Visions From a Hot Dog Stand

An ode to freedom

Sometimes life chooses for us. Other times, we have to decide on our own. 

I am a person who fears being idle. I’m afraid of the weeks and months that pass when we’re on autopilot and trying to get to the “next”.

At work this week, they were talking about “the five-year plan” and forecasting budgets through 2027. The thought of being in the same spot to live out a two or five-year plan makes my eyes dart to the nearest fire escape. Amplified by the fact that it’s a plan of other people’s choosing—and if I did nothing I could remain in middle-management through 2027—well, that has me ready to catapult my muffin top off the sixth floor.

This next part may not come as a surprise: I’ve fantasized about being fired from nearly every job I’ve ever had. And I’ve done so in impressive detail—technicolour, one might say. 

Despite the ego-blow and Mcfury that a firing brings, I’ve hoped that decisions are made for me. To have the reins taken from me and my fate sealed with the sweet whisper of  “office dismantling” and “severance package”, is a vacation for my logical, quit-nothing brain.

In my most recent firing fantasy, I go into the downtown office, learn of mass lay-offs (this way, it’s not me), and then immediately order a street meat sausage.

Each morning on my way into the office, I exit from Osgoode’s subterranean onto Queen Street. As I cut sharply onto Simcoe, I am overwhelmed by the perfume of blistering hot dogs. Behind the red and yellow cart is an older Eastern European woman with a bleached bouffant, overdrawn lip-liner, and a cigarette. 

It’s rare to see a lady holding court in the street meat biz, and she’s the perfect blend of no-fuckery and indifference. There’s no judgment on her patch of concrete. There can’t be—it’s a place where people go to scarf one linear foot of hog before 9 AM. 

And more often than not, as I turn the corner and scratch away my last sleep crusty, she’s got herself a customer. 

People are living amongst us who gift themselves a hot dog before the sun’s fully risen.

To me, that’s freedom. To see people flippantly surrender to such gross impulse is liberating. 

And one day, on my last day, I will join them in their depraved no man’s land. 

But for me, and who I want to become, I hope that ordering the footlong is a decision that’s all mine. And in the busy streets of suits and Converses heading into their offices, I mow it down and don’t look back.