Mac 'n Cheese Taboo

My granddaughter lost her condiment privileges in the cafeteria at the high school she attends north of Houston, Texas.  This raises many questions, a couple of which are “how does one do that?” and “what does it mean?”

I, on the other hand, wonder how something like that is enforced.  Do the pepper police monitor the condiments station?  If they catch a violator of said rescinded rights what happens?  Do the enforcers disconnect taste buds or do they stitch the culprit’s lips shut?  That sounds a little too violent, even for our illustrious governor Rick Perry.  Perhaps a medium that’s a little more humane would be superglue, after all we aren’t barbarians and this particular crime has not yet been elevated to lethal injection status.  If the enforcer inserts a feeding tube before administering the superglue my granddaughter probably can deal with that.  After all, she spent the first couple years of life on a feeding tube.

Just in case you don’t happen to be wondering how she managed to lose her “condiments privileges” I’ll go ahead and tell you, just for filler. It’s quite simple really.

She put ranch dressing on her high school cafeteria macaroni and cheese.  The file’ fuzz descended and busted her.  She was well into cleaning her plate of the high school cafeteria mac ‘n’ cheese with ranch dressing, but it didn’t matter because she had violated the unwritten rules of culinary logic.  Ranch dressing on your macaroni and cheese just ain’t right; not in these parts.  Can’t find that in the Old or New Testament, but it still ain’t fittin’.

It’s been many years since my high school cafeteria days but I still remember with some disdain the tasteless nature of high school cafeteria macaroni and cheese.  I attended high school after the introduction of processed cheese.  As I remember, it tasted a little like yellowish orange stuff spread on tenderized gypsum board.

Now my granddaughter, God bless her, has led a most interesting life in her eighteen short years.  She started out by being born three and one half months prematurely and that was back in the days when kids died from that.  In her first day of life she experienced something that most of us won’t experience until we are 70 or older, if at all.

She had a stroke.  Her lung collapsed.  As a result her blood pressure spiked, and she had a brain bleed. It was later discovered that the avenue of exit for fluids that accumulate in her cranium calcified and effectively closed.  Her doctor discovered the problem and surgically inserted a shunt, which does exactly what its name suggests; it shunts the excess fluid through a tube into the abdominal cavity.  The discovery wasn’t made soon enough though.  By the time it was identified there had been enough cerebral lobe damage to put her within the autism spectrum.  Yep, my granddaughter is autistic.

Despite that, she is a wonder to behold.  She has a wit that makes me just a little bit envious and she is a video game wizard that I will never be.  She climbs low mountains.  I could use a few low mountains right about now.

Best of all, she introduced me to macaroni and cheese with ranch dressing.  Just add a little freshly cracked pepper and you will be hooked for life.  Despite that, it’s not generally accepted in some circles.

S-o-o-o-o pilgrim, if fate is guidin’ yuh towards that little community north uh Houston, yuh best remember.  Yuh kin put your ranch dressin’ on yer salad, ‘n yuh kin put yer ranch dressin on yer bufferler chicken wings.  However, doncha ever put yer ranch dressin’ on yer mac ‘n cheese, leastwise not in yer high school cafeteria here north uh Houston, Texas.