Fries n Gravy.

Totally blew my diet today.

Not that I'm actually on a diet or anything, just a conscious decision to eat a bit better.

But the siren song of fries and gravy got to me.

When I was growing up, a bright-eyed boy in a small northern town, the meal of choice was to go to the only restaurant in town and have a plate of fries and gravy. The only acceptable addition to the plate would be salt and pepper, and possibly some ketchup. (If your ketchup to gravy ratio is just right, it's quite tasty - but too much, and it tastes like tomato grease.) If someone had suggested adding cheese curds to the mix, the odds are that a fight would have broken out and someone would have gone home to their mommy crying like the French Canadian pansy they were. (Don't worry, I'm not insulting Quebec, just one particular kid who was from Quebec.) Of course I supplemented this wondrous meal with coffee and cigarettes, trying to be the cool adult while my friends stuffed their faces. (I didn't have to try hard, I was already that cool.)

Later on in my high school years, I would change from gravy to chili and cheese, but that was only for a short time, since gastrointestinal distress is frowned upon by everyone except teenage males.

So while explaining the tasty Ketchup-Gravy mixture in regular conversation, (Doesn't everyone talk about gravy?) I was overcome with a compulsion for the very substance of which I was speaking so eloquently about. I was swayed by my own argument. Damn I'm good.

Since I have the willpower of a blade of grass, a trip to the restaurant was unavoidable.

It didn't taste exactly as I remember, but it was good.
I had the coffee to go with it, like the days of old, but didn't light up a smoke.
(Nostalgia goes only so far.)

Later.