i plan to lose control

By anders pearson 17 Jan 2001

i’m standing in line today at the Taco Bell on the first floor of my building waiting to get my recomended daily allowance of bean burrito goodness when i almost had to kill someone.

Taco Bell offers several different gradations of their “Border Sauce”: “mild”, “hot”, and “fire” (there might also be a “medium”; i don’t recall). of course, this being America and not Mexico, the first couple levels are merely variations on bland tomato paste and can’t really be considered particularly spicy or flavorful. only the “fire” seems to have any real taste whatsoever. naturally, the “fire” sauce is a little more popular than the others and so of the bins of sauce packets on the counter, the “fire” bin is almost always empty or near empty. it’s very sad.

anyway, i’m in line today and i see that the bin has a single “fire” packet left. then i notice that the guy in front of me has not one, or two, but about fifteen “fire” packets on his tray. as i’m watching, he reaches in and grabs the last one for good measure. i was absolutely speechless. he only got two tacos so unless he was planning on floating them in a pool of sauce, it was obvious that he was just hoarding them for the sake of hoarding them.

so i’m wondering if this guy really is as much of a complete and total asshole as i think he must be or did my parents just raise me with an underdeveloped sense of selfishness?

of course, as this is going on, i’m also listening to the kid behind me telling his friend about how over vacation he and another friend of his flew to some remote location in Colorado on his friend’s private lear jet for a week of skiing. i counted three times within a minute that he mentioned the fact that his friend actually owned his own lear jet.