Winter Break

Man so last winter when I was in Central America with my roommate, we were in Honduras and we stopped to get some lunch at this little shack somewhere. So the norm at places like this is basically they serve one thing: you tell them you want breakfast or lunch or whatever and that's what they give you. So anyway everyone there is eating chicken, so Geoff rolls up and orders chicken, which from the looks of things involves fried chicken, beans, lettuce and tomato salad, and some thick corn tortillas. Of course I'm still a vegetarian, but by this point I'm pretty used to eating some pretty crappy meals and having waiters and cooks look at me like I'm from Mars or whatever and I've stopped giving a shit, so in my broken Spanish I tell the woman I want the same thing, without the chicken.

She tells me no.

I'm pretty sure I haven't fucked up my order so bad she thinks I asked her a question, so I tell her again: same thing, no chicken.

No.

So I laugh, which I wish I hadn't done because I'm sure it came off condescending as hell for a gringo to be laughing at this poor woman in Shitsville, Honduras when she's about to go back and cook me a meal for ninety cents or whatever. But it's been a couple of weeks and I've gone through this rigamarole with cooks and waiters so many times that I have to laugh.

I try again. Of course she looks at me like I've lost my mind. Finally I point at Geoff and tell her I'll have the same thing.

So anyway, no harm done, I'll just give Geoff the chicken and eat my stupid beans and salad and I'll go get some fruit from the market later on. Anyway we pass the time making fun of me for being such a dipshit, and pretty soon the señora steps out from the little kitchen area. She's carrying two plates and she's got this big ass smile on her face.

She gives Geoff his lunch, then turns to me and smiles again, real big, and she says something real fast that of course I don't understand at all. She's staring at me as she puts the plate in front of me, and when I look down it's the same thing as Geoff got except instead of chicken she made me beef.

So I look up at her, and she's standing over me, she's absolutely beaming, and it hits me: she's proud of herself. She thought I didn't like chicken, so she went out of her way to make me beef.

Now at this point I'm not about to send the fucking plate back, and there's no way I'm going to give the meat to Geoff because I think I'd curl up and die if she saw me do this. So anyway I dig in, I start eating the beef and the beans and the salad and I'm drinking mango juice and sitting at this rickety little table and the sky is mostly blue and I am so glad I'm a vegetarian.