no idea where to begin or who to ask.
Thinking about it only made me feel more afraid and more alone. I felt as if I was the last monk to hear about the printing press. Everyone else was out printing hundreds of copies of their own writings and manifestos and I was still locked in my room hand-copying Bible after Bible by candlelight, completely oblivious to the technological revolution that was shaking human civilization to its very foundations. When the people of tomorrow write our history, 2005 will be the Year That Changed the Way People Ate Lunch Forever and I will be the guy believing that the world is flat, the sun revolves around the earth and the food pyramid makes no mention of eating one’s own hair.
As it became clear that I wouldn’t be able to find the answer on the outside, all I could do was wonder what the story had been about. Anti-gravity boots? But that would change everything, not just lunch. Was food now to be ingested directly into the stomach via osmosis? That would affect any meal. I couldn’t even imagine what it might be. They already have peanut butter and jelly in the same jar. Did they get the bread in there, too?
I then wondered if the news station was not being entirely accurate or straightforward in their promotion of their program. Perhaps they had been understating the importance of the story. Any competent producer does not want his viewers to build up unrealistically high standards for a program. The smart tactic is to talk down a show to cultivate low expectations that are easily met. Perhaps I had missed news of a catastrophic event, like a comet that was about to crash into the earth, wiping out all life. I supposed this would change lunch in that there would be nothing to eat and nothing alive to notice.
And weeks after I saw this story, it seems as if nothing has changed. Every day I make sure to keep an eye out (because when something does I happen I want to make sure I don’t miss it again), but every day proves to be another disappointment. It seems as if nothing has really changed after all, and I find myself pondering the story less and less these days to the point where I barely think about it at all anymore. But sometimes it’s hard to shake the feeling that whenever I’m eating, people laugh at the way I eat my sandwich with the bread and the peanut butter and jelly separated. Through my mouth. Right side up.
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