You Have a Different Scenario, Perhaps?

I have been a bit under the weather this weekend, with a back-to-school virus. I am usually able to  avoid the first sickness, but both my boys brought it home. I set out for some hot-and-sour soup this afternoon in an effort to ease my symptoms.

Like John Travolta as Bud in Urban Cowboy told Aunt Corene after he broke his arm down at the plant, when Sissy had run off with Wes, the ex-con mechanical-bull controller, "Cornbread tastes real good when you're hurtin'," right after Aunt Corene said, "Y'all live like pigs!" and made some individual tuna salads with onion instead of with apples and pecans, the way Sissy liked it...hot-and-sour soup tastes real good when you've got a cold.

Little did I know that I would have to wait twenty-five minutes for my hot-and-sour soup. That's uncalled for. Seriously. There were only three customers. I ordered my take-out soup. Then an eating-in couple ordered General Tso's Chicken and Chicken and Broccoli with a side of hot-and-sour soup. They got their side soup before I got mine. Five minutes before. So they only waited twenty minutes.

You would think that little gal hopped on a slow boat to China, wrestled a wizened Panda for the bamboo shoots, then planted the soybeans and waited for them to grow, harvested them, curdled the soy milk, pressed it into blocks, cut it into cubes, then trekked through a forest to forage for mushrooms, then hatched a chicken from its egg, raised it with love, chopped off its head, boiled it, poured off the broth, gathered all ingredients, hopped another slow boat back from China, set the fixin's on the counter, and waited for the teenage boy to finish his video game before ordering him to make the soup.

At least that's the scenario that passed through my mind while I coughed up my right lung waiting for my soup.