Alphabet Soup

There is a message in your alphabet soup. You swirl it away and another message forms. What is your soup trying to tell you?

It had been a rotten day, just beastly, and I wanted some comfort food for dinner. I thought about picking up some fast food, but then thought, “I need some soup and grilled cheese.” As I drove, I thought more and more about that grilled cheese, and ideally, some tomato soup. I knew that I had a lot of different canned soups in the house and by the time I got home, I had my heart set on dipping some grilled cheese into a nice, hot bowl of tomato soup. 

I ran upstairs and flinging open the refrigerator, I pulled out the fixings for grilled cheese: some mild cheddar cheese, real butter (no margarine today. There is no comfort in margarine), and the bread. After placing the ingredients on the counter, I moved to the cabinet to find my soup. I searched through all of the red and white labels- cream of mushroom, cream of potato, french onion….where’s the tomato? How can this be? I must have tomato soup! 

No tomato soup.

Disappointed, I began to close the cabinet door when I noticed that the last can, all the way in the back, is alphabet soup. I considered it- alphabet soup is also a comfort food, right? It reminds you of childhood and cold winter days when mom would give you some piping hot alphabet soup after a long morning of building snowmen and snow tunnels. Alphabet soup it is!

I heated the alphabet soup in the microwave while creating and cooking the perfect grilled cheese sandwich. Both sides were beautifully browned and a tiny bit of melted cheese oozed from the edge of the bread. The microwave rang at the perfect moment, and I carried my grilled cheese and alphabet soup to the kitchen table for my comfort meal.

The soup was very hot, I so I ate the grilled cheese first, savoring every bite. I ate around the edges first, as usual, and saved the gooey middle for last. Each bite was more delicious than the last and the final bite was the sheer perfection of warm, soft cheese and crunchy, buttery bread. Sighing with satisfaction, I turn my attention to the alphabet soup, which had cooled just enough to eat. I dipped my spoon in and swirled the letters around, remembering with a smile that as I child, I wished that the letters would form words as I stirred. Alas, the only word I ever saw in my soup was DOG.

I completed a couple of swirls and lifted the spoon to my lips. As the spoon drew near, I saw the first few letters- B-A-D. Huh? I pulled the spoon back a little bit and looked closely into it and saw that the letters had spelled a word; in fact, the letters had spelled two words- B-A-D  D-A-Y. This had to be an amazing coincidence! I wanted to take a picture with my iPhone but realized that people would think I had made it up. I also decided that I would enjoy this as a private memory, and I swallowed the spoonful. 

I was a little bored and decided to turn on the TV and see what movies might be on. I picked up a spoonful of soup first, and then decided to look at the letters again, even though I knew that it couldn’t happen twice. I looked at my soup spoon and was chilled by what I saw there: N-O  T-V. I ate that spoonful quickly, then set the spoon down and looked down into the bowl. There were a lot of different letters mixed into the broth and chicken and I couldn’t see any words. I sat back and mentally shook myself- of course the letters were random. I felt really silly! I tried to slide my chair out but it was stuck on the rug and I was afraid I would topple over. I gave up on the TV and picked up my spoon for another mouthful of soup. I was afraid to look at the letters in the spoon and I swallowed the soup quickly. 

I ate a few more spoonfuls without looking at the letters, but as I ate, I began to feel a little queasy. I put my spoon down and sat back, taking a few deep breaths to quell the nausea. I glanced down at the bowl and still saw only random letters. I felt foolish again and decided to finish the bowl. As the spoon neared my lips, I had to look and what I saw chilled me to the bone. S-T-O-P was spelled out in the bowl of the spoon. Startled, I dropped the spoon into the bowl and leaned away, really frightened. The falling spoon caused the letters to swirl around again and this time, when the motion stopped, the letters were not random. Spelled out in the soup was one word: L-E-A-V-E.

I pushed back on the chair and it toppled over backward, sending me sprawling to the floor. I untangled myself from the chair and crawled across the floor, away from the table and toward my front door. I stood up, grabbed the doorknob, and wrenched the door open. I ran outside without looking back.

The door swung slowly shut and a rattling sound came from the cabinet. The can of tomato soup pushed its way to the front of the cabinet, and together with the other cans of soup, snickered. It sent out a quick message to the alphabet soup, and if anyone had walked by the now-cold bowl of soup and looked into the bowl, they would have seen a message: Y-O-U  A-R-E  W-E-L-C-O-M-E.