So, I'm in another staff meeting this morning and having come in late, as usual, I had a prime people watching seat in the back of the conference room.
The manager had brought in cinnamon rolls for everyone, but having already had breakfast I passed on one, though they were big, plump, warm, delicious looking rolls.
As I sat in the back and faded into semi-consciousness, I looked around the room and quickly became intrigued by the ways in which people ate their cinnamon rolls.
You have the people like me who, when given something to eat, eat the damn thing without making it a lifelong project. It's there, I have a fork, the goal is obvious, it's gone. End of story.
Then you have the people who must savor.
They gently take the cinnamon roll, tenderly position it on the plate, and then set the plate in front of them on the conference room table with the fork precisely positioned underneath the roll. And it sits. And it sits. And it sits. And I'm thinking, "Eat... the... roll... Eat... the... fricking... roll!" After several minutes have passed, they slowly reach for the fork, and the very act of doing so rouses me temporarily from my meeting-induced coma. They cut into the roll with the fork, deliberately, and take one... small... sliver of a piece off of it and put it in their mouth. Then they chew exactly forty-two times before swallowing it.
At this point I'm thinking, "Chew it much longer and there will be nothing left to swallow."
And when that singular bite is gone, they place the fork back under the remnants of the roll until another few minutes have passed and some kind of intergalactic, cosmic force signals it's time to take another bite. Again, slowly, deliberately, one small bite, replace fork, wait.
This goes on for an hour, until finishing off the roll just before the close of the meeting. An HOUR! I could no more let a cinnamon roll sit in front of me for an hour than I could actually be fully conscious for a staff meeting.
It's there. It's edible. It's sweet. It's devoured with frenzied zeal. Next grand event of the day, please...
Posted by Cranky at September 27, 2002 05:45 PM