Eat or Die!

I am what you would call an eater. I eat things. I eat small plants and animals whole. I cut larger plants and animals into smaller, more manageable parts before eating. I eat cute little animals, and I eat ugly fruits and vegetables, and vice versa. If humans have been known ever to have eaten something I will eat it. I will eat things which no man has eaten before. Raw, blanched, blended, steamed, boiled, stir-fried, poached, scrambled, stewed, simmered, tossed, frozen, thawed, and chilled are just a few of the ways I will eat a plant or animal. Sometimes I will mix two or three of these techniques together to stuff my face. Variety is the spice of life. Spice is also the spice of life.

If you don’t eat you will die. Try not eating. You will die. Life will throw out your scrawny carcass when you starve to death but death will eat you right up, bones and all. Death has an incredible appetite. I don’t want to die so I eat. Death is often only a bagel with cream cheese away from where I am sitting in this coffee shop. Death circles like a vulture…waiting…waiting for me to slip up and miss a meal, waiting for me to screw up and starve to death. Death is patient. Death asks to borrow my paper. Death reads the box scores. Death sees that the Mariners are in last place at 15-28. Death smells death and leaves me to finish my bagel. Death instead goes to circle the Mariner clubhouse. I sigh with relief but cut it short because I remember that sighing with your mouth full of food is impolite. A near-death experience is no reason to lose your manners.

Death is relentless and so I eat relentlessly. Death never sleeps. It is difficult to eat while you sleep which is why people die in their sleep. My solution is to dream about eating. I’m not dead yet so maybe I’m on to something. Death does not play fair; nod off for a second and death will be all over you like a cheap suit. I nap with a ham sandwich in my hand. You can’t be too careful.

They say that eating too much can kill you. Not eating will kill you faster than eating too much and besides, while you are killing yourself by eating too much you can watch TV. There are worse ways to go—unless you don’t have cable in which case I would rather be eaten by sharks.

Sharks gotta eat too. And what about worms? If we don’t die what are they supposed to eat? We are trapped in a seriously vicious circle. Just thinking about it makes me hungry. I am hungry all the time so I guess you could say that everything makes me hungry. Go ahead and laugh but I would suggest that my survival instinct is just stronger than yours. About the only thing that doesn’t make me hungry is eating. Eating keeps my mind off hunger.

It's time for lunch. It never ends.