I GOT YOU TOFU

Back in my Pipe-Line days, I lived and worked in Valdez for a year. Valdez is a beautiful little town: the kind of small town where everybody knows what you’re doing even before you do. I loved it, though. It’s so nice to walk into the post office and be called by name, stop and chat with whoever happens to be standing in line that day, and just basically be acknowledged. This doesn’t happen in the big city, believe me.

The people of Valdez were very welcoming people. When I first arrived, they all seemed to go out of their way to make sure I was settled in and had everything I needed. The wife of the man I worked for at the Terminal even thru me a welcoming party so that I could meet everybody.

The one thing that Valdez really didn’t know how to accommodate was my vegetarianism. Apparently that whole concept hadn’t quite made it that far down the peninsula yet, and I’m sure that I was the first one some of those people had ever seen before.

Not only was I female (the ratio down there is like 10 guys to every girl) but add in my choice in food intake, and that made for front page news down there. Guys would actually come over to my desk at work just to look at me. I’d be concentrating on my job, just working away, and causally look up to find 5-6 guys standing there looking at me. When I’d ask if I could help them, they’d all just hem and haw, and walk away back to their own jobs.

So, at the welcoming party thrown in my honor, the lady of the house greeted me at the door, saying “I GOT YOU TOFU!” and handed me a plate.

She didn’t even say hello – just basically exclaimed in a very loud voice that she had gone to very great lengths to find what was most likely the only package of tofu in a 20 mile radius.

The plate she handed me held the entire block of raw tofu. She had sliced it, like you would a loaf of bread, but otherwise it was just a block of raw tofu.

“Oh, thank you!” I said – all the while, that little voice inside my head was saying, “Well, now you’re going to have to eat it. The whole thing, too. You simply can’t leave it, not after she went to all that bother and was so proud of herself for providing special food for you.”

I was touched, really I was. But a whole pound of raw tofu? I’m lucky I still like the stuff…