There is an art to the traditional American barbeque. You buy a grill, invite a good amount of people over and buy loads of food. Whether you are on a diet or a cheat day, or if you do not care about what you put in your body, a barbeque is an opportunity to put all of that aside and simply enjoy food the way it was meant to be eaten. If you show up to a barbeque, you have clearly come to terms that you are not leaving until you have eaten your heart out and then some. Personally, I believe you should not stop eating until the host threatens to call the cops; so then you go to the barbeque you were actually invited to.
College is a whole other beast. There one must worry about the dining commons. Now here at Keene State College, there is a common complaint that if they wanted us to eat healthier they would make the main line easier to access. Not to mention it is towards the back of the building while the tantalizing, greasy beautiful burgers are displayed right when we walk in. With this is mind, there is a specific stigma that has permeates the burger counter.
For one, there is a complaint that they are not very good. Another is that maybe we shouldn’t eat as many of them because they are unhealthy. Personally, I do not care if they are not good; actually I feel the worse they are the better they hold up to the stereotype of American cuisine. And I like that. What I do not like is the idea that we should not eat more because we will die. We will not die. Okay, maybe we’ll die but C’MON lets face it: we love cheeseburgers as a society.
We have no problem going off campus eating to our heart’s desire in a local burger joint but as soon as we’re on campus we lie to ourselves by saying “I’m not gunna clog my arteries tonight”. OF COURSE YOU ARE. Why? Because if we don’t we betray ourselves as Americans. If there is something we do best as a society it is grilling up hot dogs and burgers and eating so many of them in one sitting that we consider driving ourselves to the ER. No, not the hospital; the goddamn Emergency Room.
The moment we begin telling ourselves that we should be healthy, we should simply think back to our previous summer and recall all the great times we all had grilling our favorite foods. Look, we pay for the Dining Commons so none of this is free but we fail to appreciate that everyday we are surrounded by a buffet of foods for 12 hours. That is nothing short of special. And yes, we should all eat healthy and stand in that ridiculous long line for a meat lasagna or the occasional Thanksgiving dinner but we should never kick our beloved cheeseburger to the curb. Cheeseburgers make the world go round and I think we should all pay them a little more respect. They are here for us, so lets be there for them.
