the kid's favorite salad

the kid’s favorite salad

Haven’t they ever heard of botulism? Why bring me out here, in this pale green Tupperware container, just to sweat in the sun? I thought potato salad was the kid’s favorite salad. Of course, that was before. That’s what I heard them say. Jimmy took one bite of my red potato bits, with bacon and celery, and Jeanine’s secret ingredient – a bit of brown mustard – and put his spoon down.

“It’s not Mom’s.” He said. His voice was wooden and hollow and held all of the hurt with which his 9-year-old psyche felt overburdened.

“Of course it’s not Mom’s.” Jimmy’s father answered. His voice attempted to be all reason and patience and tolerance, but his impatience peeked out like a bit of black olive under just a little mayonnaise. “Mom would have to be here to make Mom’s. I told Jeanine that potato salad was your favorite and she went to the trouble to make you one. I really think that you should make a better effort at eating it.”

“No, no! That’s ok.” There was a fine sheen of perspiration at Jeanine’s brow, much like the wet scum that was developing on my surface. Any fool could see she was uncomfortable. “I thought it would be a treat to make Jimmy my family’s special potato salad recipe, but I wasn’t thinking. Some of the ingredients are so unusual that it really isn’t a traditional potato salad. A potato salad purist probably wouldn’t like it at all. No I wasn’t thinking. I should have just made regular potato salad.”

She may not have been thinking, but she sure was babbling on and neither of them were doing anything to stop her. Jimmy focused on his paper plate, the bits of me shoved to one side, while he concentrated on jello and fried chicken. Jimmy’s father stared sidesways into space at nothing, saying nothing, and eating next to nothing. And there I sat, once a “special family recipe” that Jeanine giggled over and smiled about, now a less than “real” potato salad. A mistake. Not even Jeanine ate a decent portion of me, even the green salad fared better at this picnic than I did.

I tell you it’s no wonder some foods become poison. I mean, I began the spirit of gratitude. I’m fully aware that once I was only ingredients. But talk about all dressed up with no place to go! Well maybe that’s not quite right, I’m here; but was it too much to ask for someone to actually . . . . EAT ME?

But they had left the table and the poor stragglers they hadn’t eaten or cleaned up yet, essentially me, a half-finished can of soda and a couple of rolls, were left at the mercy of the yellow jackets and flies. When you’re left to be food for the flies, you can be sure the next stop is the dumpster. Pools of fluid with floating bacon bits were developing in the corners of my container. I tried to concentrate and keep it together, but I ask you, who doesn’t sweat in the sun?

In the distance, beyond the buzz of the yellow jacket, past the breeze tickling the pine tree above me, above the whisper of traffic noise outside the park, Jimmy was laughing. I could hear him. He was laughing and he actually said Jeanine’s name. I felt glad for her that she had finally done something right for him. And then it happened. A ball thrown, I’ll never know by who – I don’t think it was Jimmy’s, hit the edge of my container and knocked me to the ground where I skidded across the grass and become a puddle with chunky bits.

I heard Jeanine clucking her tongue later as she cleaned up the mess. She mopped up the table thoroughly, but didn’t seem to notice or care about the splash of me on the ground. Perhaps she reasoned I would dry up and go away on my own; maybe she just figured that no one mops the ground.

That night, alone in the park with only the breeze, the squirrels and an occasional neighborhood dog, I wondered at my existence. Once I was a salad full of tasty potential and nutrition, but I ended up a slimy puddle on the ground. Then I noticed the night sky above me, as black as my olives but with tiny shimmering lights more numerous than my little granules of pepper; it was beautiful. And I realized I was probably the only salad on the planet, or at least one of the very few, that had ever had the opportunity to appreciate the sky.

All because a bratty kid wouldn’t eat me.