3/12/13: Plastic

"But people don't eat plastic!"

I read this in John Berendt's book, The City of Falling Angels. The quote was from a Venetian rat-poison manufacturer. Don't ask.

All that matters is, I read the passage just before lunchtime.

That day, lunch was rice and frozen vegetables. Yum. I made it as I've made it a thousand times before, with the expert touch necessary to boil rice and steam vegetables. It was a tough job, but I somehow ended up with a bowl of rice and veggies. Phew.

Then, when I sat down to consume this culinary masterpiece, I found something in it.

A little greyish triangle, it rested amidst my bowlful of white and green, contrasting the rice like a black sheep. Carefully, I excavated it by way of fork, as one might delicate surgery. I plucked the triangle from the tines, squeezed it speculatively in my fingers, and then set it down.

Plastic. A scab-sized triangle of grey plastic. But people don't eat plastic! I thought, in answer.

The best I can figure, I snipped it from one of my bags of vegetables while opening them, and it thereby migrated into my lunch. As it were, I've never before discovered any denomination of plastic in my food, in my twenty-nine years of eating -- and then this, not an hour after reading that prophetic statement.

Being a person, I did not eat the triangle of plastic.