Whatever Was Left

Someone once described a student breakfast with sesame bread, cheese, cherry tomatoes, roasted peppers, and tea.

It sounded excellent.

It also sounded suspiciously unlike the student apartments I knew.

A real breakfast depended less on taste than on inventory. You opened the refrigerator and discovered what yesterday had left for today. Sometimes there was cheese. Sometimes bread. Sometimes there was a container nobody wanted to investigate closely enough to give it a name.

This was how I learned to drink mineral water.

I had disliked it for years. Friends knew this, so whenever they brought some to the apartment, the unopened bottles tended to survive after everything else disappeared. One day I opened the refrigerator and found no water, no cola, no milk, and nothing else that could reasonably solve thirst.

There were two bottles of mineral water.

I closed the refrigerator.

Then I opened it again, as if a better drink might have appeared during the interval.

The bottles were still there.

I opened one and drank it. A few minutes later I had the embarrassing thought that it was actually fine. Soon I was buying mineral water myself, sometimes several bottles at once.

Student apartments teach through shortage. Nobody gives a lecture. The refrigerator simply presents the available curriculum.

You learn to cook because nobody else will. You learn what can wait until tomorrow. You learn that shopping requires energy and that hunger can reorganize standards very quickly.

And sometimes you learn to like the thing nobody else had finished.