It’s about two months into rooming with Rebecca when I unwrap the plastic off a six-pack of instant ramen packets. I had added it to our cart during our first Target run when we moved in together but somehow never got around to opening it until to-day. Now it’s four in the afternoon, too late for lunch and too early for dinner, but I was starving. So here I am, eating my shrimp-flavoured ramen when she passes me by on the way to her room.

“You know, Lauren,” she says, “you can’t just have ramen every day.”

And I want to protest, This is the first time I’ve eaten ramen in two months. Surely “every day” is a bit of a stretch here? But I know she’s on much stronger grounds than I am. If I say that, she can counter with, Well you know what happens when people start eating ramen. All I’m saying is, don’t make it a habit, and right now I haven’t the strength to figure out what to say to that. And she’s probably doing me a health service by glaring disapprovingly at my instant noodles. The more stigma attached to junk foods, the less I will be inclined to eat it, and the healthier I will be. And she’s only looking out for my health. Who am I to contradict that?

She’s already in her room when my mind suggests, in a moment of esprit d’escalier, that maybe I could have said, “You know it’s not often that I afford myself this luxury.” But then again I would have earned myself a free lecture on Don’t you try to be smart with me, you eat meat and I’m too tired to think about how I’d get through that.