Sunday, June 19, 2011

Fried Dough

Attending the local fireman's carnival has been an annual tradition with our family since I met my husband 16 years ago.  Over the years the focus has shifted--before we had kids, we would spend Saturday nights in the beverage tent with friends.  Once the children arrived the mission changed to watching them ride the carnival rides all afternoon.  A constant through all of the years of attending the carnival is enjoying fried dough--that mouthwatering big glob of flour, deep fried and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar.  It is the most evil, yet most delicious of carnival treats, and it is made by local volunteers from the fire department.

This year I was standing in line with my daughter waiting to pick up that glob of goodness when I noticed the man in front of me was quite irate.  He had two orders on plates in front of him and was yelling at the dough-making ladies, saying his dough was cold.  He was really, really angry about it, as if there were some kind of fried dough conspiracy out to make sure his dough would not be served warm.  I was a little taken aback at what I was witnessing.  He was too angry to hear me making comments behind him. "Dude, it's just dough.  Really.  You are going to yell at these nice ladies over a piece of dough?"  Based on the temper of that man and the way he stormed off, it was probably a good thing he wasn't listening to me.

Once he left (dough-less), I stepped up to the counter and happily took one of those orders.  It was delicious!  While my daughter and I were eating that "cold" dough, the angry man came back, reached around my daughter's head and snapped up the other order.  We decided to leave before he realized that I had taken his dough.

The angry dough man has affected me.  Witnessing someone get so mad over such a trivial thing gives me pause to evaluate my own behavior.  There are many times when I want to rage over something--just in the past week I've been angry over several things--my daughter's name not being read at an awards ceremony, attending an overcrowded elementary concert where people saved seats for no-shows while others couldn't even get into the auditorium, interacting with an exceptionally rude person at work.  In the future when the anger starts, I will ask myself if this the anger is truly justified or is it a fried dough moment, the result of being tired or hungry and taking my crankiness out on others. No one should be screamed at because a piece of dough is cold.  Life is short and disappointments are frequent, but even cold fried dough is absolutely delicious.