I fly a certain airline. A lot. And without fail, the lunch or dinner choice at the back of the bus is always the same: "Chicken or pasta?"
Chicken or pasta? Chicken or pasta? The question is delivered sternly and abruptly more often than not by a hatchet-faced battle ax whose neck alone makes me glad I've never smoked a cigarette. (OK, except for that one time when I was 19 and drunk and somewhere in Austria with a Marlboro Red and promptly tossed my cookies in the Edelweiss.)
Chicken or pasta? Chicken or pasta? The pasta never changes. Always a cheesy sponge of tortellini with a side of tomato-y baby food. The chicken can be a surprise though. This time, served with broccoli--the mushy sort--and potato wedges left over from the previous blight. Last time, with carrots. And white rice. A high-margin dish if ever there was one.
Then there's the bread: shrink-wrapped and vacuum-packed, it has not tasted oxygen in 364 days and smells worse than I do after eight-plus hours in a silver tube, weighted down and buckled-up somewhere high above the Atlantic.
It's decision-time. And I choose chicken. Because some surprise is better than no surprise. Really.
Chicken or pasta? Chicken or pasta? The question is delivered sternly and abruptly more often than not by a hatchet-faced battle ax whose neck alone makes me glad I've never smoked a cigarette. (OK, except for that one time when I was 19 and drunk and somewhere in Austria with a Marlboro Red and promptly tossed my cookies in the Edelweiss.)
Chicken or pasta? Chicken or pasta? The pasta never changes. Always a cheesy sponge of tortellini with a side of tomato-y baby food. The chicken can be a surprise though. This time, served with broccoli--the mushy sort--and potato wedges left over from the previous blight. Last time, with carrots. And white rice. A high-margin dish if ever there was one.
Then there's the bread: shrink-wrapped and vacuum-packed, it has not tasted oxygen in 364 days and smells worse than I do after eight-plus hours in a silver tube, weighted down and buckled-up somewhere high above the Atlantic.
It's decision-time. And I choose chicken. Because some surprise is better than no surprise. Really.
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