I’m The Girl From The Early 2000’s Chef Boyardee Commercial, And That Can Is Still Following Me Around
It started off cute, but it’s been twenty years! When will it end?!?!
Hi there. Remember me? I’m the girl from that early 2000’s Chef Boyardee commercial. The one where my mom won’t let me buy the can of beef ravioli, so I put it back on the shelf, only to have it jump off and follow me home. I know what you’re probably thinking. How sweet. How cute. How tenderhearted.
Well, think again. I’m currently hiding in the charred-out remnants of an abandoned doorknob factory in the middle of Uzbekistan, living off of menthol cigarettes and empty Buzz Balls I’ve filled with fermented ferret-milk, and that unholy can of microwavable pasta is still following me! Like a cruel deity with malicious intent, there is no escaping his rotund little 25 oz. aluminum body.
The Can is always there. Watching me. Observing me. Monitoring my every move. Very often I stand in the middle of the street and shout, “What are you waiting for, huh?” just like Jennifer Love Hewitt did in that scene from “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”
You try living twenty years with a can of Chef Boyardee as your roommate. He’s always at my ankles, tripping me up. I hear him at night, rolling down the hallway to use the bathroom. He leaves pasta sauce everywhere. He smells bad because he’s way past his expiration date. He’s very touchy about people looking at his Nutrition Facts. He gets high with the Ramen Noodles in my pantry. A few years ago, he snuck into my freezer and impregnated a Bagel Bite.
He hates SpaghettiOs because they’re “too commercial and a disgrace to Italian culture,” but when I tell him that he, too, is a cheap can of prepackaged foodstuffs, he gets super offended. The cognitive dissonance of this guy is wild.
Of course I’ve tried to get rid of him. I’ve flown to Egypt and met a toothless witch-doctor on the banks of the Nile River; I’ve gone undercover as a Peruvian flute player and joined a nomadic troupe of traveling musicians in the Andes mountains in the hopes of contacting a reclusive shaman near Machu Picchu; I spent a night in a 711 parking lot in Bucharest, Romania reciting incantations with a woman who claimed to be the Queen of All Gypsies but who in actual fact was just a retired sea-cucumber farmer hallucinating because she ate too many gas station hot dogs. The can of Chef Boyardee not only followed me everywhere, but had also somehow managed to get valid visas for every country.
All this can wants is me to eat him. But I won’t let that happen because 1.) it’s creepy and 2.) I don’t want a man to think I need him and 3.) I’m on the keto diet anyway.
But also I’ve sort of gotten used to him. I mean he IS ALWAYS THERE BY MY SIDE, unlike my own family, who won’t fly the six hours to visit me in San Francisco because they say it’s too expensive but then expect me to visit them every holiday season, how does that make sense? What makes them think I can afford those flights if they can’t? I mean, come on here.
But now I find myself wondering, do I need him? Who am I without him? Like the Ship of Theseus, is he a component in my life that, once replaced, changes the essential identity of the object itself, aka my life? I’m shaking. My throat tightens. My eyes glisten. Is this love? Is this can of pasta the love of my life? After all, going back to the very beginning, it was ME WHO CHOSE HIM! Oh, shame on me. How could I have been so blind? I must have opened a portal, seared his metallic bodily husk with the everlasting divinity of my love when I selected him and not any of the others that fateful day twenty years ago in the canned food aisle of Safeway near Akron, Ohio.
So now I say “Yes, Chef!” I will EAT YOU. I will CONSUME YOU. I will take this souvenir can opener I got from a Jimmy Buffet Margaritaville restaurant and CUT YOUR HEAD OPEN and then I will MICROWAVE YOUR INSIDES and then I WILL DEVOUR THE STEAMING RELICS OF YOUR SAUCE-COATED INNARDS and YOU WILL NOURISH ME and there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore because THE FIRE OF OUR LOVE WILL SUSTAIN US BOTH FOR ETERNITY and finally TWO SHALL MERGE INTO ONE and the LION SHALL SLEEP SOUNDLY NEXT TO THE LAMB and then I will RESPONSIBLY PUT YOUR EMPTY CAN INTO THE RECYCLING which is taken EVERY TUESDAY by the WASTE MANAGEMENT GUY NAMED STEVE.
On second thought, I’m actually pretty hungry. Maybe it’s better if I just order some chicken wings instead.
