Melody Platz

Olives and Individuals

What makes an individual? 

The smell of our cologne?  A social security number?  I think we are what makes us happy and how we spend our time.

There’s a room in my house that embodies who I am.  Recently, my boyfriend and I used it to create a gourmet treat.  We weighed out Kalamata olives (a half-pound) and felt giddy.  Our mission: to make Olive Tapenade.

Afterwards, I spent the whole week telling everyone about the taste.  It gives me such I high, the whole food making process.  Every time someone looks bored with my food stories, I think, “But cooking is so much a part of me.  I have to tell you about it.”

I didn’t have to fall in love with cooking.   My family counted spices as salt, ketchup, maybe pepper and if we were really living it up, a jar of fourteen-year-old onion powder.  That onion powder sat in a rarely used cabinet and I’m surprised it didn’t plot to kill us over the long months while we ignored it.

As I was opening a new tube of anchovy paste, I thought, “So why is cooking so important to me?”  It would be simple to say I love food.  But I love clothes and didn’t become an amateur tailor.

First, I like cooking shows: innocent, filled with personality and scientific.  Scientific?  Yeah, just try to fry some chicken without oil and you will see chemistry in action, burning the white off your bird. 

Second, cooking is so useful.  Whereas with crocheting, I figure I can only make so many gift sweaters, I can always find a reason to cook.  I mean, I’m always hungry. 

Third, cooking satisfies some of my wanderlust.  I can’t often get on a plane, but after a meal of raw tuna and salty edamame, I can almost taste Tokyo.

So when my boyfriend squeezed lemon into our food processor and I added two tablespoons of capers, I wasn’t just making an exotic spread for toast.  I was fulfilling some deep aspects of my personality.

I also got to eat Olive Tapenade on crusty rolls with goat cheese and ripe tomatoes.  Not a bad outlet for self-expression. 

Finally, my love of cooking allows me to spend a happy day in the kitchen with my guy: making memories, stocking our refrigerator and stuffing our faces.  And there’s not much more me than that.

Margo Takes Melody's Face

 

I took this picture to help with a Vlogbrothers project.   The book is Paper Towns by John Green.  The restaurant is Panera.  And that's me behind the book.  Don't I look sad?  At least I have a sandwich.

The Boy Who Would Be Me

From Melody:

            I’ve met my clone.  He’s an eighteen-year-old boy who reminds me of myself when I worked at MacDonald’s fifteen years ago.   I’ll call him Brian.  He works in one of those expensive delis that sell brownies the size of tablecloths. 

I go in there a lot.  Brian rang me up very pleasantly one day.  Then I said something.  I don’t know what.  One of my obscure references that I think everyone will find funny or at least good-natured.  Usually people just smile, nod or laugh.  Not Brian.  He said something just as quirky back to me.  Sweet quirky.  Smart.  He mentions astronomy and something philosophical in the same breath.  I have no doubt he’s thinking deeply and constantly.

            Brian has one of those adorable faces, easy to smile at.  I see him doing those tasks that fall to young adults: making salads, mopping the floor, and ringing up long lines of business men who are in a hurry.  I remember selecting tomatoes for my own batches of salads.  I used to stand in front of those long lines of businessmen and imagine impossible riches falling on my head, finally giving me a perfect life.

            It’s odd to see part of yourself repeated.  Every time I talk to him, he overflows with that positive desire to live a packed life.  I worry about him.  How long will Brian work for eight dollars an hour?  I stayed at MacDonald’s for two years, all that time wondering if I had what it takes to make something of myself.  The world seemed so big and I just didn’t know the rules.

            I’ve given Brian some advice, bugged him to use the resources at the library, and told him a few things about getting a job in the corporate world.  Talking to him feels like I’m mentoring my own eighteen-year-old self.

But Brian isn’t going to listen to much that I have to say.  I know I didn’t listen very well when people tried to help me.  Brian’s so busy: being alive, being ridiculous, thinking he can figure it all out on his own.  Part of me wants to protect him from all the stupid things he’s going to get himself into, and the other part of me stands in the line to his cash register and imagines the impossible riches that may fall on his head in his future.