Recipes for Suffering: POGS

B.M.
B.M.
Sep 7, 2018 · 3 min read

I’m trying this out as a way to get attention. Everyone is this diseased city is starved for recognition and I’m no better than the rest, I just have a different set of neuroses. Worried that I’ll always be viewed as a second-rate intellectual, never smart enough to hang with the elites or the kids who managed to finish their first four years of college before moving on to graduate school. Our brains will all dissolve the same way in our coffins, sitting in that pool of water in our skull, remaining stagnant and collecting mold, squishy advanced flesh no longer heating up and staying alive from stimulation and the firing of synapses. We’ll all be equal then. But until then the complex persists and the need to impress everyone remains. It’s something I may have passed on to my daughter. Like me she carries her books with her wherever she goes. But like me, she also likes having them around and doesn’t feel complete without them so I won’t call attention to it or take that away from her. The last thing I want to do is knowingly give her a complex by preemptively overcorrecting her behavior in the hopes that I’ll prevent her from making mistakes out in the world on her own. That’s mostly what parenting feels like; trying your best to make sure the mistakes they make when they’re on their own are tantamount to the day to day routine of figuring it out. We used to give them a hatchet and a vague idea of how to track and kill a deer. Now we give them a backpack and lunch bag and ask them not to be a no-account psychopath. If she’s anything like me she’ll remain inside her head for the best years of her life, always noticing what’s going on and thinking about it much later, finally giving it meaning and shape in older and hopefully wiser years. There was a POG craze in middle school. I saved up enough money and bought some from a fluorescent lit case at Walmart. I joined in on the game on a portion of sidewalk during lunch. It was one of many in a long row, like blackjack tables at Vegas. I lost a couple and moved on to the next game. An older and bigger kid got me in his sights. He followed me to the next game, giving me advice. We didn’t know each other that well and it was kind of suspicious to me that he wanted to help me. When the game was over I turned my head for a second to see where I could go next. Peripherally I saw him snatch my bag of POGS. I turned back to him.

Where’d they go, I asked.
Someone walked by and must have taken them when we both weren’t looking, he said, staring at me.
I looked away.
Let’s go look for them, he said.
We walked along the row of kids playing, each of us pretending to look when we knew exactly what was going on. I gave up and he walked away. I had nothing left.

I got carried away and forgot to include a recipe. I made Kari spaghetti and meatballs tonight. I used a pound of ground beef and started the sauce 4 hours before she got home from her trip she had to take for work. One big can of tomatoes and one small can of diced tomatoes. Mince a whole white onion, let it sauté at a low to medium heat and when they start to get translucent add the garlic. I used a bunch of leftover Côtes du Rhone, first deglazing the onions and garlic. Added a bit of balsamic vinegar and let them reduce. tomatoes next and added the rest of the two day old wine. Salt and pepper, paprika to taste. Cover and let simmer on a low heat for those next couple of hours. About an hour from dinner time I take the meatballs which have been sitting in a marinade of salt, pepper, red cooking wine and cold pressed olive oil and throw them in the cast iron pan with olive oil and braising with the same red cooking wine. Let them cook to about medium rare and then dump the whole thing, meatballs and jus, into the marinara and leave on a low simmer for the next 30–40 minutes. Add fresh chopped masil like ten minutes before serving.