The little salad bar at Pizza Hut was always a nice place. For one, I love consuming vegetables, and salad-stacking gave me immense satisfaction. I could spend a good 20 minutes trying to squeeze in that one last cucumber, or stack up those colourful little beans up to the point where one more extra bean would cause the whole lovely bean-family to topple.
That day was no different. My friends and I went to Pizza Hut. The need for a fresh bowl of garden salad arises, and needless to say I was the one up for the task. I walked to the all so familiar salad bar and started stacking.
I was carefully arranging the lettuce around the bowl when a girl came and stood beside me. Hunched over, I could see her grabbing a bowl, and from the little gleam in her eyes I could see her excitement about the prospect of stacking. Oh my, you should have seen her dexterity! The way her hands move so quickly and piling up the salad was mesmerizing. Comparing her to me was like comparing Usain Bolt to a 5-year-old toddler trying to run.
Unable to believe what I was seeing, I muttered a few of the the dumbest words one could say to a salad-stacker:
“Hi, you like salad too?”
“Yeah,” she said, “they’re nice.”
Lame opener aside, the conversation went really well (and so did the stacking). Turns out she was a salad freak who couldn’t live without that holy food. She imparted upon me her wisdom, which now I have forgotten all but one: something to do with using the thousand island sauce as cement to fill out the gaps.
Her name was Gina, and I never got her number.
Nigel
