Eleven Herbs and Spices

How many of you like Kentucky Fried Chicken?  I know I do.  As a matter of fact, it was my very first job when I was sixteen.  Well that's not entirely true.  My first job was for exactly 6 hours one day when I was fifteen.  The manager of a supermarket hired me as a stock boy.  I told him I was only 15 and he said he thought I could work there.  He found out several hours later I could not and I was let go.  I had to wear one of those square knit ties from the 80s.  It was light blue.  I didn't like the job anyway.

But I digress.  Kentucky Fried Chicken was my first real job and for a 16 year old it wasn't bad.  We got free chicken and free drinks.  Back then free was one of my favorite words.  One of my best friends and I started there at the same time.  We were both big boys.  We got 30 minutes for lunch and both of us saw that as a personal challenge to stuff as much chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, biscuits and little bucket parfaits in us as possible in a short time.  We always suffered from a hangover in those days.  Not the kind you think.  Our stomachs hung way over our belts.  I should right a book called how to weigh 350 pounds.  I don't think it would be a best seller but I can guarantee I know how to get there.

Anyway, back then the only things we were concerned with were girls, girls, girls, gas for the car and girls.  Neither one of us were very successful in those categories but we tried.  We both started in the kitchen and there is something about the smell of fresh chicken when it comes out of the fryer.  It is one of the best smells.  Then you add on the biscuits coated in butter and the gravy and you really have something.

That friend of mine was diagnosed last year with cancer.  Thank God he is doing well now and they think they have the whole situation under control.  Well, the other day I went by KFC on my way home from someplace and when through the drive thru I got a whiff of the kitchen.  It still smells the same is it did back then and for just one sliver of time, just a few milliseconds, I was sixteen years old again.  I wasn't running a company, taking care of kids, taking care of myself or anything else.  I was the kid who wasn't a good athlete, who only really cared about hanging out with his friends, not trying to keep up with the Jones' or anyone else.  For one brief instant, I realized the how easy the world was back then and how much things change.

I think we should all take a minute to be thankful for life and then take another minute to remember the things in our past that made us who we are today.

And that's, the Opinion of the Minion