Soup

How much is say, a container of the best soup in the world worth to you? Say you’re sick, and the best soup in the world is across town, in a little hole in the wall called Mogadishu Café. Say you have a fever, and the only thing in the world that would make you feel better, is this soup. Now, say your roommate, who’s this quiet Indian guy who the Foreign Student Union set you up to live with, would have to race if he left right now, just to catch the cross town bus to get to this place before it closes for the weekend, and say the owner is willing to wait an extra 15 minutes, but no more, because he had a good day. Now, say your roommate races out the front door, and it’s starting to rain, but neither of you has an umbrella worth its salt. Your roommate get’s soaked, and you promise to yourself, you’ll make it up to him. You’ll set him up with the cute blonde on three who laughs at your jokes in the laundry room, the one you were hoping to score with yourself. You’ll do his laundry for the next three weeks. That seems fair. Maybe you’ll finally clean the apartment, top to bottom like he’s been asking you to do for months now.

How much did you say that container of soup was worth to you? Say that, while running for the crosstown bus, his glasses blurry with rain, your roommate doesn’t look and darts out into 72^nd St, hopelessly as the bus pulls away from the curb?

Even if it was a semi-trailer that hit him, and they said it was instantaneous, was the soup worth what you’ll carry the rest of your life?