"Protein, go for it" (John Cusack, The Sure Thing - 1985)

I’ve been getting a lot of shit today about what/how I eat. I’ve dropped some weight lately, but I’m still in the 230 range, so the apple I grabbed on the way to work was not enough breakfast for me.

When I don’t have the time and/or foresight to make myself breakfast I usually go down the cafeteria at work. There are two employees working the grill; a guy and a girl. I’ve run into the girl a few times. The first time I ordered six scrambled eggs she said, “Six?” to make sure she heard me right, but went ahead and filled my order without another word.

This morning, I ordered my six eggs and the guy practically shouted, “You want six eggs?!”

“Yes. Yes I do. I want six eggs.”

He shook his head and mumbled, “six eggs” as he wrote it on the Styrofoam container. The girl walked past him and said, “It’s not the first time.” They both chuckled and shot each other a little glance.

“I’m standing right here!” I want to shout at them. Is that really weird? Does eating half-a-dozen eggs in one sitting really merit this type of reaction? Seriously, I want to know. I mean, I can understand a backward glance or two if I’d walked into Krispy Kreme and demanded two dozen donuts for myself.

At this point in my mental tirade, I’m standing on counter and screaming, “It’s the most important meal of the day!!”

And then, as I turn to the crowd I say, “Don’t you judge me.” (For some reason, in my mind that line always comes out with a southern accent.) After a short pause another slightly overweight man begins the slow clap which is followed by a musical montage.

Anyway, I’m working 13-hour shifts lately, so I have to grab three meals on my way out the door. Along with the apple I found half of a leftover steak and a Tupperware container of mashed potatoes. The steak was Todd’s or Becky’s, but they know my stance on old leftovers. If I am fairly certain that not eating something means it will get thrown away, I consider it fair game. In fact, the other day I stopped Jenny from tossing something in the garbage and Becky said, “You know you can’t clean out the fridge while Dan is around!”

I feel like a damned scavenger raccoon.

The new setting is my desk, Westlake Texas, around 4 PM… Central time.

I am cursing under my breath as the tines break off of my plastic fork, one at a time. As I saw away at the old, tough steak I feel like I might as well be trying to cut my way out of jail with the blade from a pencil sharpener.

Exasperated, muttering something along the lines of “Screw it” I grab the steak from the container and just rip off a chunk before throwing it back in.

I haven’t chewed twice before a voice behind me says, “What the…?”

“Did you just eat that steak with your fingers? What, are you camping?!”

Another voice says, "What's going on?"

I can hear the word and laughter beginning to spread that Dan is eating steak with his fingers so I just put my headphones back on, turn up my music and keep going till every scrap of that thing was gone.

I wish I was camping.