cheetos and triscuits

i think i've discovered the problem with the world. it's the difference between cheetos and triscuits.

hear me out!

cheetos ... i mean, we all know it, right? they're the best worst snack ever invented. the crunchy ones! the poofy-puff ones! good grief, i start eating either kind and it's just el-gorge-arundo until the whole bag is gone. how can two totally different textures both be so absolutely perfect? 

and that freaking cheese dust on them! not only is it delicious, but the mind-boggling mess factor forces you to lick your fingers, you know? if you don't, one false move and your favorite outfit has a big cheesy skid-mark down it. like, you could definitely try using a napkin and a paper towel, but we all know what good that does, right? you wipe and smear and scrub with the napkin and then you look and you totally only got half the dust off. so then you wipe and smear and scrub some more, and after all that -- still a third of the artificial cheddar-pollen still stuck to your fingers.

cheetos totally steal your dignity ... but they're so good it's completely worth it.

okay. so i know everyone with taste buds is with me so far. what i want you to do now, though, is picture a pantry -- an ordinary pantry, with a mix of stuff you bought this week and stuff you bought last week and that scary can with the 20th century expiration date stuck way way back in the back -- and on the snack shelf, there's a couple bags of cheetos and a box of ...

triscuits.

jeepers, those poor effing triscuits, right? nobody's taking that box down and opening it while there are still cheetos. are you kidding me? you'd have to be crazy.

pretty soon, though, all the cheetos are gone, and you're like, "wait a minute -- didn't i just buy two bags of those just a few days ago?" and the answer is, yeah, you did, and then you inhaled them like a giant mutated kaiju hog.

and the box of triscuits ... would you just look at it? it's mocking you. when did you even buy it? at some point when you thought, "geez, i ought to try and eat healthier," that's when. and you tried to, you really did, and you bought them, and they went up on the shelf, and you kept seeing them there when you went to the pantry desperate for snacks (by which i mean cheetos), and every time you'd turn away with a cheeto-deprived grimace of disappointment.

some weeks, you say, "screw it," and you just make another trip to the store and buy more cheetos. other weeks, you've got enough willpower to say, "if i'm going to snack, damn it, those triscuits are right there. eat them already."

but you don't.

and you don't.

and you still don't.

until one day you're either desperate enough to open them, or you make your mind up to just surrender and throw them in the trash unopened because they're probably past their expiration date anyhow -- but as you're walking to the trash-can, you see the date and it's still a month off because somehow as long as the inside bag isn't opened, a box of triscuits stays good basically forever.

so either you open them in desperation, or you open them because they're in your hand and the date stamp says they're still good, and what the heck, it's not like you have any cheetos to eat instead anyway.

everybody knows where this is going, right? (maybe not, maybe i'm just a kook about this.)

you put the first triscuit in your mouth (i mean, if you're a hog you do that, instead of biting off half or a third of it) --

and it's freaking delicious.

i know, i know, it's sacrilege for me to even think this, much less type it out, but in their own way, triscuits are just as good as cheetos.

especially when you first open a box of them up, they have this wholesomely light texture to their crunch, and the flavor is real, not something stirred up in a lab like cheeto dust, and pretty soon, you've eaten one, and then you've eaten two, and then you've polished off a big chunk of the box.

and i think this is what people do with life, a lot of the time. (life life -- not the cereal life, which is its own whole other form of ambrosia)

they think they know the thing they want. they crave it. they practically drool over how amazing it is and how colossally its very existence calls out for them to pursue it and grab hold of it with both hands.

but they get it, and it's basically gone in a fraction of a whiff.

done.

and they stew over not having more of it, and they walk past the pantry and get these pangs of yearning, and they turn their nose up at the plain-old, boring-old, no-excitement-about-it-at-all alternative.

and a lot of them never even get around to opening up that box of triscuits.

so that's what i mean about life. you spend a lot of time pining for cheetos when the triscuits are staring you right in the face.

crazy, right?

xoxo,
claire

(p.s., i showed this to my boyfriend before posting it and he said, "believe it or not, years and years ago there were these cheddar triscuits that basically were triscuits covered in cheeto dust. they were basically the greatest thing in all of creation." and now i'm like, oh, great ... now instead of being happy i realized how terrific both cheetos and triscuits are, i'm all gloomed over from knowing there used to be cheeto-dusted triscuits and i'll never get to have them.)