Suicide Salad

Ingredients:



Lettuce



Carrots



Tomatoes



Dried Cranberries



Bacon



Black Olives



Onions



Fresh fish, shrimp, beef, or chicken



Dressing



Prep time: 35 years



Difficulty Level: 5/5



Directions:



1. Rinse, dry, and tear the lettuce into bite sized pieces.  Use as much and as many varieties as you wish.



This is your foundation, full of good intentions of a healthy finished product.  But remember, it's only cheap filler, the bulk, the fluff, almost completely devoid of taste and nutritional value.  It's the stuff whose endgame will ultimately include a fork, a scrape, and a trash can.  It's your house and your furniture  and your car and your job.  It's your cell phone and your flip-flops and your blue jeans.  It's how you keep up with the Jones'.



2. Add some shredded carrot for color.



So maybe your house has a pool, maybe you have a big flat-screen TV, maybe you have a $30,000 Harley Davidson in your garage, and maybe you're a young hot-shot who owns her own business.  And maybe your cell phone is a Droid X that is smarter than most fifth-graders, and maybe your flip-flops are $60 Rainbows instead of $5 Wal-Marts,  and maybe you only shop at American Eagle.  It's how you thumb your nose at the Jones' as you blow by them in your jacked up Tahoe with the dark tinted windows.



3. Cut a few grape or cherry tomatoes in half and add them to the mix.



Bright and colorful, sweet and juicy, and finally you're getting somewhere:  the backyard pool parties with friends, the lazy afternoons in the hammock with a good Nook book, driving down Highway 70 at dusk with the top and the doors off the Jeep with the warm summer wind in your face and just the right song on the radio, Bob Segar's "You'll Accompany Me,"  the days when everything goes as planned.



4. Toss in a handful of dried cranberries.



Ah yes, the unexpected bittersweet. All the unanswered prayers and beautiful messes.  Maybe you got turned down for a loan on your first home only to find yourself weeks later moving into the house of  your dreams, privately financed at a wicked-low interest rate. Or maybe you remember all those nights you spent crying when you called off the engagement only to look back, years later, at the man lying next to you and finally understand this was your destiny all along.



5. Sprinkle with crisp, crumbled bacon.



Guilty pleasures make the world go 'round... or at least make it a little more enjoyable: the 3 AM blueberry cheesecake milkshake from Cookout that blows your diet all to Hell, as if the 8 or 9 beers before hand at the Little Brown Jug hadn't done the trick; the "one more" Jack Daniels that prompts you to sing "Harper Valley PTA" karaoke-style at a friend's birthday party, or the secret escape to Wilson's truck on the night of his son's wedding, sitting on his lap and giggling like high-school kids while you're loosening his tie and he's unhooking your bra, and the embarrassing re-entry into the party, freshly-fucked, with everyone clapping and grinning, except Wilson's sister.  She fuckin' hates me..... la-la-la-la.









6. Toss in a few black olives.



These are greasy, nasty, ugly day-to-day annoyances you never asked for and specifically prayed against. The surprise visit from the health inspector the day the walk-in cooler is on  the fritz, the pile of dog shit on your shirt that your new puppy mistook for newspaper, the license checkpoint at 9 AM on Easter Sunday when you haven't had a legitimate driver's license in over 5 years, and all the other things that make you mumble under your breath, "fuck my life."



7. Top with thinly sliced red onion.



These are the situations that leave a lingering bitter taste in your mouth and a sour smell on your skin and an uneasy feeling in your stomach for days.  Mental heartburn.  It's a phone call from the Department of Revenue announcing that you are being audited, after you have failed to file taxes for the last five years, it's the complete lack of contact with Wilson over the weekend and a phone call from his youngest son asking, "Is Daddy with you? We can't find him."  It's waking up in a hospital bed with a broken shoulder and hundreds of stitches  after wrecking a friend's pick-up truck the night before, and just as you are about to give thanks for being alive, you see the stack of pink tickets courtesy of the highway patrol.... careless and reckless, driving while intoxicated, driving with a license revoked, speeding. Shit. Fuck. Damn.



8. Top with one of the following: grilled chicken, seared Ahi tuna, thinly sliced London broil, or shrimp skewers.



This is you.  You are the meat, and here you sit,  perched on top of your empire of goods and bads, hopes and dreams, failures and successes, memories and things you wish you could forget.  You are buoyed up and supported and you start to think that you are what you are because of all the things beneath you.  All the flavors and textures intertwined and perfectly melded into a microcosm of life.  Your life.  A full life.  There is no room for anything else on your plate, or so you think...



9. Toss with the salad dressing of your choice.



You had it all figured out.  You had it all put together perfectly.  It was light on your heart, it was easy to achieve,  it was good, and it was good FOR you.  It had the right balance. It was beautiful.  And now, here comes the wrecking ball.  Here comes the smothering, cloying blanket of disaster you had so carefully dodged all these years.  It seeps down into and fills all the cracks and crevices.  Where there was room to move and air to breathe, now there is only quicksand and a plastic bag over your head.  Here comes the transcript from the audit outlining your financial ruin with intricate detail.  Monthly payments you can't afford.  Tax liens on the few, meager assets you do have.  Levied bank accounts and seized vehicles.  Add to the toxic mix that Wilson spends the weekend with his ex/ other girlfriend Pam. Make it worse when he lies and tells you he's been fishing with his son.  Make it worse still when he admits that he doesn't even love her. Your shrimp skewer has just become chopped liver.



There are only two ways to truly hurt someone: take away their money, or take away what they love. So what do you do when both of those things are gone? When you wake up with empty pockets and an empty heart? Do you rack one into the chamber of the .45 on your nightstand? Do you swallow a handful of Percosets? Or do you simply wallow in the self-pitying realization that your death would be even more irrelevant than your life?