Soy Sauce

Nothing screams adulthood like spending $50 on Chinese food. Or maybe it screams irresponsible adulthood. I remember when $50 used to be a gold mine. I'd hide my wad of bills in a secret sock in my drawer, and then immediately forget which sock doubled as my cotton safe. This was an annoying habit, but also led to many happy days when laundry was scarce and I'd have to wear that one pair of socks at the back of the drawer that would spit out a wad of bills like an ATM. 

But anyways, for Mother's Day we got take out from a Chinese Restaurant, and three hours later, my brain has some how developed a metaphor for soy sauce and consumerism, like materialism consumerism, not consumerism of food, despite the context. I'm told that it's ridiculous, but hear me out. 

I'm in the restaurant. I pay the bill. I sign the check. I try to do fast math for the tip and realize four hours later I tipped 25% and not 20%. I notice my mask is falling off my face. I wonder if the customers behind me are the kind of people that will be offended by my mask etiquette. The woman asks if I want soy sauce. I say yes. 

 

Why do I say yes? In the top drawer of our kitchen cupboard we have enough of those packets of soy sauce for a dooms-day-prepper. In the fridge we have two bottles of soy sauce. I don't know what duck sauce is, or what it goes on, and I actually can't think of one instance where I've seen anyone consume the spicy mustard sauce (do they still make that?). 

However, the time comes when we're wrapping up the leftovers, (because who actually eats all the Chinese food they ordered in one sitting), and once again I come across eons of these sauce packets and mindlessly place them with the rest of the stash that I will not touch until the next time I submit a deposit. Tonight, as I was going about this ritual I came to a sobering realization: I am a serial soy sauce hoarder. 

My mind doesn't even consider throwing the extra packets away because what if one day there's a crisis and we need soy sauce? Or what if the production and the process that brought these tiny packets of sodium liquid to my kitchen created a carbon footprint that I am unable to redeem, and in addition, I'm just wasting the carbon footprint by throwing away the sauce when I could at least recycle it for something else?

This thought process brought me full circle back to the root of this problem. When the nice people at the Chinese restaurant say "do you want sauce," I thoughtlessly say yes, as if it's an instinct, a reflex, a twitch that I am unaware is even occurring. 

Here's where the inductive reasoning comes in, so stay with me. What if my soy sauce hoarding habit is simply a reflection of my attitude towards the material world? Even if I don't want more, what if I'm wired to say yes to more without even questioning it? If some one offers something to me, and especially if that something is free, there's an instinct that of course I'm going to take that something. It is free, which means more money and more things and more is better. 

Until I'm in a pandemic. And then suddenly I spend my spare time throwing out all "yesses" that actually never made anything better, but just made everything so crowded. 

So on this day, May 10, 2020, I vow to never ask for, nor accept any soy sauce parcels until all said units have been consumed in my pantry. 

Signed,

Sarah Elizabeth Schilke