Food For Thought

You'd think I'd never been to college. I missed most of the stuff other people experience in college. When you struggle through a two-year college, bored and uninterested, then take a break for about 15 years before finishing your Bachelors and Masters degrees, you miss a lot. Like pot parties, frat parties, panty raids and long, esoteric discussions over coffee with other equally callow young minds.

I wouldn't change a thing. I got a lot more out of my education in my thirties than I ever did in my twenties and I loved every minute of it. But, I did miss a bunch of things that most college students try - like Top Ramen.

Yes, here's another convenience food that I had never experienced. But, after a long walk with my dog, an hour's hard swim with my sadistic Masters coach and two errands, I was so hungry that when I saw the Top Ramen package in the store and read that it becomes edible within three minutes, I grabbed it.

The package lies; it takes more than three minutes to boil two cups of water on my stove, then comes the three minutes of noodle cooking and another 10 seconds of mixing in the contents of the flavor packet - but who's counting?

It was exactly what I needed. It was hot and sustaining and salty and lightly chickeny. After a bowl of that, I was almost ready to pull an all-nighter.