chicken parts

I'm not a big fan of Walmart but when I found myself in there yesterday perusing their glassware for molds, I thought it might be a good idea to see what they had in the deli. Their wingdings and hot wings aren't bad for the bucks and it looked like only one person was in front of me. I stood there waiting and overheard the orders he was placing for wings. Not just wings but only the lower arm of the wing. As many of you know, chicken wings are made up of upper arms and lower arms and when you buy wings you get an equal amount of each, because a chicken has two of each. Well, this guy wanted only the two-boned lower arms, leaving a tray full of little drumstick wings. I hate when this happens, not just because I like the lower arms but I happen to like them equally and want at least a reasonably equal amount of both. When people insist on only the lower arms I end up not even having a choice. It's little drumsticks or nothing at all. I then noticed all the wings, not just the hot wings but the wingdings and BBQ wings were upper arm drumsticks, meaning other people throughout the day were requesting ONLY the 2-boned lower wings. If everyone wants only the lower arm, it's reasonable to assume the upper arms will be thrown out and you can bet these upper arms won't go to any food banks.

I wondered how many people like me wanted to get wings only to find the limited selection and changed their minds. I also wondered how long it will be before someone comes up with a genetically altered chicken capable of growing only the lower arm of a wing, lowering Walmarts waste and improving their bottom line. The thought of a huge facility populated by lab-coated guys with clipboards cloning chicken parts appealed to me in a sci-fi kinda way. Sanitary, clean room conditions with table after table filled with petri dishes growing little chicken breasts and tiny lower arm wings with nutrient hoses monitored by pocket protector-clad technicians with horn-rimed glasses, prodding them from time to time with their mechanical pencils is the stuff that makes our great society so great.

In hind sight I should have gotten about 10 lbs of their upper arm wings and hid them somewhere in the store, like behind the socks.