Chicken Skin

Y'know, I like chicken. Normally. My mom tends to fry/grill it up in a pan with a little bit of olive oil and then she adds garlic and salt and pepper and some other spices and then she puts a lid on it and steams it, and that shit is delicious. Flavorful, tender, all-white meat. One of my favorite dishes. And I like chicken nuggets and chicken tenders and chicken fingers and chicken strips and all that, I mean, who doesn't? I would still order the Happy Meal if I wouldn't get funny looks at Burger King (Is BK the Kid's Meal?), but you couple that with the fact that you only get about four bites of chicken and a couple of fries and the fact that they're trying to discontinue the toys that come with the meal, well, it kinda sends the whole operation to hell.

Regardless, I like chicken. A lot. Old bay wings, those are great.

I was disappointed today, then, when I tried eating the chicken in the cafeteria. I know, it's cafeteria food, so it's not really fair to judge it. It's like pointing to a garbage dump and saying, "Wow, that's really disgusting." It might be disgusting, but it comes with the territory and that's that. But I ate a little bit of my chicken today and wasn't happy with what was on my plate.

I ate with a fork and a knife because I was sitting with the professors and I wanted to act all professor-like, so I used ten-dollar words like "presumptuous," "impertinent," and "derelict." I carved up the piece of chicken a little bit because, well, that's how you eat it when you're using a fork and a knife. I got about half way through the piece and got annoyed because it was bland and there wasn't much meat on the bone. I just kept picking at it and picking at it, and then I moved on to something else. It might have been chicken noodle soup (told you I love chicken).

I turned back to my pile of half-carved chicken, which was covered in a bit of the skin. It kinda just made a heap on my plate. It wasn't very appetizing. Some crumpled bone and bits of meat, but mostly just folded-over pieces of skin. It wasn't gag-inducing gross, not by a long shot, but I looked at it and said to myself, "Self, you probably don't want to eat that."

It's a shame. A good chicken is hard to find. Flannery O'Conner said that. If she didn't before, she has now. If it's on the Internet, it must be true.