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Jon?

Noodles
Friday. 7.12.13 8:34 pm
Although the aroma hadn�t quite left my clothes, I missed that smelly bus I�d spent the prior night on shortly into my stay in Pittsburgh. The fifteen minutes I spent sneezing in the back of my friend�s ex-girlfriend�s car had something to do with that. James, her cat, sat in the front passenger seat.

�I swear � I�m going to kill that boy,� Chloe, Cordell�s ex-girlfriend, exclaimed as we climbed her front porch. �You know �Dell didn�t say nothing about you being allergic to cats,� she continued while simultaneously looking back at me with a smile and opening the front car door.

�Don�t worry about it, Chloe � I�m just grateful to get off a bus after seven hours.� After a week of sulking around both D.C. and Baltimore, I put $20 on a bus ticket to Pittsburgh. The plan was to somehow make it to California and find work until I could return to Harvard in January. I�d been applying to jobs all across the country, figuring that if I found something before I made it out to California � say in Chicago or Detroit, --I�d settle there. �Really though, thank you for letting me crash here for a few days. Just let me know if there�s--�

�Anything you can do?� She interrupts before flinging the unlocked front door to her home open. �First of all, help me take this shit,� she nods to a pile of road safety signs, �back to my car. It�ll save me an assload of time in the morning before work.�

�No problem,� I say while dropping the gym bag with half of my belongings on the ground. The other half was in a single suitcase in the trunk of her car. �I can move them for you. Just say when.�

�When.�

She�s giving me a grin that would make Gaston himself proud. �Really though, I�ve got to be at the pet shop in about thirty minutes for the afternoon shift.�

She was restless. Her blue eyes told me so. I figure it was in those moments -- watching her wince as she bent down to grab a stray sign � that the guilt hit me. After a morning spent holding up various signs at a construction site, Chloe drove downtown to pick me up from the bus stop instead of taking her customary hour and a half nap between jobs. In the afternoon, she typically worked a second job at Petsmart.

�I got it,� I say as I reach for the stray sign in her hand.


�Thanks. The trunkdoor isn�t locked, so just go �head and place them in there.�

�You hungry, Jon? We got some food in the kitchen,� she says when I return. �You�re welcome to whatever you see up in the cupboards as long as you make me some.�

Trying to decide between the three different kinds of ramen noodles in her cupboard brought back a lot of childhood memories. I still remember watching my mom boil water to cook noodles that cost a quarter three, sometimes four times a week. Although she always had a way of making the best of our EBT-sponsored food seem normal, twenty years later I get queasy everytime I see ramen noodles.

Staring at those familiar beef and chicken caricatures on the front of the ramen packaging had me feeling a little funny. The anger I had for my mom for not supporting my decision to leave both Harvard and a relatively good gig on a Presidential campaign rapidly transformed into guilt. All this time I told myself that she just didn�t �get it.� Standing in a kitchen with a pantry filled with noodles, boxed mac n� cheese, canned creamed corn, I couldn�t help but feel that my indignation was misplaced.

Perhaps it was me that didn�t �get it.�
3 Comments.


:)
» Zanzibar on 2013-07-13 04:46:25

I guess sneezing is better than your throat closing up or developing a full-body case of hives.
» randomjunk on 2013-07-13 06:33:14

my dad and i used to eat ramen at home, after my parents got divorced. it became a comfort food for me, because we'd bond over bowls, and besides, he turned it into ridiculously good thai noodle soup.
» thaitanic on 2013-07-31 06:42:25

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