Ode To Oleo

It started with a dollop of mayonnaise the size of a double-scoop cone from Swensen’s.

(If you don’t remember Swensen’s, you can check Wikipedia while the grownups visit.)

The pretty young thing sitting at the counter was complaining that “places in LA never use enough mayonnaise. Can I please have some more?”

The guy making the sandwich dolloped a big ol’ glob onto the already well-mayo’ed bread. It was an absurdly huge dollop, an ironically sarcastic dollop, presumably intended to shut her up. Of course it didn’t.

“A little more, please?”

Eventually they reached deli détente. Let me tell you, even from where I was sitting, that sandwich looked bizarre. The mayonnaise stratum was about an inch thick. Like I said, I could see it from most of the way across the room.

The pretty young thing was burbling happily. Apparently, that’s how it’s done “back home”.

No, I’m not going to make a joke about American obesity. Besides, she was skinny.

I want to talk about childhood.

Unless you clicked to this page by accident, you already know I was born and bred right here in Los Angeles, CA. I grew up in the hippie-dippy sixties, whence carob came.

You don’t remember carob? Click over to Wikipedia again. We’ll wait. Carob was fairly disgusting, as I recall.

Be that as it may, no matter how far you’ve come or how much you changed in the process, the tastes and flavors of childhood go with you, tucked snugly into your subconscious next to “comfort” and “solace”.

Carob excepted, of course.

Make your own “comfort food” joke if you want to, I will not denigrate such a sacred phenomenon with base humor. Also I couldn’t think of a good one.

The pretty young thing mentioned above found happiness in her mayonnaise-squirting sandwich. It won’t make up for a failed audition (statistically likely) or a bad date (also possible, given how annoyed the guy with her looked) but comfort food does just that, and it’s a beautiful thing.

Now we can all go Wiki “oleo” and don’t grumble, it comes up in crossword puzzles all the time.