#moonmarauders

But this experience has got me thinking about a much larger problem. It got me thinking of what "leftovers" mean to a "family fridge". I'm sure that our parents didn't mean to leave us ill-equipped during their departure. They assumed that since we're older we can better handle ourselves: that we'd be knowledgeable to act if we ran out of food; that we'd be self sufficient enough to make our own meals out of what they left us; that we'd be mature enough to call them if we didn't have enough funds for groceries. If we were much younger they probably would've went to the store to restock our selves and empty out the fridge for our babysitter, whomever that may be. Its quite the assumption parents make don't you think. It kinda reminds me of what a family does when the parents are deceased. The leftovers are sort of the lessons, the beliefs, the integrity our parents instill in us; however the leftovers are also tangible things like our parent's property: their house their jewelry, their fishing poles, their furniture, and the family album. When our parents depart from this world all we have our their leftovers and we have to decide what to do with them. We gotta shift through the leftovers, deciding what leftovers to throw away and which to eat before they spoil. We have to be creative; we have to be responsible; we have to be self sufficient; we have to be knowledgeable. On the same token, our parents have to be smart about their assumptions; they have to be smart about what they're leaving as leftovers.

Just recently my parents went on vacation to South Carolina for my father's business trip. So that left me and my two younger brothers to fend for ourselves for a week until they got back. This meant that we had to prepare our own food for a week. In other words we had to use what our parents left us to scavenge up our meals for a week. In the beginning we were coasting: days were stress free and stomach were full; we were set for at least four days... or so it seemed. It wasn't until we cleared out the fridge of spoiled leftovers on day five that we didn't have as much food as we thought. Connor, my youngest brother, was the busmen of our fridge. He was the one that asked me why our parents kept a ton of food-gone-bad in our fridge, never bothering to throw it out. I answered that they were too busy with work to throw out old food; that it was the fault of our mom for making so much because she's uses to a house with six mouths to feed instead of only four seeing as my two younger brothers are venturing off into another step in their lives, finishing up college. Connor sneered at the answer and instead asked the question again except this time it was rhetorical as he grabbed another plastic container full of food, disposing it in the trash. We really didn't have enough money to go to the store to buy groceries for all three of us at the moment nor did we ask our parents. For the last couple of days we managed to survive on Digiornio pizza and easy-to-make noodle recipes. I guess you can say that we managed to "survive" the last three days, if you count beating hunger through first world convenience as a means to a triumphant fanfare. (lol)