No Man is a Thousand Islands

NO MATTER HOW MUCH PEOPLE HAVE, THEY WANT MORE. No matter what people have, they want something different. That behavior pattern may be deep seated in our DNA going back millions of years – back to the days of our “Hunter-Gatherer” subsistence world. If we hunted and gathered the same things millennium after millennium we might like a change. Given the odds that we might starve to death – we would want more. Of course, one does not expect to such behaviors exhibited today.

Oh, yeah? Have you been to a salad bar lately?

A couple of weeks ago a few of us got together for Sunday Brunch at a local restaurant. Part of the deal was a trip to their huge salad bar. It was there that I witnessed a replay of lunchtime in the Rift Valley of East Africa circa 5million years B.C. (Before Croutons)

Most salad bars have a stack of nice smallish plates there for the diners to use. When I stepped up I saw one fellow there with his full sized dinner plate in hand. He was busy.

I couldn’t help but gawk as he moved down the line. Lettuce piled high, about a dozen cherry tomatoes, red onion, carrots, broccoli, corn, shrimp, and beans. I was waiting for it all to topple over, but this guy was a pro. Just when it looked like he was going to have to throw a net over his plate he moved to the vats of the salad dressings. He weighed it all down with about 20,000 Islands. Nothing was going to fall. Not satisfied, he then shored it up with about a half pig’s worth of Bacon Bits and sufficient croutons to rebuild the Berlin Wall (Under 30 years of age – look it up.).

 We have all been to those salad places that charge you by the pound for your salad. This guy would have had to take out a mortgage on his home on his salad.

I watched him go back to his table. His companions all had normal sized salads, but his plate reminded me of a scene from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Remember Richard Dreyfuss and the mashed potatoes?

“This means something!”

As I ate I couldn’t help but keep tabs on the One Man Famine Machine across the way. He dove onto his salad like he was a Great White Shark and the salad was a blind tuna.

Seeing him devour his food made me wonder if and how he was raised. Was he reared by wolves or in a house with 15 other people and only one fork?

I know that some people might criticize me for appearing “Judgmental” about this fellow and they’d be right. I am being judgmental. Of course, those who are “tsk, tsk-ing” about me and my thoughts are being judgmental about me. So, it all comes out even in the end. They have their opinion and I have mine, which is that their existence and their opinions are irrelevant, I like how that works.

The chap with the salad bar on his plate did not go back for seconds. He didn’t have time. No sooner had the last Bacon Bit disappeared down his gullet than his entrée arrived. That man could eat!

I haven’t checked, but I’ll bet that his picture is on a warning poster next to each cashier at every Golden Corral “All you can eat” buffet in the country.

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