I often wondered the difference of men/womens thoughts and one instance during lunch brought it all together.

Having an ocean of selections in the market, I ventured into the deli section for a quick bite to eat. Everything was appealing, from fresh vegetables, to potato and egg salads, to smoked fish.

I decided upon the quiche lorraine, as there was an entire pie, individually sliced, and prepared to a perfection that I have never been able to achieve (much less even attempt, in scale, depth and size).

As the young lady attempted to extract a single (rather large) slice from the pie, she physically damaged one piece and it appeared ravaged.

I saw her face wash over with shame, or failure, or some sort of 'oh-noes', as she tried to correct her mistakes, and only made it worse for this slice.... It was demolished to bits, smooshed, and broken.

Then, she automatically began a second attempt at another slice. This is where I interrupted her with "hey, wait, let me have the smooshed one."

Her look went almost ghost white and stared at me as a deer in headlights, and for a moment I thought she was Ukraine or didn't speak english, or understand my request. She was completely dumbfounded.

I repeated myself and she looked closer, into my eyes and asked "why, it's smooshed, these other ones are still good?"

I immediately thought the opposite, of good, as in, that piece is bad? In a spit second I evaluated the situation, and concluded that the broken piece is in fact, not bad. It's not at fault, and it will taste just as good as the rest, without leaving a giant smashed piece in the display, that looks like it got dropped.

Not knowing what this meant at the time, I replied "because, no-body else will ever want it now. Or know how majestic it once looked, and it was my 1st choice anyways, besides, I'm simply going to eat it in my car and I know it was perfect, just a second ago, and if I came in here now, without seeing you wreck it, I wouldn't want it b/c my imagination on how it got smooshed would be wrong. I saw you destroy it, but being me, and not wanting to see that perfect piece get thrown away later (I have tremendous sadness of wasting food) it's only chance at ever getting bought is me, and do you have any hot sauce for it?"

At that, she glared at me, and shoveled the pieces into a small paper box, rang up the ticket, and appeared to detest what I just said.

I hadn't realized that in my remark, I would think of her now, and ponder her in 20 years when she may be hoping for someone to want her, as I wanted that smashed quiche lorraine, because she showed actual contempt and looked down at me, just for being hungry at lunch and not wanting to waste food.

Summary: it was glorious cold, as I've ever only had them hot before, but they're just as good cold, with a bit of hot sauce.