An Open Letter...

3/19/10: Patagonia

…to the Muffin That Was Served to Me on Our Bus Ride From Ushuaia to Puerto Natales

Dear Muffin-That-Was-Served-to-Me-on-Our-Bus-Ride From Ushuaia to Puerto Natales,

When our bus driver – Argentine Mr. Rogers with a mustache, I had nicknamed him – handed you to me, I was slightly baffled. A muffin? For lunch? The lady who sold us our bus tickets had said lunch would be included on our ride, and since it was past noon I was expecting lunch – you know, a ham and cheese sandwich. But then you were given to me. You, a muffin. I held you in my hand and stared at you in a perplexed manner. You politely said nothing about my staring.

You were quite a small muffin, and I noticed that your little muffin top barely peeked over the edge of the muffin wrapper, as if the person who baked you had been a bit stingy when pouring the batter into the tin. You were plain yellow, almost looking a bit like cornbread, except with no bits of corn. No bits of anything, actually. Just a plain, small, yellow muffin. I wondered what you might taste like. I thought maybe I should save you for later, since we wouldn’t be getting into town until 10pm that night – and who knows if we would stop for dinner. I thought about how long a small muffin like you would be able to keep my stomach from growling and decided that it wouldn’t be that helpful to save you for later. Plus I was starving. All I had for breakfast that morning was a peach and half a bag of Lays potato chips. So I decided to eat you.

I unwrapped the wrapper carefully, so as to save any big crumbs from coming loose and falling into my lap. I pinched off a tiny piece in between my thumb and forefinger and noticed that you had quite a dense consistency – not springy or fluffy like I would have preferred, but in these situations you can’t be too choosy. I put that tiny piece into my mouth and chewed it slowly. You were quite dry and vague-tasting, and yes, very dense. There was no particular flavor that I could actually discern. You weren’t a blueberry muffin or a cornbread muffin or a chocolate chip muffin. No, you were just a plain yellow muffin.

I continued to pull off pieces of you and slowly eat you, with bottled water to help wash down the bites. Even though you weren’t the best tasting muffin in the world, I found myself quite forlorn when I looked down and realized I had finished eating all of you and all that was left in my lap was a small white wrapper and a smattering of little yellow crumbs. Argentine Mr. Rogers with the mustache came by shortly after to collect you wrapper, and I sadly gave it to him, knowing that I would never see you again.

Oh muffin, you were not delicious! Not at all. But I had to eat something. So I ate you.

Sincerely,
Zhou
_____________________________________________

Picture of the Day: Are we in Antarctica or Ushuaia? This sign is confusing me!

About these ads