*: 90% water, 10% fiber, 100% guarenteed to dampen your seat.

Some women can orgasm eating chocolate. Some while being tickled. Others need a bit more prodding, and the help of a certain mechanical device.

The woman behind me in the cafeteria today nearly creamed her shorts over the salad bar.

Have you ever had one of those moments where you were utterly convinced that you must be going about life wrong? That single split second where the thought "I've never looked at lettuce that way before....WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING WITH MY LIFE?!?" flittled so very innocently through your head?

Hold on to that thought. As long as you can. Because the nasty realization that Stupid is contagious and you just caught the acute strain is about to hit. Hard.

Now, I can understand being excited for food. I give most food three thumbs up (which, in all honesty, is part of the reason I happened to be in the salad bar...but more on that later). We eat out for special occasions. People dedicate their lives to creating ambrosial delicacies for our pleasure in consumption.

I can guarantee you no one dedicated more than 2 seconds of their day dumping the lettuce, coated no doubt in "brown-retardant," into that bowl. Possibly they MAY have dedicated an extra two minutes to mix the mayo into the crab salad. But only maybe.

Two minutes, two seconds.

Certainly not enough to warrant the "OH MY GAWAD! This looks so WUNDAFUL!" that somehow wormed its way into my ears and began nonchalantly gnawing away at possibly vital parts of my brain. I still can't find my car keys....But who knows. I could be wrong. Maybe I really DON'T look at lettuce in the right way.

But how DO you look at lettuce in a different way? No one wakes up in the morning and thinks "Holy shit, I want lettuce, and I want it NOW." There's no lettuce flavored treats. Even vegetarians have found better sources of nourishment. Lettuce is a punishment, and has been for the existence of man.

Don't believe me? There are four known types of lettuce eaters in this world. First, there are those of us who are 50 pounds over weight and have been deluded by the diet industry to think that lettuce holds some magical power. Then, we have the starving students who can only afford the 99 cent head of lettuce on top of a weekend's binge drinking. And finally, we have the crazy health nuts, who, let's face it, are really into the masochism thing to begin with, but commendably choose to suffer in silence.

This woman constituted a prime specimen of the fourth type. The "I eat lettuce in public and feel the need to talk about it so everyone within earshot will know how devastatingly healthy I am and have to commend me on my restraint at not fainting at the site of a hamburger and oh my look TOMATOES!! UGH - EGGS?!? Don't they know how bad cholesterol is for you? I though this was a healthy option! Oh, I don't have to eat the egg? The egg is extra? Oh that's WUNDAFUL" type of lettuce eater. A vision of New York subtlety, her hair, makeup and clothes were naturally about 20 years too young for her, thin as a rail, her "health nut" status belied by the depth of crow's feet that only come of 30+ years of 32 menthols a day.

But she was happy. And who am I to deny someone their public orgasm, even at the cost of my own sanity?

I smiled quietly to myself as she drown her wonderfully healthy lunch in full cream dressing and went about my day.