I don't care for bagels.

I don't care for bagels.

When I arrive at a workshop where there is a breakfast bagel bar, I feel resentment. Sometimes there's salmon spread or lox; I think that is a dirty trick, and it doesn't work on me anymore. I'm not ashamed of eating a pile of straight salmon spread.

Please don't send me an email about how I don't understand the bagel, about how I should try a real bagel fresh out of the oven from your favorite place, or toasted with X herb, or whatever. I disagree with the bagel on principle, and I'm not ashamed. The premise: my stomach does not handle white bread in an amount over, say, five bites... let alone white bread that's been boiled. Baking and toasting doesn't help, the white bread returns to its dough state in my stomach and then it's all farts and pain after that.

One time a classmate, a Filipina that had grown up in New York, brought a dozen bagels to class as a treat. She went home with eleven bagels in a bag. Eight of us had split one. Sorry, seven of them had split one, I declined.

She was interesting. She wrote part of the script for the video the class made, the part of the script that explained how to cook rice. The language was ok, but yikes, the rice recipe was technically wrong. I corrected it and didn't tell her.

I know all about rice... but I don't care for bagels.

So you enjoy your bagel; if you offer me one, I will smile and decline. I do not care for them, thank you.

Anyway, global warming will kill a lot us, and society won't be the same after that. The USA won't recover as a nation, and we'll all laugh bitterly about the frivolity of the great bagel debate of 2006.