Everyday Absurdity

It is finally summer. After months of mild weather the normal hell of the DC summer has decided to show up. It is September and too late for this type of heat. I was prepared for it in July and August but it never came, and now it is here and it is late. The other day I saw a woman raking leaves. She was making large piles of dead leaves but the trees in her yard were full of bright green leaves and it was 90 degrees and humid as the banks of the river Styx. It was absurd to see. Made more so by the fact that none of her neighbors yards had enough leaves to even make a small pile, but here she was making large piles of leaves. I wonder if this is her ritual. To wait for Indian summer and clear the ground so that the Autumn leaves can fall and rest on her yard through all of winter, spring, and summer and then next year she will do it all again. That is the only way there could have been that many leaves. 

This is something I saw during my daily life. It was absurd. It was part of life. I didn't have to make it up because it was happening right in front of me. I had a friend tell me once I might make a good stand-up comedian because I tell absurd stories, and it started me on wondering if I attract the absurdity or if I seek it out. I told this friend a story of Baltimore and how I am angry that they have good food. The fifth best BBQ ribs, the best BBQ chicken, the second best fried chicken, and the second best pizza I've ever eaten all exist in and around Baltimore. It is a city full of great food, and it is affordable. Now about that fried chicken. 

This was the story I told my friend. This all really happened. I had gone to an Orioles game with my friend. We do this. We travel around the country going to baseball games, and once a year we go to Baltimore. We get drunk at Pickles, go into the Orioles game, and generally make a nuisance out of ourselves at the game. It is one of the few days during the year we completely cut loose. It is Baltimore and nobody cares in Baltimore. That is another reason I kind of like the place. It is a place that is proud of being weird and tries hard to be weird and if you go up there and act weird no one will think anything of it. 

So we went to the game and while at the game I told my friend about these commercials they have for Royal Farms. Royal Farms is a gas station, but they sell fried chicken and they have this commercial with one of the Ravens players sitting there and eating fried chicken. If it were any other city this commercial might be seen as racist, but it is Baltimore and therefore it is a Ravens player eating fried chicken, and telling you to eat fried chicken, and it is a commercial that works, because I wanted to eat Royal Farms fried chicken. 

I know where there is a Royal Farms in Baltimore. Actually I know where there are three, but this happened to be the one closest to Orioles Park and we stopped there. I went and order my fried chicken, I got two piece dark, and cowboy fries because I didn't know what cowboy fries were but the sign told me to try them and I figured a sign wouldn't lie. I went to the cashier and paid. I thought I used a twenty and she insisted that I used a ten. I got angry and the choice was to take $10 back and not get my chicken or accept the lesser change and eat the chicken. It also goes to show that paying with a credit card isn't all that bad, because then you're always giving them the exact amount.

After that brief argument I went to pick up my chicken and was told they were out of cowboy fries. I was disappointed because I was eager to find out what cowboy fries where, but I know what they aren't. They aren't potato wedges because they had plenty of those. I asked for coleslaw instead and I get that a fork and eventually my fried chicken, and it looks and smells delicious. 

My friend and I take out food back to my car and as soon as we sit down this disheveled looking woman comes over and knocks on my window. I attempt to ignore her at first because I want to eat my fried chicken and I consider it quite rude to bother someone when they are trying to have dinner. People don't come knocking on your kitchen table, do they? She didn't seem to want to leave without and acknowledgement of her existence so I rolled down my window and talked to this wanderer of the night. 

She told this story about getting out of the hospital and how she had just gotten treated for some disease and her husband couldn't come pick her up because his work truck was broken down, and when she said this she pointed at a truck that was right across the street which begs the question of if that is where the truck was parked why couldn't she walk home. She finally got to her point and it was that she wanted money to buy food (wine). As I was fairly certain I had gotten ripped off by the cashier in the Royal Farms I wasn't eager to part with anymore of my money, but I offered her my coleslaw and after a minute of considering she took it. As this is what she claimed to ultimately want she should have been happy to receive half my food. If I had gotten the cowboy fries I doubt I would have parted with anything. Mostly because I didn't believe her story, and she proved that to be the case when she returned the coleslaw and came out with a bottle of Boone's Farm, Wild Irish Rose, or some other cheap gas station wine. 

Finally with all the distractions aside it was time to enjoy my chicken, and enjoy it I did. The skin was crispy and held the juice inside as good as any fried chicken I'd ever had. The meat was tender and taste, but lacked the overall freshness of a place like Stroud's in Kansas City (that is the first best fried chicken I've had). It was good fried chicken that had everything that makes fried chicken good, but it was in Baltimore, and it makes me angry that I can't get fried chicken like that around here and there is no good reason for it. The entire experience was so Baltimore. I possibly got ripped off by a cashier, they were out of the side dish they charged me for, a homeless prostitute begged for money to buy alcohol, and in the end the experience was a net positive because the reason we went there, fried chicken, was good. 

Life is absurd, but does that absurdity happen to me because I am me or do I just notice it more than other people or would normal people not go to a Royal Farms at 11:00 PM before driving home from an Orioles game? There are a lot of questions in there and I don't rightly know the answer to them. The only thing I do know is it is a strange mad world, and crazy things happen around us every day and if we open our eyes and notice them we'll soon see that the world doesn't make a bit of sense nor does it have to. It is fried chicken in Baltimore.