Calorific

Ma won’t even eat half a chicken sandwich. She wants a chicken wrap — which, while advertised, is not sold. (Presumably, they ran out of wraps.) Ma feels that the sandwiches purveyed at this particular concession stand have too much bread. She’d eat the chicken alone — which, to my tastebuds, is tender and juicy — but she’d rather eat a hotdog. That, and instead of buying her own carton of fries, she’d rather mooch off everybody else’s. Not that she’s cheap, she just doesn’t want to eat an entire carton of fries. “Together,” says Ma, “a hot dog and its bun add up to two hundred and twenty-five calories.” To my thinking, this was possibly true of hotdogs and their buns back in the 1950s. “You can have a hot dog, its bun, and a cookie — and keep the whole meal close to three hundred calories,” she says. “Or you can have two hot dogs, minus their buns, and maybe two cookies. Or a cookie and a half.” This was one way to control one’s weight back in the 1950s. These days, the hotdogs I buy for Pop, they’re only fifty calories apiece. And the buns I buy, they’re only ninety calories. “So there,” I say. Granted, the bunned hotdogs Pop and Betty are currently munching on from this particular concession stand, they’re likely a great deal more than two hundred and twenty-six calories. Anyway, that’s what I tell Ma. “Two hundred and twenty-five,” she says. 

20 June 2005