Since I had decided that I was no longer going to try to get the babe, since I knew that only lead to my
misery and trouble, I realized I could stop exercising. I no longer made an effort to hold my gut in, I let it all hang
out.
"I'm hungry," I announced loudly to anyone who would hear me.
"Then eat something," shouted back Paul from across the hall.
"I don't have anything to eat!" I cried out.
"Then get some macaroni from the desk," cried back Paul, in a vain attempt to guide me along the best
path.
"I'm afraid," I said. I had never bought anything at the desk before, and the guys up there looked kind of
dangerous sometimes.
Paul came out of his room, took me by the hand and took me up to the front desk, and said to the guy, "Hi,
I'm Paul. This guy wants to buy some macaroni and cheese but he's afraid to talk to you."
The guy at the desk kind of grunted and tossed a box at us, "That'll be fifty cents."
"Umn, do you have any milk or margarine?" I asked.
"That'll be another seventy-five cents."
"See," said Paul as he walked me back to my room, "that wasn't so hard."
"I guess not," I said, "But I still don't have a pot or anything."
"Here," said Paul, "You can use mine, if you give me half of the good stuff."
"What?!" I yelled.
"You use my pot, you give me half of it," he said.
"That's a crock," I said.
"Like you have a choice," said Paul handing me the pot, "Go. I'm getting hungry, and be fast about it."
I trudged down into the basement of Shen, and walked into the kitchen. A sign that said, "I'm not your
mother, so clean up after yourself," dangled from one of the cabinets obviously ignored.
My box of macaroni had the name Leonardo on it. I suspected that it was going to be good, because it
looked good on the picture on the box. So I got it started going, and walked over to the fridge to see where I could
put my milk while I waited. Inside the fridge lived a number of things, which clearly had been dead at one point,
but had been slowly resurrecting over the past month. I told the things in the fridge that they were not to touch my
small carton of milk. Putting it in the fridge I uttered a prayer of deliverance from evil in behalf of my milk carton
and my margarine slab.
After I stirred the pot a little more, I walked over to the T.V. room to see what was going on. In there, I
saw one of the big dangerous guys from the far end of my floor. He was watching pro-wrestling, and laughing at it
and yelling and cheering. Somehow this made him less freightening.
I did some more hard work, and the macaroni appeared to be done. I brought it up to Paul, who took the
larger half of the macaroni, and said, "Thanks," in his loud voice.
I settled in my room, and basked in the glories of one of the greatest creations in the world. A good dish of
macaroni. The Leonardo was a rather salty brand and I liked it. I put one of the box covers on the wall as a
decoration. I decided as a rememberance of my determination to become fat I would collect all the boxes I got. A
sense of accomplishment waved over me, and I slept well that night.
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