MY SHORT STORIES

YOU GAME?

I opened the fridge to remove the vegetables for the salad I was making. It's not everyday that you would find a twenty-something year old guy eating salad and vegetables but that's what I eat everyday and no, I'm not watching my weight.

I wasn't always a vegetarian, heck I still crave meat but after that incident I haven't touched any food product made of animal material again. Looking at my almost empty fridge it was easy to confirm that, with just a lot of water bottles, fruits and vegetables, a lot of people who have visited my apartment think that I am a health conscious guy.

I close the fridge after removing the necessary ingredients, which isn't much. Lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, olives and cucumber. Wait, did I say cucumber? I turn around and return the vegetable, it is a vegetable, right? I honestly don't know why I bought it in the first place, that thing is part of woman's beauty products. I placed my vegetables on the kitchen counter and sighed at the sight of the dreaded food, my mom never got me to eat even a spoon full when I was little. I remember yelling, I am not a goat!, at the top of my lungs at the sight of peas.

I grab a bowl from the kitchen cabinet and throw the vegetables in to rinse them, except for the pickles of course. I wonder if pickles are actually tiny cucumbers soaked in vinegar, sugar and salt.
I know my salad is going to be crappy, I should definitely watch the Food Network or get a cooking magazine, not a magazine that actually cooks but that has recipes in it.

As I am rinsing the vegetables I can't help but look out the window and take in the sight of the beautiful beach and that's when something catches my eye. I squint my eyes at the little dots for a while but can't make out anything so I grab my binoculars from the window seal and peer through them.
The binoculars are always on the window seal because I love... bird watching, yes that's it, bird watching. As I peer through the binoculars I realize that the little moving dots are actually penguins that were washed up shore, they seem to increase in number every year.

I return the now rinsed vegetables on the counter and retrieve the cutting board. I should probably tell you about the incident that ruined my meat eating days maybe, just maybe he won't find out. I grab the kitchen knife to start slicing and the action makes me grimace.

It was the butchery in town that started all of this, I am sorry but I can't mention the name.

The butchery that shall not be named was a new butchery that had just opened up, and like all new things that appear people flocked to it. At that time I wasn't that sort of person who would buy meat from a butchery, I was okay with Spar, Shoprite, Pick n Pay and those rare trips to Woolworth but a friend from work recommended that I try it.

I swear that my intuition warned me about it and if I had listened to it I would have been in Steers eating meat to my hearts content but against my better judgement I went to the butchery thinking, what would it hurt?.

There is something that I learned about shopping, if you want the freshest ingredients always go for things that are running out of stock or is it the things that are fully stocked? Anyhow I went to the butchery that shall not be named and boy was it packed. If you were a stranger in our town you would have sworn that it was one of those exclusive clubs.

I waited in the long queue, wondering whether the meat was a celebrity or something but little did I know.
The nursery rhyme Three blind mice kept playing in my head, especially the part about the farmer's wife. I should have known that that queue and the nursery rhyme were a sign from above for me to turn back, then maybe I would have been saved.

After suffering the horrendous queue, I made it inside. The butchery didn't smell like a butchery nor was it cold. The different meat were put in display behind the see-through glass, it was quite classy for a small town butchery with the garlics, lemon slices and those green herbs decorating the meat. To be honest I was quite impressed.