18/90, hot potato

Today, I pissed off an Asian couple in the library. This isn't exactly new.

I go as fast as the snow will let me, racing in my plastic-bottom shoes from my class to the library and down the stairs. It is 12:15. The lower level of the library has one microwave. It has not been cleaned in [insert your favorite number] years. Standing in front of it makes you smell like a mixture of theater-style popcorn and no-salt-no-fat-no-preservatives frozen chicken.

I have no choice. I stand in front of the microwave and wait for the girl to cook her Uncle Ben's Minute Rice and then the girl to cook her Southwest Chicken Entrée and then the woman the cut me in line to cook bagel. Yes, cook her bagel. I stand in front of the microwave and breathe it all in and think about the mythical diseases that come from standing this way, but I know that if I move the Asian couple will beat you again.

They beat me every Tuesday and Thursday. I wait as they cook their white rice. And then their water for tea. And then their beef tips. And then their three individual cups of vegetables in sauce. Not today.

I am starving because I had a smoothie and a pitcher of coffee for breakfast. I have peed nine times, losing every nutrient I took in. The sweet potato weighing down my backpack will take eight minutes to cook. It is my turn.

When I start stabbing the sweet potato with a fork, the skinny man realizes what's coming. He knows what he's waiting on.

I wrap the potato in a napkin and toss it into the microwave, where it comes to rest on, what? Dried tomato bisque? I set the dial for eight minutes.

After five, the man is getting nervous. His girlfriend is calling to him, her eyes pleading, her tiny stomach growling inside that enormous sweater. I think of how unfair it is that she can be so small when she will sit there and eat so much of that damn rice. I think of the paper napkin holding my potato and worry that it may burst into flames.

I rush to the microwave and grab the potato. The napkins disintegrates in my hand. Tiny flecks of its fiber are burrowing their flaming selves into my palm. I smile at the man. See? See how nice I can be to you? I have stopped my lunch three minutes early.

At my table, I saw the hard potato in half with a plastic knife. The core is still tough, and I tell myself that it is ok. I saved the Asian couple three minutes of waiting. I will save calories by not eating it. And, let's be honest, that's what this is all about.