August 4, 2010
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I also like to live dangerously
Ok . . . so the following is a hypothetical situation which may or may not be based on real events.
So let’s say you’re in a library where you’ve been reading for about an hour. You’re in a leisurely reading area that consists of a circle of extremely uncomfortable couches and a few bean bags You have not have much to eat that day; since morning, only a bagel, and then for lunch, a smoothie. And you only got the smoothie because you had a giftcard since, despite their deliciousness, smoothies are quite overpriced. Not to mention the fact that smoothies, as we all know, are not real food: they are pretend food. If anything, they are made by sacrificing real food to the blender god so as to make tasty pretend food. So you’re living on a long-ago eaten bagel, and a smoothie, which was consumed many hours ago. Not to mention the day has been hot, and you have been walking all over the place doing errands.
And thus, there you sit. A belly aching, pining for sweet, life-giving food as though a child that lived inside you. It wails and looks around at the unmerciful world of unconcerned pedestrians, hoping for a friendly, compassionate face to take notice of you, say ’There there, you poor thing’, and then take you to the store so you can pick out your favorite yummy foods, upon the eating of which you will finally be able to giggle all over.
But this doesn’t happen. What does happen, however, is this: you are rolling around on the bean bags, changing reading positions, when suddenly you notice a small white bag suddenly appear right by your face. Curious at this unexpected discovery, you glance around to see if anyone is watching and then innocently peer inside.
THERE IS FOOD IN THE BAG.
More specifically, there is half a bagel, and half of a sandwich. And remember, you’re hungry. Food is all theory until you have an empty stomach. Inspecting closely, both the half bagel and half sandwich look relatively untouched. And no one has been around for at least an hour. By all accounts, it has been officially deserted. The food is clearly from a library cafe: very expensive food, unless, you have now realized, it is discovered after already having been bought.
I cannot stress enough, you are extremely hungry. So be real with me here. What do you do? Do you eat the food?
Again, this may or may not be based on true events.
Comments (10)
i don’t like germs and i certainly don’t like sharing my food with strangers. if they were both untouched in their containers though, i would most certainly dig in.
Nope. I would not eat it. I would just go to a vending machine and get some crackers. lol. The person who was munching on said items could have stuck their fingers all in the food, licking at it…ew i’m getting grossed out just thinking about it. No no no…do not touch it but place it back where you found it.
Nope. Unless Im homeless.
It would depend entirely on how hungry I was and when I was confident of getting actual sustenance. If I knew I was stranded there for, say, another five hours and supposed to be studying for a significant midterm, and my concentration was shot from the pain in my stomach, I would skulk around looking for the nearest person to ask if they knew whose bag it was. If it wasn’t claimed within twenty minutes, I’d wrestle with my inner gross-meter and try not to think about who might have touched it. If it looked CUT in half, my stomach would win. If it looked at all “handled” (teeth marks, finger dents, etc), my gross-meter would win and I’d get absolutely no work done for the next five hours of tortured pain. I’d probably throw it away if I couldn’t bring myself to eat it, just to maintain some vestige of sanity.
~V
I’d agree with m_kabs, if they are in they’re sealed containers than i’d dig in but i wouldn’t sit there. I’d take them to another spot in case the purchaser comes back for them LOL. I’m really concerned about germs and such but if they’re sealed, waste not want not
hmmmm….I would be worried about the person who left their food as opposed to worrying about the germs. I think I would take the bag, and hurriedly eat the contents in another part of the library. Then I wouldn’t go back to the original location of the bag for fear of being suspected of stolen food consumption if the owner came back. Didn’t you write a post once about a theory on germs? ‘What if they are a hoax meant to control society?’ or something along those lines? haha
@TheMarriedFreshman -
You point out the exact things that clinched it for me. It was going to be about three hours before I could eat anything. (Although techincally anything longer than fifteen minutes translated into an eternity. Fudging the numbers comes with the territory of deep hunger; not least, perhaps, because of how much one thinks about fudge in such times.) And the cafe sandwiches at libraries are in fact cut in half . . so it’s not like I was digging into something that someone had put their mouth on. I think I wouldn’t have been able to overcome the teeth-marks thing either.
Not to mention . . if they didn’t have teeth-marks in it, doesn’t that support the idea that they didn’t even handle it? Oh yes, the rationalizations are out there! Muwahahahah.
@letseewhatthiswilldo -
I told my boss at work and he asked, “Are you homeless? Do we need to talk?”
Now whenever I go in there eating something I always say something like, “Look at what I found in the street! And it’s still good!”
@angeltears2431 -
Oh yeah, I definitely took it somewhere else. I was pretty sure they weren’t coming back, but still I thought that would be pretty weird if they did. So I took it outside – and I felt very watched by the guy at the counter and I was freaking out thinking, “Oh my gosh. Is it his? That guy’s huge! He could kill me! Just look normal, just look normal, just look normal . .”
@Linley_K -
Haha wow. That was a long time ago. The hoax was about soap actually . . the germs are real, but in order to keep public order the government made up the idea of soap. I mean really, colorful magical slime kills our worst enemies after just smearing it on our hands?
It had been a long time, but I still didn’t want to eat it right there. I could just imagine the scene, them showing up and me having my hand caught right in the proverbial cookie jar. Although there’s always the potential for a good wife-meetings story with situations like these, so maybe I should have stayed.
Although personally if I had left my food there and then went back awhile later to see if it was still there, and I proceeded to find someone eating it, I would probably burst out laughing.