Years ago when I was a meat-eater in New Jersey (one must eat meat to survive in New Jersey), the Aberdeen MacDonald's served me a hamburger, so to speak. When I discovered it had no meat, I relished every second of the experience when telling the acne-faced cashier that my burger had no burger. I remember the stunned look, the hurried conference with the adolescent manager, the puzzlement over what to do, and the risky decision to make a burger anew and hope the owner didn't notice the mistmatch between register receipts and the number of remaining buns.

So here I am in Aruba. It's Friday -- Aruba Day -- and this island is closed up tight as a clam, except for tourist alley where the pluckers, fleecers, and pickpockets are in full force, and except for a few eateries nearby.

I'm way behind studying for my Pathology quiz this Wednesday. I'm also running out of underwear, so I sacrificed some desperately needed time to make a trip to the laundromat in hopes that it might be open. No such luck; I'll have to return tomorrow. I'm starving, and the cheap plastic band on my cheap Timex watch, which I bought in Panama, has just broken. To try to recover some time, I decided to go to Quiznos near the school for a quick sandwich, so I don't have to cook at home.

It was open, luckily; I ordered a tuna sub on whole wheat, and specified "lechuga y cebolla, por aquí" (lettuce and onion, for here), in flawless accent-free Spanish, to the Venezuelan woman at the counter. She said "what kind of bread?"; I answered "whole wheat". Again she queried, "for here or to go?". "For here", for heavens sakes. And again: "one or two?". "ONE!!!!!". When did we have to mention number? Maybe it's because I didn't use the Spanish word for tuna, and she picked up on the "tu-" of tuna, and heard it as "two" (that's homonym, you know). "You want to make that a combo?". "Combo this", I felt like saying, but I composed myself and politely replied "no". A male co-worker watching all this threw me an embarrassed smile.

Okay, so I watched the bread, cheese, and tomato components go through the toaster thingy. The woman at the condiments section at the receiving end of the toaster then asked me the exact same questions, some of which I answered in the exact same flawless, accent-free Spanish, except that I used a castillian pronunciation just in case. I finally sat down and got to bite into my sandwich and -- that's right -- no tuna!

Gripped by LSD-style flashbacks (I never did that, BTW), I returned to the sandwich counter, sandwich opened with contents laid bare, and complained that my tuna had no tuna. The guy with the embarrassed smile said "this is Aruba, one big happy island", to which I replied: "if you can't solve a simple murder, I can't expect you to make a simple sandwich". They made me another, risking the same discovery of mismatch as the MacDonald's guy. (Hey, maybe he was the MacDonald's guy.)

Being the great intellect that I am, I pondered this for a while. How fortunate to have puncutating moments during periods of stress. Levity amidst chaos, speaking of which, I got an email while writing this that the school has erected a tent in town as part of the carnival celebration that begins today, and would like all the students to come over and join in the merrymaking. Apparently no one told them about my Pathology quiz. All the kids who can read something once and have it memorized for life will be there. If they offered me fifteen points on the quiz for putting in an appearance at the tent, I might be tempted.

The notice said there would be refreshments. I wonder if they'll serve those cheap cheese sandwiches they fed us at orientation.

Without the cheese, of course.

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