USA. A breakfast counter. The waitress recommended the biscuits and gravy, and when the plate arrived, I thought something had gone wrong in the kitchen.
I say this with shame. The dish looked like a construction site after rain. Pale mounds. Gray ladle-fall. Speckles I could not identify.
In my land, the eye eats first. A meal is arranged like a garden. This meal was arranged like weather.
"Is it… finished?" I asked, carefully.
"Honey, that's what it looks like."
The man beside me was already eating his. He did not look up. "Just try it."
I am a man who has charged hillsides at dawn. I raised the fork. I tried it.
I must now formally apologize to the biscuits, the gravy, the waitress, the kitchen, and the entire breakfast tradition of the American South.
It was magnificent. Warm. Peppered. The biscuit drank the gravy the way a field drinks rain — THAT is why it is shaped like that, you fool — and every mound I had insulted was a soft fold of comfort that my homeland, in eight hundred years, never once thought to invent.
"Well?" the waitress asked.
"I judged it," I confessed. "By its appearance. I am ashamed."
"Everybody does, hon."
Everybody does. A national dish that forgives you for doubting it. It expects the doubt. It waits for you on the other side of it.
Do not judge the gravy by its face. Judge yourself, for hesitating.
I order it every Saturday now. I no longer see the construction site. I see only the garden.
It was a garden the whole time. The eye must be trained.
This is so essential American.
"I don't know a single thing about Algeria, I cannot find it on a map, but you showed me a modicum of kindness and I am now ride or die for every single Algerian for the rest of my natural life."
Congress should be forced to retire at 70. Salaries should be $60K, the average American salary. They should pay a minimum of $300/month for healthcare with a $1,000 deductible, like we do.
To represent us, they should live like us.
@michaelFhurley Nahhh, bad take. They should have top 5 uniforms at all times based on colors and mascot. Their last set blew it with corny details (gradient, chest patch, etc.). These are everything good, just cleaned up.
In 125 seasons of Cleveland baseball, one man stands alone atop the leaderboard of games played. 🐐
With five innings completed, José Ramírez is the only active player to currently lead a franchise in games played.
#GuardsBall
There's nothing better than becoming best friends with the strangers sitting around you at a baseball game. You never learn each other's names, you just talk ball and get really excited together when your team does well. Such a cathartic experience