8. Frittered
Little tidbits
Odds and ends
Of whatever, fruit or meat or veggie or tuber
Being fried up on the griddle
After being dipped in batter.
That’s a poor man’s tender
That’s a low-class nugget.
That’s a fritter. A noun.
But I want to define the verb. The one with the -ed added to it.
I want
FRITTERED.
Often accompanied by the adverb ‘away’ (frittered away) or ‘down’ (frittered down)
Especially in the context of money or time or energy.
When something is frittered, it is squandered in a piecemeal fashion
Incrementally
until it becomes nothing at all.
Like a piece of wood that you whittle
With a dull knife
From a square stub
To a rounded end
To a pointy edge
To eventually, nothing.
Or like my day today.
Where I frittered away my time and my money
First at breakfast
when I opted
for overpriced French Roast
Over the house blend.
Then I dilly-dallied on main street
Before a stroll into the local convenience store
To buy silly bumper stickers
Even though I don’t use bumper stickers
Because I don’t have a car.
And to buy two funny books.
One about songbirds
The other about making fires without matches,
Neither of which I would read.
Later, after puttering about in the park
First birdwatching
Then watching people fire-starter barbeques
Then thinking about cooking songbirds on an open fire
I got hungry
And bought gelato
Instead of ice cream
From a street vendor with a pushcart
just because, it being Italian and all,
it sounded nicer to say,
and loved ones had just returned from the ‘Amalfi’ coast
A place that in Italy I now realize I always called ‘Malfi’ coast.
God I’m an idiot.
But I was an idiot with gelato, which is better
Then an idiot
Without gelato.
Until the gelato was done. And then I was back to being an idiot without gelato.
But an idiot who conveniently
Finished
In front of a bus stop.
I could have taken the bus
But elected to take a Taxi home,
Despite the bus
Stopping right in front of my apartment.
Once I got there, again by taxi, not by bus,
I tipped my driver
And spent
the last
few
dollars
left on my credit card
Paying for a movie on Amazon demand
that I had watched a million times before
that is always on cable.