The Misconceptions of Cleanly Eating

I can no longer eat my food properly.

I'm such a messy eater that I have recently become unwilling to eat while driving a car. While many might never imagine attempting to eat food while operating a car, I, not too long ago, used to nurture this instinct. I wouldn't just eat in a car, I'd feast in the damn thing. I'd balance my McNuggets on the dashboard, stick my Slurpee in the cup holder, rest my Cheesy Gordita Crunch in the door flap where maps were stored and stuffed all my candy where I was supposed to be stuffing all my change.

Turning a corner sharply or stomping the brakes would have caused a mess of Seussical proportions.

These days, I won't even open my Taco Bell drive-thru bag until I get home. I've got a deplorable streak of six or seven trips wherein I's unwrap my taco, spill meat on my pants and complain about it the rest of the way home.

I'm just not going to subject myself to such agitation anymore.

But my problems don't stop with vehicle interiors. It's getting to the point where I can't eat inside restaurants either.
I was recently sitting at the window seat of a Chipotle in the heart of Downtown Chicago. It isn't smart for me to sit in a window seat anywhere while eating anything. First of all, I eat alone. That's not a cue to pity me, I prefer to eat alone. I get a lot of reading done.

Sitting at an open window on a beautiful summer afternoon however, my reading gets distracted by the myriad of interesting people walking by.

But along with my reading, so does my eating become something almost unbearably difficult for me.

Part of it, I think, is that I've never fully memorized where my mouth is in proportion to the rest of my face. Sometimes, when drinking out of a cup with a straw, I open my big gaping mouth in preparation of accepting the straw. I move my mouth over the area where the straw is and I close, ready to feel the smooth weak plastic in between my lips.

You'd be surprised how many times I miss my mark and allow the straw to jab my cheek or poke my eye.

Or maybe you wouldn't be surprised. I guess that just depends on your opinion of me.

Missing your mouth is embarrassing though; there's really no coming back from it. Poking your own eye with a straw hurts and everyone laughs.

You wouldn't think that something so prominently displayed at the front of one's face would be so difficult to locate. I mean, I've been eating for quite a while and I should have mastered my mouth by now.

But I haven't and with each passerby with a sharp new short-sleeved button-up shirt or fresh pedicure, my eyes grows raw with straw jabs and my lap grows heavy with taco fixin's.

Tacos are messy to begin with.

Tacos in a hard tortilla shell have never been eaten cleanly in the history of food. Don't write in and tell me that you once ate a taco without spilling or that your best friend makes perfectly tidy tacos each Tuesday.

You're lying.

Tacos are impossible to eat without spilling.

This is universal.

This is undeniable.

This goes for everyone.

On any given day lately, you'll find me with lettuce hanging off my lower lip reminiscent of my tortoise, Tillie. I'll also have cheese sprinkled all over my slacks and chunks of fallen steak plummet through the cracks in the hard shell tortilla like cars disappearing through splitting asphalt during an earthquake.

It's gotten to the point where I wear my dark ties on days I plan to eat at Chipotle.

It's that inevitable.

But that's tacos for you.

Everyone knows how messy tacos are, right?

So why then, when I've got corn salsa dabbled on my chin like a supermodel mole and lettuce draping the spot on my lap where I should have put my napkin, do passersby on the street still look at me as if they can clean 'n' clear my taco better than me?

They can't. Tacos are messy. They cannot be eaten cleanly. Don't act like I'm alone in my inability to keep taco
ingredients in their original casing.

Pretending your tacos are clean is uppity.

Don't be uppity.

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