They are piling up in the refrigerator, spilling onto the floor every time
the door is opened. Without creative action, they will take over the place.
They are piling up in the refrigerator, spilling onto the floor every time
the door is opened. Without creative action, they will take over the place.
Everyone orders one of those “deal meals” at a drive-through burger
place. Marvelous how they come up with those cute, rhyming names. You get a
burger, fries and drink in any one of three sizes. By the time you finish ordering,
you feel like you have been playing 20 questions: “Would you like cheese
on that? Would you like to super size it? How about big size it? What kind of
drink would you like with that? Would you like some pie with that? Would you
like ketchup?”
Normally, I say, “No thank you” to the ketchup. I like to drive safely.
Peeling the wrapper until it exposes just enough burger, juggling that, plus
removing the fries from the holder, then placing them into my mouth and working
the drink back and forth from the holder on the dash and into the mouth while
talking on the cellular phone is about all I can handle while negotiating the
Alexandria South Traffic Circle traffic.
But today, I have three minutes to park and eat, so I decide to make it a picnic
with ketchup.
“Yes,” I tell the nice young lady hiding in the sign.
Pulling up to the window, the price is paid, and the young lady who has come
from the sign to the booth says again, “Would you like ketchup?”
“Yes.”
She reaches beneath the window and pulls up a fist-ful of tiny pouches of ketchup.
I figure she is working ahead, getting enough ketchup for me, the guy that keeps
bumping my bumper with his bumper and
the 10 cars following him.
She unceremoniously dumps all the pouches over my burger and fries.
The time is too brief to explain to her I will use only two, three at the most,
and she should take back the
other 20.
Back at the office, I take the pouches to the refrigerator to place the red
pouches there for safekeeping until another burger day.
There are at least 250 pouches already there. It seems everyone in the office
has stowed away for another day.
How much does one of these little pouches cost the owner of the burger place?
A nickel? Is it possible that we have more than $10 worth of ketchup pouches
here?
That was a month ago. The pouches have continued to multiply. Something has
to be done. But what? Most of the employees of the Baptist Message grew up poor,
and wasting food was a crime. We cannot bring ourselves to throw away “perfectly
good” ketchup, as our mothers told us all leftover food is.
Maybe we could give them to some church having Vacation Bible School. The kids
could either eat the ketchup on cookies with their deep purple kool-aid, or
failing that, they could stitch the ends together and form bracelets and necklaces.
Perhaps we could use them to line our flowerbeds. True, they are small, but
in a couple of months, we will have enough to triple line any flowerbed in the
state.
Being a youth minister from years ago, I wonder . . . “Would that burger
place buy them back at half price?” They have to get their ketchup somewhere,
from someone.
If every church member asked for ketchup, used only what they need and gave
the rest to the youth ministry . . . Say the church has 100 families, with three
kids each. That could mean 500 burgers ordered every day. Twenty extra foil
and plastic pouches of ketchup a day times
500 – that could mean 10,000 pouches in no time at all.
Say the church finds a way to sell them back to Mister Burger Master at half-price,
or 2.5 cents each, lets see. Multiply 2.5 times 10,000, the total is .
. . Hey, thats real money. It could cover the amusement park trip.
Some of you may be saying, “Why not just tell the lady in the sign that
you only want two or three ketchups?”
Well, that is not the American way. In America, we take what we can get, whether
we need it or not. Count your loot, and get on down the road. Need is not a
factor. Get and get. Even if we have to build bigger barns or rent larger storage
sheds, take it. More is better. A lot more is a whole lot better.
Of course, at some point, what we think we possess begins to own us, and one
day, our lives will be required of us, and then, things do not matter. But in
the meantime, get and get.
Anyone have any extra french fries?