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| - Private Oya pulled out the metal folding chair and plopped down in its hard metal seat, then scooted up close to the table. The mess hall was empty, because it was 7 in the morning, and everyone else had finished eating long before Oya got out of bed. He looked down at his tin plate, piled high with nails. He had to eat them. The Americans said they ate nails for breakfast, so he had to too. He remembered Lt. Hardin saying so. I eat nails for breakfast, son. This was before Pvt. Oya had asked him if he was French. Oya thought he was French because he was wearing a beret. Lt. Hardin didn’t appreciate the question. Oya didn’t remember any of the rest of the US Special Forces training, because he’d spent the rest of the training in the medical building. Luckily for Pvt. Oya, Lt. Hardin was too busy to ever drop by and finish the job. So that’s what Pvt. Oya got out of the special forces training…eat nails. But now that he was sitting here with a big plate of nails in front of him, he wasn’t sure how to go about it. He tried to pick one up with his chopsticks, lacquered black chopsticks that his mother had given him before he left for basic training, but the nail just squirted out from between the chopsticks and fell on the floor. Were you supposed to eat the ones that fell on the floor? I mean, Pvt. Oya would never think about eating a piece of fish that fell on the floor, but, these were nails, not fish, and so it might be ok to pick it up off the floor and put it back on his plate. It wasn’t a question of etiquette, mind you, I mean, Pvt. Oya was the only person in the mess hall, so he didn’t have to worry about offending anyone or grossing anyone out. It was simply a matter of hygiene. Pvt. Oya decided that if he was going to pick up the nail from the floor, he’d better do it soon before it got too dirty, so he glanced around (to make sure no one was looking, even though he was the only person in the mess hall) and then quickly bent down to pick up the nail. But he didn’t put it back on his plate. He just put it off to the side. Now that he’d touched it with his hands (there was no way he could’ve picked it up with his chopsticks without getting his chopsticks dirty) he was pretty sure he didn’t want to eat it anymore. But this gave him an idea. Maybe nails were finger foods. Americans eat things with their hands, like McDonalds French fries, for example. Maybe nails were like French fries. Well, in that you eat them with your hands. Pvt. Oya didn’t like eating things with his hands. He didn’t eat McDonalds French fries. He’d managed to go his entire life without eating a single piece of food with his hands. Even in Junior High, when they served a big piece of fried bread dusted with sugar and cocoa, he’d used his chopsticks, awkward as it was, to eat it. But now, sitting here in an empty mess hall faced with a plate of nails that he couldn’t possibly pick up with his chopsticks, he started to wonder if maybe it would be okay, just this once, to eat something with his hands. He tried again to pick up a nail with his chopsticks, but it just fell back on his plate before he got it anywhere near his mouth. Faced with this difficult decision, he began to question the wisdom of eating nails. I mean, not that he wasn’t going to try it. Pvt. Oya wasn’t a picky eater; he’d eat just about anything, provided of course that he didn’t have to eat it with his hands, but he wondered whether he’d be able to digest the nails. Perhaps you had to build up to nails. He’d always eaten rice and miso soup for breakfast. Perhaps, you have to go in stages. Like, for the first week, just go from eating rice and miso soup to eating bacon and eggs. Then once your stomach gets used to that, you move on to say, thumbtacks. Then after a week or so eating thumbtacks, you move on to sewing needles. Then, once your stomach and other digestive organs were used to the sewing needles, you move on to very small nails, like those tiny little brass nails that they used to hang up the bulletin board in the barracks. He hadn’t hung up the bulletin board, but he remembered the kind of nails they’d used because he’d help them find one that they dropped while they were working on the bulletin board. Anyway, then once you’re used to the tiny nails, you can move up to the real ones. Pvt. Oya did a quick calculation, and gathered that it would take him a couple of months before he was ready to eat nails that way. But then he realized that leaving a plate of unfinished nails sitting on the table for a couple of months was unacceptable. Pvt. Oya didn’t like to leave food. He always finished whatever food was given to him. So he was stuck. He’d have to eat the nails. No way around it at this point. He tried again to pick one up with his chopsticks. This time, he got it about halfway to his mouth before it slipped out of the chopsticks and fell into his lap. He picked it out of his lap and placed it next the one that had fallen on the floor. He hadn’t decided yet whether he was going to eat that one. He figured, if I can find a way to eat them with my chopsticks, then he’d just leave the two that he’d had to touch with his hands. He didn’t like leaving food, but, after all, these were nails, not real food, so maybe he could make an exception. He tried to remember why he didn’t like leaving food. He thought it was because of a documentary he saw when he was a kid about starving children in Africa. He had felt pretty sorry for those starving kids, and that’s why he didn’t leave food. It just didn’t seem right to leave food when kids were starving. Of course, this was nails, and he didn’t imagine that the starving kids in Africa would mind too much if he didn’t eat all his nails. But, on the other hand, if he couldn’t find a way to eat the nails without touching them with his hands, then he might as well just eat the two that he’d dropped. No sense letting nails go to waste. He made up his mind. He was going to eat them with his hands. But he realized that he hadn’t washed his hands yet, and if he was going to use his hands to eat the nails he wanted to make sure they were clean. But then he realized that to wash his hands he would have to go to the bathroom, leaving the nails on the table, and Pvt. Oya didn’t like eating anything that had been out of his sight for too long uncovered. He could eat the nails if he covered them up with plastic wrap while he was gone, but he didn’t have any plastic wrap. He looked around the mess hall, but there was no plastic wrap to be seen, and he couldn’t ask anyone if they had any, because he was still the only person in the mess hall.
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