Some Conversations Are Hard to End

He disdainfully looked inside the bag and asked me, “Is that a muffin? Nah, I’m good. That’s too much sugar.” A lunch that would typically take 45 minutes in this busy restaurant of our downtown ended up taking an hour and a half. Even after all that time, they still managed to get our orders wrong.

To make it up, they gave me what looked like the most exquisite and decadent Brown Sugar Berry Crumble muffin.

Here is the thing.

That is no reparations for me. I don’t eat gluten. But I also recognize a good piece of baked good when I see one. So I took the muffin and the apology and then proceeded to find someone who might enjoy it.

That’s when I found this man playing his out-of-tune guitar sitting on a trash can next to our local bookstore. I couldn’t believe it.

“Too much sugar. WTF?” I thought.

In broad daylight, I had just been rejected in the middle of the street. I could smell the alcohol in his breath. My resentment wanted me to ask him, “you know there is sugar in alcohol, right?” But I didn’t.

I just turned around and walked away, unsure of how to end a conversation like that.

Back at my office, I gave it to someone who knew the value of a fancy-pantsy five-dollar muffin, especially when it is free and it comes from a world-renown bakery—okay, only the locals think of our town think that highly of it but still.

Free is free unless you have standards.