"You heat it up right in the carton"

The chicken fried rice was actually pretty good. A dismal end to an otherwise ok day, I drove up the street to the all-night convenience store for something to eat. I’d been looking forward to going out and sitting down to a nice meal with my newspaper at the seafood place I like. Instead, this. It got too late for the restaurant, so I evaluated my options. The big supermarket just down the street closes early on Sundays, seeming to change its hours every few weeks, so I went to the brightly-lit store up at the corner. The young man tending the place was out front, taking a smoke break. I told him as I entered that I would be looking around a bit, so there was no need to hurry to the counter. I’d probably be awhile. I found, in the refrigerated case at the back of the store, a carry-out container of Chinese food. You could heat the food up in the microwave and pour it into a dish. Just like that. Even I could manage with such simple instructions. The other things in the case were the typical Hungry Man dinners, with depictions of mounds of food like Salisbury steak and meatloaf on the brightly-colored packages. I know from experience that this is terrible stuff, strictly a last resort in an effort to stave off starvation. They had a carton of shrimp and fried rice as well, but I chose the chicken fried rice instead. I took it and a bag of Fritos and a super-large Nutty-Buddy ice cream cone with nuts to the front counter. The place was deserted, with only a woman behind me wanting to know if the store had children’s strength aspirin for her young child. The clerk answered her query and took my items, one-by-one, to get scanned into the computerized cash register. He stopped when he came to my Chinese food. Amazed, he uttered a “Whaaa? I didn’t know we had this stuff.”
Things got better for me immediately. Here, in this forlorn place, at eleven o’clock on a Sunday evening, with a woman looking for medicine for her child, and me having forsaken a good meal out for this---there was a glimmer of hope. The commonality that links us together, that connects the wires of humanity, was stirring to life. In this case it was the ability to wonder, to be amazed. Ok, so it was only a carton of carry-out fried rice that had stirred the interest of the store clerk, but I’d take it.
“I know,” I said—in response to his wondering appraisal of the package still in his hand. “You heat it up right in the carton, with the wrapper and all; I’ve never tried it before.”
“Huh? In the wrapper?”
“That’s what the instructions say,” suddenly feeling just a little bit important, as I was, for the moment, the expert on this stuff.
“Wow, you’d think the plastic would melt all down the sides.”
“You would think, yes,” I said. “Like I said, I’ve never had it before, so I’ll let you know how it goes.”

It went pretty well. The food had a decent taste, was infinitely better than a Hungry Man dinner of ANY kind, and besides wasn’t loaded up with a lot of additives or preservatives. I would like to tell the store clerk that. I would like to say that the chicken fried rice, that cost only $2.89, was a wonderful surprise, that the taste was actually quite good. There are so many other things I’d like to tell him. So many things. The desolation of a lonely Sunday evening, in a deserted store, the machinery of enterprise slowing to a halt as two human beings exercise their right to be living, thinking people. The wonder of it all.