The Ghost Apple by Aaron Thier Read Free Book Online

Hall, I sleep in a bunk bed, so my sleeping patterns depend in part on Akash, my roommate, a much younger (and much more romantically active) man. My room is too hot, my bed is too soft, and there’s always someone talking to me. The building itself hasn’t been renovated since I myself was a Tripoli student! Plus, it seems as if anything could happen at any time, whether it’s Lehman practicing with a small gong in the middle of the night or a lacrosse player discharging a fire extinguisher in the hallway outside.
    At the same time, I find that I welcome the noise and distractions. My wife and I ate breakfast together every morning for years and years. We’d make steel-cut oatmeal and read the paper and we wouldn’t say a word, but after she died the silence was different. The silence was so loud that I couldn’t read at all. It’s nice to live in a place where there’s always something going on.
    Tripoli at the Trough: Notes on Dining Services
    I want to talk first about one aspect of student life that arguably has an effect on every other aspect, and that’s the question of what our students eat.
    Tripoli has gotten a lot of attention recently because of what’s been called our “old-fashioned” (and sometimes, less generously, our “reactionary”) approach to dining services, and it’s true that we haven’t responded as quickly as some institutions to new and changing ideas about diet and nutrition. Part of the reason that some members of the community welcome the partnership with Big Anna® is that the company markets a lot of low-calorie foods. Professor Amundsen has even proposed that we source all of our food and food products from Big Anna®.
    In the past, I ate in the dining halls once or twice a week, but I usually had other things on my mind and I rarely ate more than a salad, a piece of fruit, and maybe some bread and butter. My appetite isn’t what it used to be! Now, however, in order to get a better sense of how our students eat, I pledged to have the regular entrée and two sides at each meal. Little did I know how difficult it would be to keep that promise. At both lunch and dinner, Tripoli’s dining halls typically offer a choice of three entrées, not including the vegetarian option, but I’ve found that often there isn’t much to choose. On an average night, options might include old favorites like Drippy Wrap w/Fish, Bacon Blast Pizza , or Soused Mackerel , plus a vegetarian alternative like Crushed Legume Patty . Students ordering the Legume Patty can choose to have it “fully loaded”—i.e., served on a bun with pickles, pickle relish, mayonnaise, onion rings, barbecue sauce, garlic aioli, and ketchup—or they can eat it plain off a piece of wax paper. Side dishes might include Potato Salad or Poached Green Beans , but more often there are less nutritious items such as Mini Tacos , Candy Apple Slices in Jell-O (which is not considered a dessert), or Deep-Fried Pasta . Dessert options might include the popular Nut Ball in Chocolate Sauce —a frozen ball of peanut butter dipped in hot fudge—or a bowl of Chilled Water Matrix with Flavor Compound , our only low-calorie dessert option.
    But as you can tell from reading any number of editorials in the Tripoli Telegraph , the real controversy has to do with our famous self-serve pudding bars (c.f. “The Problem Is in the Pudding,” Tripoli College Telegraph , September 4 , 2009 ). Made possible by a generous gift from the Walker family, Tripoli’s pudding bars have always struck me as a fun diversion from the rigors of college life, but I soon discovered that the reality was different. At lunch one day during my first week, I was taking a breather before heading into the servery when Lehman sat down across from me with a full tray. He was wearing a suit coat with mesh gym shorts.
    “You know the best thing about college?” he said. “I can have as much pudding as I like, or none at all.”
    I thought this was a joke, since