Dinner

Dinner is the best.
You know, if you have to pick one of the three.

Of course, there are those who claim that breakfast is the best, or at least “their favorite,” which is just the coward’s noncommittal way of refusing to choose sides. And sure, breakfast has a certain kitschy charm, with all of its candy-colored, cartoon-mascotted, maze-on-the-back-of-the-box, free-toy-inside, movie/TV-tie-in-promotion, artificially-hyperflavored, dripping-with-high-fructose-corn-syrup, so-crunchy-it-tears-sheets-of-skin-from-the-roof-of-your-mouth, pulverized oat-, corn-, or wheat-cereals festooned with inexplicably crunchy marshmallows. Breakfast is cute and everything, but let’s face it, it’s sort of a joke.

Breakfast will never be a full-fledged meal because it’s too narrow in focus. It lacks options. Besides cereal, you’ve got eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, waffles, and toast. And oatmeal, I guess. But that’s the entire list. Of course you can eat whatever you want in the morning, but I think we all know that if you stray from any of the classics, you’re sort of stretching things by calling it “breakfast.” Now don’t get me wrong, I love eggs. I think bacon is one of the crowning achievements of porcine evolution. But why limit yourself to breakfast when there’s a delicious spectrum of culinary pleasures to be had?

Lunch is the fulfillment of an obligation. It’s ten minutes in the middle of the day microwaving a fiesta-beef-n-cheez bun from a gas station vending machine so you can cram it joylessly into your slobbering, drooping mouth. Lunch is eaten while driving, or while hunched over the kitchen sink, or in your cubicle while feverishly maintaining the illusion of being far too busy to step away. You eat lunch with your bare hands. You eat it from Styrofoam, with plastic utensils and paper towels. It’s take-out. It’s drive-through. It’s hurry up and get back to what you were doing. It’s just lunch. Just get it over with.

But then there’s dinner. Man oh man, is there ever dinner. The amazing thing about dinner is that it could be anything. It could be a bowl of chili and a hot dog. Or eggplant. It could be chateaubriand with Doritos, or a bologna chimichanga. It could be Cool Whip straight from the container washed down with Mountain Dew. It could even be breakfast (and I suppose it could conceivably be lunch, although it probably wouldn’t be). At dinnertime, you can sit at the table, sit in front of the television, or sit in a restaurant. Hell, you can stand up for all I care. You can do anything at dinner. You can talk to your kids. You can ignore your parents. You can eat meat as an entrée and still have side dishes that contain meat. You can eat dinner with your hands, with a fork and a knife, or with a special utensil your Uncle Dan invented that grinds the food into a pulpy paste. You can eat only red foods, or only foods that start with the letter M. You can speak with a comical ethnic accent that has the same geographical origin as your food – Atsa espicy meata-ball! or Ziz zoup, she is merde! You don’t have to clean your plate. You don’t have to go to work afterwards. You don’t even have to put your shirt on, but you really should. At dinner, anything is possible.

The verdict: Dinner is awesome.