Comida Gratis

Free food is an interest of mine. I come by it no more or less than others, and through the same means mainly. I do get some of it on film sets sometimes, which is an avenue I concede most people don't have open to them. I also get it from ordinary social occasions. It's one of those things where human behavior seems counterintuitive. When there's good food and it's free, I would think anyone would jump at the chance for it. On that I am quite wrong if my personal experiences are to be trusted. I can conceive of some reasons for this, and yet I cannot say those reasons would sway me to the same way of thinking.

I think the main thing is transportation and storage of the food. People don't want the hassle of moving so much as a single pie from the home of a friend to their own. There's the general difficulty of moving anything, and then added to that quite often is the risk of moving potentially messy items. Imagine a warming pan of chicken. It's greasy and laden with some manner of sauce. Even if it doesn't get disrupted and spill everywhere, it's still giving off residue which shall be the car interior's ruin. You have to secure the thing like an egg in a high school engineering experiment. It's an inconvenience perhaps only partially justified by the ultimate result of free chicken. Storage is the other thing. Picture a holiday meal for which of course far too much food has been prepared. The hosts are desperate to get rid of as much as they can, and understandably so. Unfortunately, the guests are probably in little better position to accommodate the food.

Guilt seems to be another issue. I call it that, although there may be some more accurate term I can't come up with. People don't like accepting anything that might be construed as some form of charity or incurring anything remotely like a debt. This does not bother me terribly, but I know it does others, as they have explicitly stated so to me. I guess the thinking is that if a person takes some muffins left over from a party, they then owe the giver, and this debt can be called in at any time with possibly disastrous consequences for the debtor. If it's not like that, then the taker feels like some poverty-stricken pathetic wretch being pitied.

I don't get caught up in such emotions, but the practical considerations do affect me. Mainly taking public transportation, I am at a loss when it comes to transporting more cumbersome foodstuffs home. I recall a great big bag of remaining craft service snacks I consented to take home from a tv pilot shoot out of the goodness of my heart. I looked something like Santa Claus with this very heavy sack which I dutifully brought home on the bus. At present storage seems to not be a problem as I have to use an excellent, reasonably roomy refrigerator, but it would be a challenge anyway to fit something very big in there. I'd consider it well worth doing so. If there's one thing I'd be hesitant about however, it would be taking uncooked items whose proper preparation I would consider beyond my abilities. Thank you, but no thanks.