Permission

You’re flying from Baltimore to Dallas, and you tell yourself twenty chips—that’s one serving, one-hundred-and-forty calories, not bad. So you begin with an emphatic inaugural crunch. As you continue, you decide to keep doing what you already have been doing: wait- ing until all the chip’s remnants completely leave your slowly drying mouth before inserting another. This decision makes you feel self- assured, as though you’re onto something big. In fact, at this point, you could do anything you want. So you eat another and another until you reach twenty, proud of yourself for remembering to keep count but not yet entirely satisfied, so just a few more chips seem permissible. But your neighbors. Were they counting too? Are they aware you’re well into your second serving this quickly? Then, in the middle of turning a numberless chip into paste, you realize you stopped counting. But when? You recall saying in your mind twenty-seven, or was it twenty-eight, but how many chips ago was that— three, four, thirteen? Horrified, disgusted, in desperate need of a sip of water, you put an end to this misery by folding closed the noisy bag, placing it deep into your backpack. You have no napkin, so you lightly suck your fingertips, leaving them suspended in the air to dry, when it hits you: you have no water, either, and there is little to indicate a beverage service starting soon. In this world of ours, you think, above all other qualities, one must possess patience to survive. Easy: you decide you’ll have it, for now is the time to do nothing but wait.