submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society

As you may know, I used to have magical powers when it comes to food. For about 2-3 years, I was able to obtain free food, simply by desiring it. I went out to Potbelly with my good friend Anne a few weeks ago, and she asked me to conjure something up. I had to admit to her that it hadn't happened to me in a while. Sadly, my powers have faded from existence.

Though I no longer possess any special food-getting abilities, I assumed I was just back to normal human-being level. A few days ago, though, I realized the power may have been reversed altogether.

It all started when Laura and I were running some errands. We stopped at PG Plaza to pick up some things. All I really wanted was a Cinnabon that day. I felt a little guilty eating it without any lunch though, so I perused the food court. Nothing caught my eye, but as I was looking at a salad and burrito place, the lady behind the counter called me over and started explaining the ordering process to me.

Aaah, I thought. This place looks like Chipotle. Sure enough, it had all the fixings you would find at a real Chipotle. I ordered the equivalent of a Burrito Bowl and sat down, immediately realizing that I wasn't hungry at all and had been duped into buying a very large meal. My next bad idea was to eat it. Right away, I realized that this place was clearly Chipotle's evil twin. If you ordered Chipotle in Hell, I think this is what you would recieve. It looked exactly the same but tasted terrible.

I put away the rest of the salad and decided to ease my pain by sharing a Cinnabon with Laura, now that lunch had been attempted. We went up to order it.

Laura: One Cinnabon please.
employee: We don't have that.

I slowly craned my neck up to look at the neon Cinnabon sign above our heads, not so much to see if I was indeed at the correct counter, but more to make a statement to the employee behind it. She was not amused, and offered no further explanation. I had to drop the sarcasm.

me: Do you not serve them, or do you mean that you don't have any right now?
employee: We don't have them right now. They'll be out in 20 minutes.

I'll spare you a speech about good customer service and skip to the part where we try going to Auntie Anne's instead, to get a cinnamon sugar pretzel, a poor substitute for Cinnabon, although still delicious. They were all out at Auntie Anne's as well.

0 for 3 so far. Next stop: grocery store.

At the grocery store, I picked up a few things. Juice, cherries, cucumber, jam, etc. Now the cherries were not on sale but I figured, Oh well. I love cherries. After I got my receipt, I realized I had in fact spent 18 dollars on cherries. My mind instantly started reeling with the many things I could have bought with 18 dollars, none of which were edible or would be gone in 2 days.

I was just listing for Laura the many things that the money could have purchased, when I realized it. I'm under a food curse! I became fearful of eating or buying anything for the rest of the day. Every time I tried to eat something, it was an opportunity to either reverse or further the curse.

other indications of the curse:

• My Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds only had 2 almonds in the whole box.
• I found an unopened bag of slimy lettuce in the crisper.

Chalk it up to coincidence if you like, but the facts are clear to me. Either way, I think I was finally freed by a good experience at Rita's that night. Plus, the cherries were heavenly. Ask anyone who partook.