Chips

The sandwich shop where Hank often got his lunch was set up in that sort of self-serve manner that left one holding his bag of chips and drink as he waited for the main course of his meal to be prepared. 

     At one time it had been a find, tucked into a neighborhood that required some part, if not all of your vehicle, as recompense for parking. But the undesirables had been driven out of the ‘hood’, as they say, by adventuresome homosexuals—god bless them—which paved the way for young business types—god damn their snobbery—and more often than not, Hank found himself to be the oldest patron in the shop, by what he guessed to be a good thirty years. 

   He enjoyed observing as he held his chips and unsweetened tea. Hipsters, techies, blue print shuffling contractors, musicians, suits who no longer wore suits, undeterminables. 

   While not one of those Armageddon, survivalist types, Hank did put a fair amount of stock in a human’s ability to accomplish the basic tasks of procuring food, potable water, and possibly creating fire from something other than a match or cigarette lighter, should, as some say, ‘the shit hit the fan’. 

     Not a single person he had seen in the shop had struck him as being able to last more than a month should the kale and kombucha cease being delivered to their doorstep. 

     For a time, Hank told himself to be more optimistic, to have a little faith in this future Generation. 

     But then he noticed the chips.   

    They would eat them before their sandwich arrived. Anyone under thirty. Plop down in a booth, or mount a stool at the live-edge bar, open the bag and one by one, eat until they were gone, the sandwich for which they had been intended to accompany yet to be made. 

     Perhaps they could have survived without their farm-to-table entrees and craft small-batch brews. But to eat your chips before your sandwich arrives. There was no hope for such a Generation. Of that, Hank was certain. 

     Doomed, Hank thought, his chicken salad on toast ready now at the counter, and not even a sip taken prematurely from his tea in the waiting. You are all doomed.