Life is a Package of Top Ramen

    I was in fifth grade when I first learned the trick of breaking up uncooked packages of Top Ramen, putting them in a Ziploc bag, mixing in the seasoning packet, shaking it up, and eating it like a bag of chips. I fell in love with that method, and did it countless times over the years. Over time, my taste in ramen packets went from "any package works" to "only the spicy flavors" until I eventually came to the conclusion that the only flavor of ramen I was willing to eat this way was Picante Beef.

     This decision was partly influenced by the fact that it was the only spicy flavor I could find at local grocery stores. Over the years spicy flavors of ramen went away and only the bland flavors remained. Eventually, I couldn't even find Picante Beef anywhere.

    I was devastated. Not because I loved Picante Beef, most of the time I thought it was too salty or too spicy or too overly soy sauce tasting. I was sad because about one out of every twenty ramen packages I got tasted Perfect. Just spicy enough to be interesting, not overly salty, with enough soy sauce flavor to set everything off perfectly. Basically, I didn't like eating Top ramen, what I liked was playing the Top Ramen lottery in hopes of a slightly less mediocre experience. 

    I've said before that I don't think we should go back to "normal", meaning I don't think we should aim to go back to the world before the pandemic. I know the present sucks, but I think most of us have forgotten that for ninety percent of the worlds population (at least) before really sucked too. The only reason we want to go back so badly is that there are a lot experiences you can't have anymore, or at least not easily. Flash games are gone, social media's worse, it's impossible to escape from work, the earth will soon be uninhabitable due to climate change, I can't blame people who want to go back.

    But I think that most of what we view as "good" about the past is like the packages of Picante Beef Top Ramen I used to eat dry like a bag of chips. Not great most of the time, not even objectively good, but sometimes you got to have a truly wonderful experience and you would hold onto that forever. Over time, the successes would outweigh the failures even if you failed more often then you succeeded. In the end, the experience wasn't all that good. That's why, even though I badly miss flash games, I don't think you could pay me to spend all day playing them the way I used to. And even if you can technically buy bulk packages of Picante Beef Top Ramen off of Amazon, I don't think I'll ever eat it again.