Saturday, November 17, 2007

Milk police


In a fit of altruism, Roommates A&J and I returned to serve meals to homeless seniors today. Today's lunch smelled and looked delicious! Salad, squash, turkey chili and cornbread for the main meal, with a dessert of pears.

Each of us had a different role. Roommate J made sure all the empty plates made it smoothly to be filled, Roommate A passed out the bowls of pears and I had the very important task of handing out cartons of milk. I didn't realize that milk was such a hot commodity, but apparently there usually are attempted milk thefts so it was my duty to make sure each person received only one.

Like our first visit, it was a nice way to spend some time. I was reminded of how privileged I am when one woman came to line excitedly and exclaimed, "I'm so hungry! I didn't eat yesterday." She proceeded to go through the meal line three times.

But the milk really was surprisingly in demand. One gentleman's cup of milk had been upturned by another diner so he came to ask for another cup. We had handed out all the single-serve cartons, so Roommate A improvised and poured him a cup from the kitchen stash. The diner then proceeded to pour four heaping spoonfuls of sugar into his milk and took it back to his table. The Roommates and I looked at each other in disbelief.

I also witnessed one patron who took his milk and poured it over his bowl of pears, then mashed up all his cornbread into the mixture. It was sort of like a pear cobbler/bread pudding concoction and he seemed very pleased with his creation.

After we served all the meals and cleaned up the kitchen and dining room, we ate our own lunch and relaxed a bit. While discussing whether or not our waiter might have been an F-to-M transsexual, the synapses in my poor brain misfired and I suggested he was a "female impostinator." Poor dumb panda.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

FEMALE IMPOSTENATOR is my new favorite, although we do need to agree on the proper spelling. and shouldn't it be "Poor Dumb PANDA!!!!