I remember my first childhood encounter with summer sausage.
I was Christmas shopping with my mother for my father at the local World Market, which was sort of a cross between a global grocer and gift store. He was a man of the world who enjoyed beer, so I thought a twelve pack of assorted beers from around the globe would be a perfect present. Upon checking out I saw a peculiar cylindrical item in the impulse buy lane. What was this? It was labeled sausage, which even in that young age I knew meant delicious spiced meat, yet it required no refrigeration! Remarkable!
A man grounded in the cynical reality of adulthood would know that any meat with an infinite unrefrigerated shelf life would be a horrible in both taste and nutrition, yet I was but a child still – filled with an endless supply of optimism and magical curiosity. It must be fantastic! Yes!
Of course I was spending all of my fortune at the time on the twelve pack, so I could not check out the summer sausage. Nor did I over the next two decades.
I am no longer that child of endless optimism, I am a stoic adult, so when I was at (retailer) the other day and saw something that reminded me of that lost sense of wonder, I decided to purchase it.
Not just one – but four! An unimaginable bounty!
“Remember when I used to have sardines for dinner?”
~ Notorious B.I.G.
We have summer sausage of four variety here- four! Quadruple what even my boundless young imagination could fathom!
Such quantity is enough to slow even the greatest decision maker in the quicksand of choice paralysis- but I decide to begin with “Original”, the way Nathaniel J. Summersausage intended the world to enjoy his nitrate-laden meats.
Here it is! Decades of build up, I’ve worked real hard for this. Within this vacuumed package is the mystery of an age.
I am almost one with the universe, every personal anxiety big and small melting away into nothingness! I hold no regret over harboring such foolish worries, no, for such suffering is bricks in the path to enlightenment. I cut off the slice of the heel, feeling so holy.
It tastes like salami, but bad.
It just
It just takes like salami except bad.
It just tastes like bad salami.
All this time is was just horrible salami. It’s just… bad. synthetic. bleak. boring. It’s just bad salami.
The nutritional label is printed directly on the sausage? Are you kidding me?
Why did I buy four of these? What’s wrong with me?
When I was a kid in high school I wrote a screenplay, it was a superhero piece. The protagonist, The Stoib, has teamed up with Robocop enough times in the past for them to be friends. So in this screenplay when Robocop showed up unannounced to help The Stoib fight evil, The Stoib was not speculative or alarmed, and the audience wasn’t either.
There’s a big twist in act 2. The protagonist and Robocop are investigating the dairy section of a local grocery store, and when The Stoib is distracted by an amazing sale on unsalted butter Robocop reveals his secret- that he is not Robocop. He is, instead, the Robot Who Cannot Love.
So when the Robot Who Cannot Love has The Stoib right where he wants him – in the dairy freezer – he is cackling mad.
“At last, Stoib,” read in a robot voice of course, “All this time I have never been able to feel love!” Heavy discordant music blares as The Stoib realizes it wasn’t Robocop after all.
“I cannot love you, so I must freeze you!” The Robot Who Cannot Love repeats over and over as he seals The Stoib into the dairy freezer.
Now, it’s been a tall decade since I wrote those ideas down in some long-gone desktop computer or math notebook, but as I hide my mistake in my freezer behind a fifth of Evan, I can’t help but sympathize with that old robot who couldn’t love.
Keep on Chooglin’