November 6, 2004

The Chicken Dinner

By George K. George

Howard opened the freezer door to which a gust of freezer mist poured over him. When the mist cleared he examined his options for dinner that evening. There were two chicken and gravy dinners remaining to one Salisbury steak dinner, all stacked neatly beside a gallon of vanilla ice cream and various leftovers he planned not to eat for millennia.

This man Howard loved variety and loved planning ahead. This was why he bought about one-half dozen tee-vee dinners containing various sides and desserts each week. He ground his teeth into his lower lip in indecision as the cool mist oozed out onto his arms, giving him goose bumps. To ensure he could make the same decision again tomorrow, he reached for one of the chicken dinners, leaving the Salisbury steak for another night. He slammed the freezer door and a few small wisps of mist dissipated around the door.

Holes were poked with a fork in the cellophane wrapper in all partitions except the cherry dessert as the instructions dictated, though Howard knew the drill. With the microwave oven humming at two intermittent frequencies, Howard decided to start with the wine that he kept in his refrigerator and that flowed from a foil pouch packaged in a cardboard box. Soon, one and a half small cups of wet white wine had been imbibed, and the chicken dinner with gravy and mashed potatoes began steaming and emitting popping noises from inside the radiation chamber.

Living alone wasn’t bad living at all, he thought as the fragrance of the gravy that was slowly hydrating the chicken breast as it cooked filled the air in the small kitchen. He even thought this smell was better than that of one of Polly’s dinners that she cooked for him when they were married. The television from the other room suddenly became audible through the beeping of the microwave oven. The dinner was done. All that was needed was some cellophane removal.

Howard’s apartment had a small dining area adjoining the living space. He would often marvel at the spaciousness of it. Comparable to the suburban home he shared with his then-wife, it was, he thought. He sat, peeled the cellophane back, took his fork in his hand and prepared to bless the chicken and potatoes by God.

“Dear Lord, bless this...” he started murmuring with a bowed head. He stopped and opened his eyes on the steaming food. He thought about the next word he was about to murmur, “meal.” He murmured it, paused, and murmured it again, tasting the word. He did this from time to time; examine the audible qualities of a word in the English language. “Problem” reminded him of potatoes being peeled and “applicable” reminded him of a Band-Aid coming off. “Meal,” he said louder, but then tasting the word and finding it pitiful-sounding, he lowered his head and moved his eyes from side to side while saying it softer and with an interrogative tone, “meal?”

He didn’t recall having a problem with this word in the past—each time he sat down to a tee-vee dinner, but now the word sounded sad and really quite pitiful. This affected him so much that he dropped his fork with a clatter onto the table and ran his fingers through his hair.

“Meal, meal, meal...” Howard chanted slowly, gritting his teeth from the sound the word made. How truly sad this word was. The television mumbled something in the background, but Howard did not hear it. His attention was on this word, and also the growing sorrow that it brought him. Like it felt good to cry dry tears after his divorce, Howard’s grief for the pronunciation of “meal” did not cause him pain. Instead, it was a feeling of release, and it was now spreading throughout the room.

He opened his eyes to a new perception of his apartment. He saw the sofa, on which no one had sat in months. The sofa was worn and in “sad” shape as it was, and its lack of use amplified the sadness. It was prepared for persons to sit on it, no stray newspapers would need repositioning, and the cushions were neatly in place. Sadly, however, no one probably would for another several months. Items of disuse were very sad indeed.

The sound of the television crept back into Howard’s field of awareness. It sat just a few feet from the long-since vacant sofa and was delivering a situation comedy to nobody. Howard didn’t seek out having anyone’s company, and this was because he rarely enjoyed it. But, to see the television speaking to no one took his sadness a step further. Electricity was being used, he thought, to drive a device that no one was using to any great extent. Even the inefficiency saddened him. “What of these actors? Wasting their time on me.” True sorrow filled Howard’s heart.

Then the bomb hit him. He was supposed to be eating a chicken dinner. He focused his eyes on the dinner that had now ceased to steam with appeal. “Meal,” he said again and shivered. He looked at the neatly cut piece of chicken breast, with almost square edges. A machine must have done that, he thought. He imagined the chicken that the piece of breast might have come from, and how it must have played like chickens do. What do chickens eat, he thought? Corn. That was it. The chicken ate meals just like he did. The word would not be destroyed. The chicken might have been capable of having friends, but since Howard enjoyed not having many of these, his sadness for the chicken breast lifted slightly on this thought. The chicken that this very breast came from was raised, butchered, packaged, bought, heated and eaten as a meal. Truly sorrowful, it was. Howard mourned wholeheartedly for this chicken and the chicken still in his freezer.

Still not resuming his prayer for the meal, Howard’s attention moved to the side of carrots on his divided plastic tray. All of the carrots slices were of equal size, which led him to believe that smaller or larger carrots might have been discarded in the processing of this chicken dinner. He never purchased the very large tee-vee dinners for fear he would throw some of it away. Wastefulness—anyone would agree, thought Howard—is a very saddening thing.

Nothing struck him with much sadness concerning the mashed potatoes right away. Then, he envisioned how the factory in which this dinner was created might distribute these dollops of whipped potatoes on each tray. He saw a large chute stemming down from a larger funnel, where the mash would be fed into the contraption. In Howard’s mind, as the trays passed by on the conveyor belt a control mechanism would allow the correct amount of potatoes to be pooped out of the chute. Automation in the food industry now seemed so tragically sad to him.

Finally, there was the cherry dessert. But, by this time he was getting fairly ravenous. This was made especially true with the vision of red, sugary goo poured over black cherries and a graham cracker crust staring up at him. There was nothing too sad about this tasty feature of the chicken dinner. Its color offset the drab theme of the carrots, potatoes and chicken and gave the meal a cheerful overtone. It crept into his mind that people somewhere had planned this effect in a boardroom. People making plans about his meals almost made him sad, but now he was extremely hungry. He lifted his fork, scooped up a cherry, and lifted it to his mouth. It and the rest of the dinner complemented their own amounts of sorrow and were utterly delicious.