The worst burrito
Once upon a time in the rurals of New Mexico I was at a laundromat. Before jumping into the story I’d just like to admire the phrase “Once upon a time”. It’s one of my favorite story openers. Whoever came with the wording deserves props. Some might argue that it’s overused, but I like the simplicity of it. In 4 words it communicates that you are about to hear a story, a story isn’t concerned with using fancy words. It tells the world that this is a story solely for the sake of narrative. The author has life experience to share and they’re giving it to the audience raw. The best stories in the world are simple and can be told around a campfire; the phrase Once upon a time exhibits this sentiment.
Anyways, I had just graduated college and was doing a cross country road trip as a vacation celebration. Every night I slept in the trunk of my spacious Subaru Outback. Since I was a debtor (recent college graduate and debtor are synonyms, lol. Not lol as in funny, but lol as in laughing out the pain), I couldn’t afford the luxury of a hotel. This was day 9 of the eventual 14 day journey and during that time I hadn’t showered.
By day 6, my hair had become pretty grimy. Essentially it had so much grease I could style the hair in any direction and it stuck. The whole coiffure (a synonym for hairdo) looked gross. Instead of finding a way to wash my hair, my creative solution was to buy a $2 hat from Goodwill. The problem was then out of sight and out of mind.
This worked for my hair, but obviously couldn’t work for my clothes, which by day 9 smelt gross themselves. According to the law you should wear clothes while in public, so removing the problem wasn’t a viable option. The smell was at the point wear it was hard to concentrate. You may question how clothes can go dirty that quickly, here’s the answer: frequent hikes, lack of car AC, and the southern humidity. There was a lot of sweat on the trip and neither my lack of deodorant which I forgot to pack nor the fibers in my clothes could keep up.
Dot dot dot, I found myself at a laundromat in New Mexico.
When out of the red (New Mexico is a very dry state, so “out of the red” seems more accurate than “out of the blue”) a little Hispanic girl comes to me and asks if I would like to buy a breakfast burrito. I asked her how much. She meekly answered $3. I then asked her how big. She indicated with her hands it was a respectable size burrito.
Under normal circumstances I would have bought the burrito as a gesture of goodwill. 3$ is very cheap and the girl seemed somewhat nervous. However, under these circumstances I was just hungry, so I bought the burrito under that intent. I said sure.
The girl leaves and returns with a tin-foil-wrapped burrito. She hands it to me and I pay in quarters because I had lots of quarters (remember I was at a laundromat). As I’m opening the tinfoil, the girl darts out the door. Inside the tinfoil, the burrito doesn't look right. It was made of 3 ingredients: a tortilla-shell? (not a tortilla-shell, but a tortilla-shell?), under-cooked meat (which smelled like dog-food), and the color white (which may have been cheese). The color white and the meat molded into a tube shaped unit which didn’t fit well with the tortilla-shell? The burrito was very cold.
Through the window of the laundromat I saw a white van skid away at an intentionally high speed. We can only assume the van contained the little girl and her supplier. I've made a horrible mistake, I thought to myself. I’m pretty sure I’d been scammed. On the bright side though, at least my scammer had the decency to scam me to my face and not over the phone.
Here’s the sad part of the story: you know you’re frugal with money if after buying the worst burrito, you eat it. I didn’t eat it all, just enough for a meal’s worth of calories. I’m proud to say that in spite of the awful taste, I didn’t throw up.
