For several years I have mostly been eating
cheese sandwiches for lunch. I don’t
have much time to prepare lunch between lessons and I can’t really be
bothered cooking and cleaning dishes twice in one day. So a cheese sandwich is a very easy way to
fill my stomach. I don’t add any butter,
or vegetables. It’s not a cheese and
butter sandwich, or a cheese and pickle sandwich, or a cheese and tomato
sandwich. It’s a cheese sandwich.
But last week I found myself thinking about
making lunch, and sighing. “Oh
God, not another cheese sandwich,” I thought.
I searched for some tuna fish, but couldn’t find any. I looked in the fridge for some tofu, but
there was a tofu-sized empty spot on the shelf.
I looked for some soup, but the cupboard was bare.
My 2,000th cheese sandwich
stared at me, ugly and cold and unwelcoming, and I had no choice but to accept
it. I ate the cheese sandwich, and then
a packet of natto to help me forget the taste.
My sudden realisation that I hated cheese
sandwiches reminded me of a story from the Bible. The Israelites had been slaves in Egypt. But they listened to the advice of Moses and
escaped into the desert. When they
arrived there was little to eat and the people complained to Moses, “When we
were in Egypt we had fish and bread and vegetables to eat. Why have you taken us here where there is nothing
to eat? Are we to starve here?”
God heard their complaints and caused
cheese sandwiches to fall from Heaven. They then ate the cheese sandwiches every day
for forty years until they reached a new homeland. I’ll bet that they felt the same way about
cheese sandwiches that I do!
Well, no, not really. It wasn’t cheese sandwiches in the Bible
story. It actually says that it rained
manna from Heaven. Manna was a kind of
wafer made with honey.
I have been making more of an effort to
vary my lunch diet recently. When I
have time, I make the evening’s dinner salad at lunchtime, and eat some of it
with my lunch. I always have kimchi in
the fridge to eat as a side dish. And I
found out where my wife had hidden the tuna fish. The cheese sandwich rainy season is over.
Vocabulary:
can’t be bothered (doing something) – feel
that it is not worth the effort or are too lazy to do something
to sigh - to let out a long deep breath,
expressing an emotion such as disappointment
bare – empty; having no objects on it
to vary one’s diet – to eat different kinds
of food, not just the same thing or few things
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