Three weeks ago I was eating junk food from the food vendors at Citizens Bank baseball park in Philadelphia. Today, I’m eating healthy food out of a trash can in a train station in Washington DC. And they say you can’t teach and old dog new tricks.
It all began last night as I prepped for my trip to Washington to exhibit for StyleMatters. Some of you know I’m working with a nutritionist this month to get on track to healthier eating. This involves massive planning, shopping, chopping, and bagging, especially for lunches out and meals on the road. The night before my trek to DC, I stayed up late, well past my nutritionist’s recommended 10:30 bedtime. But damn it, it was worth it because I packed every last ingredient I would need to have breakfast, lunch, dinner–and snacks, mind you–on the road.
Well I carried that fluorescent green lunch box with total pride and self-congratulation onto the Amtrak train this morning and was sure I wouldn’t forget it there upon disembarking.
Why is it that the surer you are you won’t forget something, the greater the chances that you actually will?
Flash forward twenty minutes after my arrival to the train station. After fielding a cell phone call from a client as I sat and breathed in the air of the grand atrium of Union Station–this time congratulating myself for taking time to stop and smell the roses–terror struck me. Where was my pretty green lunch bag? On my god, I hadn’t. But I had! I left that darn thing on the train because I was so busy making sure I got off quickly to be polite to the passsenger next to me. Doh!
Well I don’t give up that easy. I asked a couple of policemen at a desk if they had seen a lunch box and they tried not to laugh at me. I snuck back onto the train and walked its shadowy aisles with my eagle eyes scanning for my prized goodies. I even enlisted the maintenance man’s help after he yelled out “hey you!” and explained that he was about to call in the train police on me.
All those search efforts, but I found nothing.
Then I headed for my last resort: the lost and found counter. Puh-lease. Who ever finds what disappeared in the lost and found? The words of the maintenance man echoed in my head as I strode in the direction of the counter. “What did the lunchbox look like? Was it new or beat up? I mean, would an employee have wanted to take it?”
I arrived and asked a diminutive old man in a blue uniform if this was where the lost and found was. He shrugged and pointed in the direction of an empty bellman’s cart. My worst fears had been confirmed. Not an organic food treat was to be found, not even an old pair of shoes or a wrinkled newspaper.
But wait! What was that? As I approached the bellman’s cart ever more closely, I discovered a secluded office with a big glass window. And there to my inglorious surprise was…my bright green lunch box!
“That’s mine!” I exclaimed to the women at the desk who was talking on the phone. She hung up and I apologized for interrupting her. “I’m just so happy to see my lunch!” I shared.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “We had to throw it out. No food allowed. My manager always says, no food.” And she walked over to the trash can to show me the entire contents of that gorgeous lunch I had packed with such care the night before around midnight: tupperwares of rice and spinach; baggies of hummus, strawberries, and balsamic vinaegrette; a plastic fork.
“I don’t mind,” I said with only a slight tinge of embarassment. Thank God I had been so clever as to bag and seal everything!
To my delight, the women colluded with me. “The trash bag is brand new,” she said, lifting it out to reveal its cleanliness after I had reclaimed my lunch items. And thus, my first ever lunch was eaten straight out of a trash can. And you know what? It tasted particularly good.
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