Money's kind of tight right now, so I tend to pounce upon free food like a wolf going after a lame caribou. However, my survival skills could use a sharper edge, as I learned this week.
The Telegraph's teen board (high school kids, almost all girls, who produce a features page each week full of youthful insight and reportage) had its last meeting of the school year this past Monday, and the staffers who work with the teen board arranged to have a pizza party. bare cupboards can push a man to do a lot of strange things, and for a second I thought about knocking out one of the young women on the teen board and switching clothes with her so I could sneak into the pizzafest. But I had no wig to help me pull that off, and I knew that there would probably be several slices left over.
And I was right. Surplus pizza was brought into the newsroom, provoking an unseemly scrum that would have been understandable among vultures descending upon carrion but was less so among humans. (But then on the other hand, we do flounder about in the low-wage part of the journalism pool, so I guess a little grasping is pardonable.) When the swarm had moved on, there was nary a crust left. But there was a sense on my part that we might have been able to get more free food if I had been able to get in the party.
It would have been child's play, really. Just a few sharp intakes of breath and distressed expressions whenever a Teen Board member reached for a slice, followed by the old, reliable warning, "Do you really think you should have another piece?" Or maybe I should have gone straight for the jugular: "Wow, I guess high school boys nowadays like a little heftiness in their girls, the way y'all are tearing into the food!" But I didn't ruin the pizza party, which meant no pizza for me to take home for the next day.
I wonder whether other species play the fat card when competing for food. Has a lioness ever stopped devouring an antelope carcass because one of the pride told her she was looking fat? Conversely, has a grandmother ever been jettisoned from the Thanksgiving feast because her hunting skills have eroded?
The Telegraph's teen board (high school kids, almost all girls, who produce a features page each week full of youthful insight and reportage) had its last meeting of the school year this past Monday, and the staffers who work with the teen board arranged to have a pizza party. bare cupboards can push a man to do a lot of strange things, and for a second I thought about knocking out one of the young women on the teen board and switching clothes with her so I could sneak into the pizzafest. But I had no wig to help me pull that off, and I knew that there would probably be several slices left over.
And I was right. Surplus pizza was brought into the newsroom, provoking an unseemly scrum that would have been understandable among vultures descending upon carrion but was less so among humans. (But then on the other hand, we do flounder about in the low-wage part of the journalism pool, so I guess a little grasping is pardonable.) When the swarm had moved on, there was nary a crust left. But there was a sense on my part that we might have been able to get more free food if I had been able to get in the party.
It would have been child's play, really. Just a few sharp intakes of breath and distressed expressions whenever a Teen Board member reached for a slice, followed by the old, reliable warning, "Do you really think you should have another piece?" Or maybe I should have gone straight for the jugular: "Wow, I guess high school boys nowadays like a little heftiness in their girls, the way y'all are tearing into the food!" But I didn't ruin the pizza party, which meant no pizza for me to take home for the next day.
I wonder whether other species play the fat card when competing for food. Has a lioness ever stopped devouring an antelope carcass because one of the pride told her she was looking fat? Conversely, has a grandmother ever been jettisoned from the Thanksgiving feast because her hunting skills have eroded?
posted by John Parnell at 9:13 AM
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