Out of the Loop

           

            On Wednesday, for the first time in a month, I went to the food bank. For three weeks, because of my annual fast, my diet wasn’t really compatible with what they had to offer there, plus I was occupied with essay writing. I still had my Nietzsche essay to finish, but I thought that maybe they’d have better stuff than usual just before Easter. I went earlier than usual and yet the line-up was already finished and I got number 24.

            I noticed that Joe, the manager is back to walking with a crutch. He’d had one a few months before and then he didn’t have it. Marlon, who’s been working there since the snow started falling, greeted me by name. In fact, he’s the only one there that has ever greeted me by name.

            I came back at around 13:30 to find no people outside waiting for numbers to be called. When I asked someone what number they were at, he told me that they’d stopped calling numbers at around 78. I went inside and asked, “You guys started early?” Joe answered, “We told everybody that we’d be starting at noon.” I said, “Nobody told me when I came to get a number!” He said something about the media having been there. I guess that’s why they started early but the reception people should have said, “We’re starting at noon today” when she gave me the number. I assume that Joe’s “telling everybody we’d be starting at noon” was an announcement to the people in the line-up. So, instead of having number 24, I effectively had some number close to 80. 

            I didn’t really need a lot of the regular items they keep fairly abundantly on their shelves, like pasta, rice and sauce. I took some energy bars and a bag of potato thins. I noticed that the soup shelf was empty except for a couple of cans of Campbell’s tomato. The more interesting stuff was in Sue’s section. I got a half litre of yogourt, half a dozen eggs and a choice between a turkey and a rack of ribs. I’ve never understood why some people eat turkey at Easter. Where I come from it was always ham on Easter Sunday. I took the last rack of ribs. I didn’t need any bread this time around and the only thing I took from the vegetable section was a bag of small potatoes. I already had a five-kilo sack from the supermarket at home, but small potatoes are so adorable that they’re not just small potatoes.

            I took a siesta in the afternoon for half an hour. When I got up I found one of my overhead light bulbs had shattered and fallen all over the floor. The thing is, the lights were switched off, and so I couldn’t figure out why the light would have exploded. Maybe it was just a weaker bulb and the continuous vibrations of passing streetcars finally just caused it to break. It probably didn’t explode.

            That night I watched the third episode of the first season of “Father Knows Best”. Robert Young’s character had bought his son a motor scooter, which his wife made him take back because of it being too dangerous. The son was never told about the scooter but his father felt guilty and gave him twenty dollars as a present. The boy then sold his own bicycle for ten dollars and with thirty dollars went and bought the same scooter that his father had sold back to the original owner. The oldest daughter, Princess, is obsessed with her weight and with handwriting analysis while youngest child, Kitten is a shrewd observer of her family.

            When I searched Pirate Bay for “Father Knows Best”, most of the items under that name were porn films.