Running With Scissors

Life Is Like A Box Of Nuggets

When food producers want to cut excess fat from meat trimmings or processed meat, they do a nifty little trick. They place the trimmings on a centrifuge and apply heat so that the fat melts off the meat.

Then, they scrape off the now-fatless meat mush, commonly called "Pink Slime" for its appearance, and add it to a huge pile of thousands upon thousands of other mushed meat to flash freeze. It is then given a nice ammonia bath to kill any remaining bacteria, mix it together, and add it to ground meat.

Said ammonia-laced, pink-slimmed meat constitutes about 70% of all American meat products, mainly because it is cheaper. It winds up in your local supermarket ground beef, hamburgers, Hot Pockets, that complementary chili they give you at 7-Eleven, and yes, chicken nuggets as well. There could potentially be meat from a thousand different chickens in one nugget alone thanks to pink slime.

Life, Peter Katz thought as he held one soggy Wendy's piece of breaded chicken in front of his face, was like a box of nuggets. It was definitely laced with ammonia, and too much of it will definitely kill you. Life also resembled a nugget by the fact we are not entirely sure how many chickens it contains. Definitely more than one.

Also like a nugget were the hundreds of tumors lacing his body, formed out of thousands of dying cells clogging his...everything.

There was a nugget of truth in what Sarah had told him before, and it was nagging him from the back of his brain. Peter neglected to pay attention to that part of his brain as it often tried to lead him astray. It constantly demanded him to eat a proper meal, be kind to his elders, and be a general buzzkill all around. The voice was usually a whisper, but this time, it was yelling at him through a megaphone.

"Remember, you will die!"

It tolled like a bell, ringing and reverberating, and making that noise from "Down With the Sickness" over and over again. It was torture.

Life was like a box of nuggets—without barbecue sauce, it was bland and soggy.

"Are you okay, Mr. Katz?" said a voice that was definitely not Peter's malnourished conscience. "You've stared at that nugget for about an hour now."

Across from Peter, James Truman-Conelly dipped his fingers in a borderline empty packet of hot sauce in an attempt to get that last bit pooled at the corner that you can't quite get no matter how you tried.

"I'm not hungry," said Peter. He was not many things. Not comfortable. Not happy. Not healthy. Two of those things could be chalked up to the fact he was sitting in a run-down Wendy's in the middle of a low-income area. We will let you decide which two it was.

James Truman-Conelly eyed Peter's nuggets with a greedy gleam on his eyes. Subtlety was not his forte. He already had at least three empty nugget boxes stacked next to him with a splotch of sauce soiling his second chin.

If Peter had no appetite then, looking at James Truman-Conelly weaned him off food forever. He dropped the soggy nugget in the box and slid it towards James Truman-Conelly.

Life, Peter thought, was like a box of nuggets. Everyone wants to take a bite out of yours.

"Man, why do you eat so much junk? You're already morbidly obese, diabetic, and poor. I honestly wanna know," said Peter as he watched James Truman-Conelly devour his food with the panache of a drunk circus elephant.

"Why do we do anything, really? Is for our ultimate happiness. We live in a world filled with sadness and sorrow, only divided by brief moments of joy. But the universe is bent on taking those away from us. It is only the happiness that we seize for ourselves that count. In an increasingly meaningless existence, we must find meaning for ourselves. Not understanding our fleeting and inconsequential existence is, on itself, ignorance onto death. Realizing this and falling into despair in a vat of nihilism is also sickness unto death. It was Kierkegaard that said that we must construct meaning for ourselves, and to take a leap of faith. For others is a job, career, religion. For me, is the homely comfort of a chicken nugget. That is my truth," said James Truman-Conelly.

Or at least, that's what he wanted to say, but because his mouth was full, he only said "chicken good."

"Yes, chicken good, my friend," said Peter with a sigh. "But diabetes is bad, isn't? If you don't stop, you will-"

"Die, I know," interrupted James Truman-Conelly. "But I love nuggets. I love hamburgers. I love French fries and shakes. I love food. If I can't do anything I like, then what's the point of living?"

Peter slammed his hand on the table, alerting a nearby Korean war veteran who, mistaking the sound for artillery fire, jumped to the sauce station to use it as an improvised trench. He then proceeded to throw mustard packets at a nearby Korean-American family, the Moons. Since the Korean war was still technically not over as both parties had not signed a peace treaty, some historians believe this to be a war incident, and as such, can be found on Wikipedia as "The Great Mustard Assault of 2019".

"That's it! You get it!" said Peter. "If you can't do what you love, then what's the point of living?"

"I guess," said James Truman-Conelly. "Where are you going with this?"

Peter stood up from his seat, ignoring the one-sided battle going on behind his back. "I can't do the things I love. Like not dying, or not having pain, or be with a lady, or smoke. I literally can't do anything Peter Katz is known for."

Incidentally, Peter Katz was mostly known for crashing a Miami Marlin's game and calling Derek Jeter a cuck over the microphone during the national anthem. He blamed an over fermented kombucha for his outburst. He lied.

Life, Peter thought, was like a box of nuggets. Neither of them should have any Derek Jeter on them.

"So what are you going to do?" asked James Truman-Conelly. He wanted to stand up dramatically too, but, you know. Fat. "You're going to undergo treatment like that nice mean lady said, right?"

Peter placed his hands on his waist, looking for a way to express his wicked thoughts. Thinking something is not the same thing as saying it. A person might think their wife looks fat with that green dress that made her look like the Jolly Green Giant, but do try to say it, and you will find yourself on the receiving end of a slap and a few nights sleeping on the couch.

"I wanna kill myself," he said. "I don't wanna wait my days on a ward full of pity and despair. I have the right to avoid pain and suffering and wasting my hopes on a situation that won't improve. I have the right to a dignified death."

Silence fell between the two. Around the two, however, the battle was still raging on, and in fact, it had taken its first casualty in the shape of Consuela Gomez, a Dominican maintenance manager that slipped on a squirt of ketchup.

Life, Peter thought, was like a box of nuggets. It ends too quickly and leaves you wanting for more.