One of the things that I tend to notice when I am walking around the city is the random pieces of food that are left alone on the street after the person carrying or eating them has left. I read years ago about a guy who thought it was completely bizarre that you could see a whole cucumber waiting at an intersection or a tomato sitting near the curb, but you do. It’s not as infrequent an occurrence as you might think.
Today, it was doughnuts. Not your usual glazed or jelly filled doughnut but the giant buns that my son used to call “Sleepy Buns.” He misunderstood the word cinnamon and thought, since he was usually sleepy when he was given one, that sleepy was what we all were calling them. They tend to be large, they are glazed, and they weigh in at about twice and a half the weight of any normal round doughnut with a hole. They are dense and they present a serious alternative to a healthy diet. Oh yes, and they are usually wonderful.
I was walking to the train just now and saw one of these buns lying in the middle of the street. Normally, I would remember that cucumber guy, scoff at the loss of a perfectly good bun, and keep walking, but as I kept walking, I saw another one, only this time, it was merely a shard of a sleepy bun. Walk a few steps more and there is another shard, and another. Together, they made up the better part of two buns.
So, what happened?
Somebody was starting to get self-conscious carrying an 800 calorie snack and decided to leave it for someone else? OK, that could happen, but how did the shards come to be there?
Somebody picked a fight and heaved the 800 calorie wonder at his or her assailant who reciprocated with the shards?
Or maybe somebody who started the altercation did so because the sleepy bun owner didn’t want to share? He or she, although I feel certain this was a guy event, had broken the first bun into pieces and the bun recipient tossed them at the owner of the second bun because getting a shard was a slight?
What will be interesting to see tomorrow, as I walk the same route back, will be to see if either the bun or the supplemental shards are still there. My bet is some happy rat will have carried it all off to his or her, and in this case I am leaning toward her, family waiting for dinner behind a wall someplace.
Sad bun owner, belligerent shard tosser, yet happy rat. At the end of the day, it’s just another story in the Naked City and I’ve got 8 million of them.
The Backpack Press 