On Monday (pronounced /‘mʌndi/), the day of the week between Sunday and Tuesday, I put a plastic bag containing two yogurts, a diet coke, and a Tupperware container with Peking Duck in the fridge. Peking Duck is a famous duck dish from Beijing that has been prepared since the imperial era, and is now considered one of China’s national foods. Beijing used to be Peking. But you know this already.
At lunch the bag was gone. I comprehensively, if not compulsively “checked” the fridge at great lengths to make sure the bag was indeed gone. Many of you claim to suffer from mild OCD, but you haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen a man count in prime numbers to 89 while smacking his lips in 3/8 time, a ritual incurred by unfortunate food-related events.
So today, which is Thursday, I find the bag back inside the fridge, positioned in front as a “silent apology” of sorts, without any note of explanation. The math is simple: my lunch was missing for 3 nights, 3 being the first odd prime number and the second smallest prime, not to mention a Fermat prime—which Ted, you’re a jackass for not catching the second time around.
I’m a little pensive about consuming yogurt and duck which may have been left unrefrigerated for up to 75 hrs, as I cannot be certain that the bag was not left inside a bathroom, near a dog, or any other inhospitable place where yogurt and duck are concerned. As some of you may recall, I was out sick two weeks last year stricken with Giardia (fml, Giardiasis), my abridged entry being “not fun at all.” Thank god this is not the third world; I want my duck heated, then cold, then heated again. Room temperature is a compromise I will not make.
If you accidentally brought a plastic pink bag home thinking it was yours, only to discover three days later that it wasn’t, that is okay. We are all somewhat overworked and distracted by the constant real-time edits, especially concerning the relationship and/or addiction statuses (the plural for status is not “stati” Ken, and Laura, “statii”? Jesus) of our most beloved celebrities. It is okay that you mistook a lunch. What is not okay is a kind of entitled reticence about the matter which you have employed.
My grandmother (cc’d) bought me that duck, and I’m the last legitimate heir to my family’s dynasty (my sister, duh, is a woman — patriarchal I know; I don’t make the rules). Anyhow, I hope you understand why this is personal, and try not to take it personally. We are all friends here, at least some of us. I also cc’d our Human resources department, so I guess I’m taking this “personnelly.”
Please answer me and you shall remain anonymous: was my yogurt and Peking Duck “respected,” and can its rightful owner consume it without running through his bi-annual supply of toilet paper? (I’ll spare you the details of the aforementioned affliction and simply point you towards [file: Giardia-infectedpatient_fecal.jpg (full size)] in our wiki server. Ted, why do you keep editing that pic out?)
Hey, can I eat my Peking Duck? Would that be possible? Do you want me to die? We, of course, are in the business of truth, not mere rhetorical questions. What is not important is what the answer is, but that we have an answer.