Small Tests, Big Rot

I stared at the slow cooker, vexed.  The mishmash of seasonings, broth, and chicken bubbled away, ignorant of the tragedy it unwittingly participated in.  I looked at the clock and frowned, hoping daylight savings had struck early this year.  No matter how I tried to rationalize the situation, the facts remained—I had left the chicken in its cauldron several hours longer than anticipated.

Three options sat before me.  The first, close my eyes and soldier through.  I could make a reasonable assumption it wouldn’t be the worst thing I’ve eaten, given that the government fed me at the quality of the lowest bidder for four years.  The second, make my kid eat it.  I soon remembered he’s going through his food critic phase where everything is, and I quote, “BLEEGGHHHH.”  I put a pin in that option anyways, just in case.

The third, however, whispered in my ear like a snake loitering around fruit trees.  Why not throw the chicken out and go buy another package to start over with?  This was my meal prep for the week, after all.  Isn’t it worth a few bucks to prevent five straight days of suffering?

I discarded this as heresy.  The $5 I’d have wasted could sit in an investment account for the next forty years and give me a bounty of $74.87 (assuming 7% annual returns).  Given that I could get his and hers do-it-yourself taxidermy kits for that much, I couldn’t possibly justify the waste.  And the time investment!  The hours of life going to the store and recooking this meal would cost?  Unconscionable.

No, the only way out was through.  I’d made this bed with the concerning smell; I’d lie in it.  I unplugged the slow cooker and shredded the chicken, only somewhat concerned with how porous and gelatinous it felt.  Into the Tupperware it went, and I tried my best to think of other things for the remainder of the night.

The Week of Reckoning

Monday afternoon, I took the Tupperware out of the microwave and returned to my desk.  It looked like chicken, at least.  Perhaps a touch stringy, but isn’t that a sign of good pulled chicken?  I lifted the fork to my mouth, eyeing the quivering mass with slight concern. 

I took a bite and chewed.  Actually, let me correct myself—I attempted to chew.  What happened instead was what little structural integrity the chicken still had vanished like tears in the rain, leaving me with the mealy texture of soggy newspaper dipped in a lemon-soy mixture and left on a roof through an Arizona heatwave.

Again, the options floated before my eyes.  Again, I made the decision to endure.  The marinade may have failed, losing me the day’s battle, but hope approached just on the horizon.  Given my spotty cooking record, I have come to know the power of condiments on a spiritual level.  Barbeque sauce covers a host of sins.  So as the remnants of my semi-slurried chicken slithered its way down my resisting throat, I thought of better days and my future triumph.

Tuesday afternoon, I stared down at my chicken.  What had been an unhealthy yellow color the day before now took on a vomit like hue as the Japanese barbeque sauce swirled like an oil spill on a colony of plague-ridden seabirds.  Surely this couldn’t be as bad as yesterday, I thought to myself.  Surely.

It was.

The Japanese barbeque sauce labels itself as carrying deep umami flavor.  I don’t know what that means, but it umami’d into this chicken like a Zero piloted by someone who never thought to ask why his flight instructor always told him not to worry too much about landing.

Wednesday afternoon, I fell back on old tactics.  In the early days of my cooking career, I failed to recognize the value of things like herbs or salt when preparing food.  After realizing plain baked chicken is awful, I started relying on what became my personal Old Faithful—‘Murican barbeque sauce.  Packed with high fructose corn syrup and more chemicals than a fertilizer factory, this culinary coronary keeps the flavor flowing in our country.  If you want to smother a bad taste with no mercy, buy American.

Unfortunately, flavor does nothing to mask texture.  Instead of day-past-its-prime citrus flavored rotting mulch, I now had tangy mesquite flavored rotting mulch.  My teeth grinded against each other, convinced that something should be between them but finding only disappointment and regret.

This was my true point of no return.  At any moment, I could have tossed the vile concoction into the trash and saved myself from the horror of choking down each additional bite.  But pride is a terrible thing, the root of all sin and despair in this world.  Pride drove my fork back into the Tupperware holding what once was chicken.  Pride brought the fork to my mouth and stopped my ears from hearing the sound of a chunk of the mash sliding off into the pile below.  Pride drove my molars together as some small part inside of me screamed.

Hope died on Wednesday.  My mindset shifted from “I can fix this” to “I will endure this.” 

I could go on and tell you of Thursday and Friday, of how in my increasing desperation I turned to other condiments like hot sauce and mustard in the vain hope of finding palatability.  But you, dear reader, know the answer.  There was no expectation of success, no retreat from the battle I brought upon myself.  I may have endured the siege, but it left behind a broken man whose world will forever be that much dimmer.

The Real Test

I wrote this off as an absurd week, easily forgotten save for the occasional nightmare.  Then I heard about a student cheating. 

The assignment meant nothing—a percentage of a percentage of the overall course grade.  Had the student just typed “I’m here so I won’t get fined” until they hit the word count, they wouldn’t have noticed on their final grade and would have a great story to tell.  Instead, they used ChatGPT in such a glaringly obvious way that even Doubt knew it didn’t need a benefit.  It was completely unnecessary, and hearing about it bothered me more than it should have.  I couldn’t stop thinking about it, picturing the student staring at a blank document and its blinking cursor before giving up and outsourcing their thinking like it was a New Delhi call center. 

Something about failing a test that didn’t matter felt worse than failing one that did.  Cheating is never acceptable, but the act still exists on a spectrum.  I can understand—if not condone—why someone might cheat on a final exam.  Desperation has a logic to it.  But cheating on something worthless?  That’s not weakness under pressure.  That’s who they are.

Cheating on a five-point assignment in a thousand-point class isn’t giving in to temptation—it’s a complete failure to recognize the action is a problem to begin with. 

Cheating for everything is temptation.  Cheating for nothing is rot.

Rotting from the Inside Out

The true tragedy of this situation is that the student in question is a cadet at a military academy, someone who may soon graduate to commission as an officer.  To me, that takes this from sad to dangerous. 

With enough time in the military, you learn to ask a simple question about those you meet: would I want to go to war with this person?  If I ever find myself in a trench, I need to be able to rely on the people next to me.  Failing that is one of the quickest ways to take a situation from bad to worse.

Someone who cheats on a meaningless assignment is someone who cuts corners on maintenance checks, intelligence reports, or the rules of engagement.  There’s a rot there in the truest definition of the word—when something becomes weakened or useless because of decay. 

Rot is reliable.  It doesn’t discriminate between critical and trivial—it just spreads.  When you let it into your character, it doesn’t stop at the edges.  Integrity isn’t a switch you can flip on and off for convenience’s sake.  You either have it or you don’t, and it’s a hard thing to regain once lost.

The Tests Nobody Sees

Life is full of little challenges that test major commitments.  The student faced one and failed.  I faced one and passed—though I’ll spare you the victory parade for surviving self-inflicted bad chicken.

But passing one test doesn’t clear the ledger.  Throwing out food triggers my principles—frugality, efficiency, and an aversion to needless waste.  Those principles kicked in without effort.  Do they trigger when I’m struggling to handle a screaming toddler?  When I’m deciding whether to work on my writing versus tuning out to mindless entertainment?  

Small tests matter, yes, but rot stays hidden unless you peel back the floorboards to look underneath.  I can point the finger at this student like a frontier judge, but is my house in order?  I don’t know, but I’d like to think me asking the question is a step in the right direction.

We all have tests no one else sees.  Ones where no one is watching and nothing is at stake.  But low stakes expose what high stakes conceal.  Which test is in front of you right now?