Longbeach, Gardenburgers, Good and Evil

Took a trip out to Long Beach with Erin today to pick up some china that her parents won on ebay from the lady who was selling it. It’s been a rather long ordeal to save the twelve dollars on shipping – Erin had to play phone tag with the woman for about a week before she could get a hold of her, and we had to find a narrow gap in schedules to arrange the pickup, but as we are always on the lookout for fun, we decided to make a dinner date out of the short journey to the coast. We faced a few obstacles in retrieving the china, including heavy traffic on the 22 while the sun blazed right into the center of our windshield, unhindered by clouds of any sort, a gated community that we got locked into (but could have hopped the fence out of if only we’d come without a car), and finally when we arrived at the ebay woman’s garage stocked high with peppershakers, wind chimes and other auctionable knickknacks, the fact that she couldn’t remember what she was supposed to send us away with. Fortunately, Erin’s parents had bit on china that they already had the pattern of and Erin was able to recognize it among all the variations of “gardeny on white,” although it took the auctioneer about three tries to get the cup, saucer and plate all together.
It was very interesting to see that cluttered, Long Beach garage on the other end of e-commerce.
We went out to Ruby’s for dinner, because I had fond memories of the one out of the pier at Huntington Beach, although this one just overlooked a strip mall with other upper/mid-range restaurant chains (Claim Jumper, El Torito, et al). It felt sort of like Disney Land, with the staff all dressed up in ‘50s diner attire and acting as chipper as all getup. Erin thought our waitress in the white skirt and pinstriped blouse might be a robot, and I began to see her point after the waitress chirped out her personal recommendations (without being asked) and they exactly matched the “recommended” items on the menu. She wasn’t a good waitress; she was playing a good waitress.
There wasn’t much selection beyond burgers and shakes, and although Erin and I hardly ever pass up a good milkshake (we got St. Patrick’s Day Mint, probably their version of McDonald’s mysteriously named “Shamrock” shake, although come to think of it, McDonald’s doesn’t really taste like mint, so I’m not sure what it is. Soilent Green?!), we have sworn off most beef on the grounds (ha ha) that it’s the most wasteful food there is, and ecologically irresponsible, blah blah blah. But we were tempted, oh were we tempted, especially since getting the meat replaced with a gardenburger would cost an extra buck twenty, and Erin had never met a vegetarian patty she agreed with.
But we went with the meat substitute anyway, calling it a gastronomical experiment and a way to not sacrifice our values.
When our hamburger came, it looked amazing, and the thick juicy beef was mouthwatering. This was very much beef, the same sort of beef I had enjoyed in the burger joints of my youth. The same beef that had probably guided me to this restaurant in the first place. I sent it back before I had time to really think and change my mind. When Erin pouted at me from across the table, I could tell she’d been having similar thoughts. We should have eaten it, she said, because they’d just throw it away now. And because it looked really, really good.
Eventually our gardenburger came, and it was actually quite good, full of flavor (herby, not meaty), and far exceeded our expectations, perhaps living up to what we expected the meat burger to taste like. I still had a hard time getting the picture of that full-fledged hamburger out of my head, though.
Now you may not agree with our stance on beef (it’s rather weak as far as activist diets go, and it’s a personal thing, not necessarily the Right thing), but I think that tonight’s incident said something about the nature of Right and Wrong. In movies and video games, and even most books, it’s pretty easy to tell the difference between Right and Wrong. Wrong is evil and gross and creepy. It’s scary! It’s Orks and Darth Vader and Evil Robots. Good is what all the strong, attractive people fight for, and it’s the side that always wins, so of course that’s the team you pick. But in real life, I think it’s a bit more difficult than that. In reality, sin is very, very seductive, and it can be hard to tell what’s wrong with doing Wrong at the time. Doing Good doesn’t bring immediate rewards most of the time, and it can involve slogging it out in the trenches for a long, long time just trying to hold on while sin hovers nearby and offers that easy lure out of the battle.
And a lot of the time, we give in, and ride, rather gloriously and full of ourselves, with Wrong, feeling free and as if there are no consequences for our actions.
But there always, always are. And the worst consequences may not happen to us, they might fall on the heads of others. They do exist. It’s very hard to ride with Good, and it can be a rocky, harrowing road. But I believe that it’s worth it if we can learn to hold on.