Grandma's Guacamole

A Secret Family Recipe

photo by Adam Hammer

The chicken was fine, as far as I could tell.
Just as disappointing as any grocery store fried chicken has ever been.
I ate three pieces myself the night before.
But it wasn’t up to her standards.
She didn’t care that the rest of us ate it up.
She didn’t care that only 6 of the original 14 pieces were still intact.
She didn’t care if we said it was unnecessary to pluck the discarded bones from the trash can and return them to the box.
She didn’t even care that she didn’t pay for it.
She didn’t like this chicken.
If you could even call it chicken.
This was more of an insult. It was communism, terrorism and atheism all battered and fried up together.
“It’s so darn tough you can’t hardly chew it,” was the given reason. She’ll take any reason to leave the house, though. And today, this was good enough. 
“I’m gonna return it.”
And so, it was settled. Right in the middle of a Bird Flu epidemic. Back to the store goes the perfectly fine chicken.
Fuck it.
Not every reason …