Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash
Prompt: Make a sandwich.
I didn’t like sandwiches growing up. Maybe because they were shitty, on shitty cheap white bread. Nonetheless, I went through two distinct phases of liking sandwiches once I could make them myself — around the age of 9 or 10. First fried bologna. Place two slices of white bread on a plate or cutting board. You’ll smell the yeast and preservatives escaping from the plastic bag as you close it back up to keep it from molding and going stale as it will in about 15 minutes in the humid Virginia summer. Get the generic brand of mayonnaise out, unscrew the lid and apply the thinnest veneer of mayo you can muster to both sides of the bread. Remove a slice of bologna from its container, careful not to get that deli-meat slime on your fingers. Snip the edges of the bologna in 3 places. Ideally at equal distances around the circumference of the bologna. This isn’t easy; it requires simultaneously relaxing and focusing to get it right. Successful placement of the snips satisfies your OCD soul in a deep, reassuring way. Add heat to a skillet and then put the bologna in. No oil or butter needed. Watch as the edges curl up, but note how, because of the snips, it’s still easy to use a spatula to press it all down mostly flat. Let it sizzle. Now flip and regard the pronounced brown at the edges and the little concave middle that’s more pink. Inhale the aroma of pork and fat and god knows what else. When you judge it to be done, insert slice between bread slices and eat.
