Back for Another Salad

Salads are pleasant enough.  And that’s what I have, just about any day I have a choice, for lunch.  Must have been fifteen years ago that I put two and two together that sandwiches were carbo-nightmares and so you have a salad with the dressing on the side.  And if you’re me, you have a lot. 

When I’m working in Shanghai, there is a simple spot that serves salad across the street.  It’s iceberg lettuce and they smother it in croutons, but they have avocados and a carrot-apple juice smoothie that I can taste in my mind and every time I pop out of the building I wonder if I should go somewhere else for a change.  And now, for the third day in a row, I’m back for another salad. 

It’s packed and reluctantly I join the queue.  It’s too late for regrets about where else I could have gone.  A western fellow in his forties is talking to a Chinese lass in her twenties.  There is a free seat at their table.  I ask if I can sit along side them, in a fashion that assumes this will be OK.  No resistance.  I slide my umbrella under the table and consider the environment, with my back against the wall, as I await my greenery.

They have a wall painting of ET reaching out to touch a fruit drink.  I don’t know why such a thing is there.  A cat is running around down beneath the tables.  No one minds and miraculously, no one steps on the creature.  I ordered an extra helping of chicken and an extra helping of avocado.  What arrives seems to be piles of poultry, avocadoes and little else.  And I add oil and I add the balsamic vinegar and reach for my phone and my earbuds so I don’t have to listen to the couple getting acquainted to my left.