Common brands include: Wyler's, Goya, and Kallo

My parents are both out of the house for a good chunk of the day, so I'm left to fend for myself. True, I'm nineteen and should be able to entertain myself until they both arrive home later in the evening, but most of the time I wander aimlessly around the house looking for something to do. Thankfully the trees in front of the house are the perfect distance apart. My love for hammocking has traveled 800 miles.

That's not the point.

"Fending for myself" means making lunch. Usually I skip lunch or eat a piece of fruit. It's a strange habit I picked up while living in a dorm and having a class schedule that interfered with the normal lunching hours. Plus, we don't really have any food in the pantry save for some crackers and olive oil. But today I found the Holy Grail of quick, easy, mess-free lunches. A Totino's Cheese Pizza.

I took it out of the box, ripped off the plastic, and started making the necessary changes: adding garlic powder and pieces of dried onion. A regular cheese pizza seemed to blase, and I had just finished watching Rachael Ray.

But as I was taking out the bottles, I noticed a tin of bouillon cubes. I was instantly taken back to second grade and the time I spent the night at a friend's house.

Before dinner that night we were standing around in the kitchen waiting to be told to sit down. While we were shuffling across the floor, said friend flew over to the cabinet and took out a perfectly shaped cubed wrapped up in the most beautiful shade of gold my tiny eyes had ever beheld. It was breath taking. It was intriguing. It was essential to my being to find what was hidden beneath that shiny piece of foil.

At last the cube had been unveiled. Marvelous! Majestic! Mercy!

Oh, I tell you now that it looked so delicious. She popped it in her mouth, put the lid back on the container, and started to walk back to the table. I didn't understand. Was I not important enough to have whatever she was having? Was I not a guest in her house? So I glared at her. Then my glaring eyes turned to ones of pleading.

"What...what is that?"

"I dunno." She was smacking her lips.

"Could...could I taste one?"

"No."

I've hated her ever since.

Not really.

Kind of.

I finished sprinkling the extra toppings onto the pizza and slipped it into the oven. I opened the cabinet door and took out the tin of bouillon cubes. I took off the gold wrapping, popped it into my mouth in the same way she did twelve years ago, and immediately spat it into the trash. It was the nastiest thing I've tasted in a long time.

I hope she still eats them. That way her sodium levels will be through the roof and she'll be a candidate for diabetes and paralysis of the lung muscles.

Only joking.

Kind of.