The Perfect Roast Beef Sandwich That Wasn't

I was hungry yesterday. I had skipped breakfast because… well, I skipped breakfast. By 11:00 I was properly hungry. My co-worker kindly let me know he had sandwich fixins, and that I was free to leech off of him.

Super.

I made  a roast beef sandwich. A simple sandwich with regular bread and roast beef from "Farms" that probably don't look anything like the idyllic picture on the pink plastic lid. Add a little mayo and some mustard and, bam! Hunger gone.

But it made me pine for a real roast beef sandwich.

Off to the store after work to pick out the perfect, medium rare roast beef, French bread, artisan cheese, tomato, lettuce, spicy mustard and mayo.

A word about mayo. Mayo is mayo and nothing else is mayo. Why merchants continue to perpetrate the fraud of putting "Miracle Whip" and other "spreads" with actual mayo is beyond me, but they do. Since I'm not into the hackneyed premise of creating mystery, I'll come out with it. I bought Hellmann's, (my preferred brand) Real Whipped Tangy, which I thought was mayonnaise, but was really just Hellmann's sell-out version of Miracle Whip.

To be fair, nothing on the label says "mayonnaise", but the word "real" does appear. Unfortunately, the  word "bad" isn't on the label, either, because it's real bad.

Home now, I cut my bread, slice my tomato, spread my mustard and Hellmann's on the bread, warm up the oven, etc., etc.

The perfect roast beef sandwich is only 10 minutes away. I licked my fingers a little and realized the mayo didn't taste right, which is when I realized my mistake.

I knew my sandwich, and probably my life, were ruined.

I added dill and garlic powder. I added salt and pepper. I added paprika and hot sauce.

Nothing I added could disguise the fact that this stuff was nasty-ass off-brand Miracle Whip.

I only ate half the sandwich. The rest is sitting in the fridge. Now the perfect roast beef sandwich, the very thing that was supposed to deliver me from hunger and usher in the baseball game, sits unloved, unwanted; taunting me every time I open the fridge.

Mr. grocer! Please, create a separate section for non-mayonaisse spreads. Somewhere out in the parking lot or in the receiving room or something. Deliver the rest of us from this pretender to the throne of food lubrication perfection. I have suffered much, but if I can save just one more person from being disappointed, maybe I can take solace in that.

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I got an ukulele (editor's note, it sounds wrong, but is, by rule correct to say "an ukelele") for my birthday, a gift from Emily. It's a good stringed instrument to start with. Small, unintimidating, (four strings instead of 6 or 12), and relatively cheap.

I got it Saturday night and it's now Wednesday morning. I haven't been able to put it down.

I suck, but I have never enjoyed something that I am so bad at. I am spurred on by friends younger than I as well as contemporaries of mine who are self-taught instrumentalists. I typically eschew anything I'm not immediately good at.

I bear no specific aptitude for playing music, but...

I can't put it down. I have spent hours and hours and hours practicing. I have gone from knowing nothing, (literally zero chord fingerings or how to strum), to memorizing several (maybe a dozen) chords. I even can grind through some songs and came up with the beginnings of a little ditty of my own.

Funny thing - I can't sing and play at the same time. I've been singing my entire life. Ask anyone I know. They'll tell you I sing even at the most inappropriate times. But I can't sing and strum.

I followed along to a recording of the song I was working out last night, (Mother by Pink Floyd), and while I know every word, inflection and phoneme of that recording, I just can't get the words to come out while I am playing.

I guess I'll learn eventually. The point is I am having a good time trying.