Anxiety and Cheese
9 November 2009
My second period B-day class is Algebra 2 with Ms. Gillespie in building 4. I usually go from there straight to lunch, but not today. Today I went in the opposite direction to Ruiz's 3AB pre-AP English. It's not a big deal. I just went to a different place for 25 minutes, but I got that empty-stomached butterfly feeling I get when something is different. I guess its the schedule-prone species I belong to. I entered the room, and that feeling went away. Why feel anxious about something so familiar? These past two years I have spent time and energy and spilled blood, sweat and tears in this room, and when my subconscious brain picked up on that it calmed down. Sometimes I wish my subconscious brain and the rest of my body would get onto the same page.
That aside, I love cheese. I say I love cheese not in the sense that I really like cheese, but I love cheese. I love all kinds of cheese, yellow cheese, white cheese, red cheese, brown cheese, and all the other colors of the cheese rainbow. Cheese really is the melty-delicious glue that holds the human race, and the world, together. Every culture has their cheeses and when we share that cheesey gift to the world, something beautiful happens. Something so beautiful that I can't help but shed a tear when I witness that spectacle. When two foreign, warring, diplomats taste the other's parent country's cheese for the first time they cannot think about war. They can only think about getting that delicious, salty, savory, sweet, earthy, pasteurized, and un-pasteurized, Old and dry, new and tasty cheese into their possession. That cheese that makes the rest of your possessions meager by comparison. They want - nay, they need to get that cheese home as soon as possible to their Apartment in Amsterdam or their Townhouse in Moscow.
But there is problem. American cheese. Holland has Smoked Gouda, and we have American cheese? An outrage! It is no small wonder that our soldiers during the American Revolution could keep their spirits up with such a depressing excuse for a cheese. Our American "cheese" against the English Brie or the classic Cheddar? How could any of them hoped to survive in the wake of the Cheesy British assault? It only makes sense when you think about it. Why are we always at war with someone or another? Because our cheese sucks. If our cheese was any good, then those beautiful moments would happen between our politicians and those abroad and the fighting would never ensue. What was the Cold War about, if not for cheese? Fridges are cold, cheese is kept in the fridge; it only makes sense.
The fighting in the Middle East could be solved in one afternoon at one luncheon. Give the leader of Israel and the leader of Palestine some smoked Gouda on French bread? There will be peace within the hour. We, the western powers, need not focus on well-placed missle attacks and well-coordinated Ground-Air offensives, but rather on well-coordinated knife cuts into blocks of cheese and well-placed name places at the table on the Veranda. Please, cheese makers of the world, give to charity. A good charity, one that strives for world peace. Give up just 1% of your yearly production, and you will have your name forever engraved in the monument to the ending of war. Those among our number spear-heading the effort to bring about a cheesey peace, you will surely be given a Nobel Peace Prize for your contributions to world peace.
I have a proposal: America, get a better cheese, and we can end war. Why did the War in Iraq happen? Saddam was so offended by our cheese on a Ritz cracker that he could not help but insult America. So my plan for ending war, once and for all? Get better cheeses. We shouldn't be spending so much money on rockets and bombs, but rather on precious Cheese research. What are we training these egg-heads for if not for cheese? I say, make cheese, not war!
-Nic