Last week JDub and Ashlee took Teens and I out to dinner as a belated wedding present, since there was a death in the family and they had to bail on going to Florida at the last minute. We went to a semi-classy downtown establishment-- not quite the kind of place where you need to be wearing a tie to feel like you belong, but the kind of place where the prices are listed in the menu as simply '14' or '24'-- no dollar signs, and certainly no cents, because fuck you and your broke ass if you think that extra 79 cents makes a difference on whether or not you order the Pappardelle Bolognese.
Something on the menu caught my eye immediately; a combination of words that I never knew could co-exist in the same sentence, unless it was as part of a list of my favorite foods: Tuna Spaghetti. Initially, I felt incredulous, like 2Pac must have felt before he was about to shoot a music video with Snoop Dogg. You put two of America's most wanted in the SAME muthafuckin' place at the SAME muthafuckin' time??? After that, I went through a wide range of emotions in a short span of time: confusion bordering on bewilderment; excitement; suspicion; trepidation; cautious optimism; and about 45 minutes later, ecstasy, and uncomfortably full. Is 'full' an emotion? (Judges: we'll allow it.) But as a few days have gone by, a new emotion has been gnawing at me: frustration, mixed with betrayal.
Guys, what the hell? These two things exist together on the same plate and nobody thought to tell me? I had to find this out for myself, 30 years into this crazy little thing we call life? I don't know exactly how long you're supposed to eat baby food for, but I figure that's at least 28.5 years of potential tuna spaghetti time that has been completely wasted.
So let me get this straight. I can spend my childhood getting mercilessly ripped on, because I didn't eat hot lunch until like 5th grade, and I brought raw tuna for lunch probably four out of every five days until then. In addition, I'm so easily pleased by spaghetti that before I moved to Kansas, I asked Lindsey to give me the recipe for the delicious spaghetti she had been occasionally cooking me, only for her and Myshawn to bust out laughing and tell me "Uhhh, dude....it's Market Pantry Original sauce".....but yet, nobody comes across tuna spaghetti somewhere in the world, puts two and two together, thinks "Hey, maybe Jum would like to know that two of his favorite foods on the planet can be co-mingled together and enjoyed in the same forkful" and fires me off a quick texty? NOBODY? I see how it is. No, no, really, don't apologize. It's cool.
**Important note: the above picture is a Google image search result. My actual dinner was much better looking, there were big hunks of mozzarella in it, and the presentation was tremendous....but I couldn't bring myself to take a picture of my plate in the restaurant. I'm not gonna straight up hate on people who do that kind of thing, since I don't want to alienate a large portion of my friend group....but you'll probably never see me post a picture of what I'm having for dinner on any given night. Probably because it would mostly be depressing; I wouldn't be a very valuable addition to the Instagram community. Pictures with captions like "KFC again tonight-- who says four times in one week is too many??" or maybe "Here's a rule of thumb that's always served me well: for every additional pizza roll above the 18 you already have on your plate, just add another eight seconds to your total microwave time" would probably just bum people out.**
