The first time I ate a meal in Jon and Amir’s apartment was very memorable. Amir put a bunch of plastic bags on the table. Mashed potatos were in one plastic bag, salad in another and salami in another. Amir had saved these plastic bags from his last trip to the supermarket. Jon argued it was uncivilized to eat from plastic bags. Amir thought that using plates was a waste of paper. Everyone agreed that dishes were too much of a pain. Jon and I were so hungry that we just gave into Amir’s very determined environmental stance and ate dinner out of the bags. That was settled. Amir won. Then, Jon mentioned that he picked a girl up on a date in a taxi. Amir got very upset and told him that this was not environmentally sound. Jon said that he was more chivalrous than Amir. Amir said that because he picked girls up walking or on a bicycle, future generations would live. We told Amir that he was an extremist. Amir told us that we were environmental terrorists. Amir got us to admit that that the food from the plastic bags tasted good. Amir said that he might bring a bag of food on his next date. He made it sound like reasonable etiquette.
-yoni malina
