Recently, some banana muffins found their way into the volunteer compound.  Obviously, I attacked the tray like tiger who hasn’t fed in a weeks.  As I was chomping through a muffin, my roommate asked, “Are they good?”  

“Yeah,” I said, crumbs flying out of my mouth.  

She picked one up, took a bite, and then made a disgusted face.  ”You like these?” she asked and then tried to clean her tongue with a napkin.  

“Well, I Africa like them.”  

“What?”  

I had to take pause from my third muffin and explain that once upon a time, in a land far, far away, I had a big girl life with a big girl hair do and a big girl apartment and big girl shoes and even a big girl career.  And the career was in publishing.  And while there are a lot of great things I can say about working in publishing, the presence of a quality young straight male population isn’t one of them.  So anytime a man would start at the company, it was a mighty huge deal.  E-mails would fly from one girl’s inbox to another with questions like “Is he our age?”  ”Is he cool?” “Is he straight?”  ”Is he cute?”  

The answers normally weren’t affirmative.  After new hire after new higher of disappointment, we eventually started sending response e-mails that read like this “Well, um, he’s publishing cute.”  Meaning that compared to the three male security guards and the gay guy on floor seven, he was the cream of the crop, but outside our little publishing world, you probably wouldn’t be into him.  You might even call him “Vomitface.”  

And in Africa, I get baked goods so infrequently, that these baseball weighted mealy muffins counted as a treat even though at home, I wouldn’t think about wasting the calories on them.  I Africa liked them.  

My roommate nodded, which I took to mean “Please eat the rest of this muffin that I took a bite out of.”  And I did.