How to be a proper curmudgeon

I have just finished eating the most delicious sandwich known to mankind. The best part about it is it was made with partially free ingredients. By free I mean stolen from a free breakfast bread buffet my office landlord held for all of us tenants this morning.

One of my co-workers told me about it as soon as he saw me, I suspect because I'm the token fat pregnant lady around these parts. As soon as the words "free food," fell out of his mouth, I had turned on my heel and was out the door. Oddly, I was the only person that was in the lobby standing before the most beautiful carb-laden buffet filled with pastries, bagels, muffins, strudels and croissants. I wept for a moment before thanking god for the heavenly bounty put before me and loaded up a plate. I took an extra croissant too because I am your grandpa.

Like your grandpa, Andy Rooney just admitted to pocketing free rolls when he visits a restaurant on 60 Minutes a few weeks ago. He also confessed to making his own coffee in the morning rather than paying $1.50 for it in the CBS cafeteria. Most delightful of all, he acknowledged wearing his shirts multiple times before laundering them. All in all, Andy Rooney's oddball habits probably save him about $3 a day.  Some would argue that all his efforts are not worth such a  small savings. But those naysayers are too transfixed on the monetary amount itself and they fail to recognize the satisfaction that Andy Rooney gets out of living so frugally by choice. 

I've even created a new verb for the act of saving money in shameless and often insignificant ways, "to andyrooney." As in, today I andyrooneyed my sandwich.   That does not mean that I yelled at my sandwich, berated it even, while the poor sandwich could do nothing but stare at my very bushy eyebrows and question whether I ever aged.  (Seriously, does Andy Rooney age?  I feel like he's looked the same since I first saw him on TV back in the 80s.)  No, to andyrooney a sandwich means that I went to great trouble to save myself the 20 cents that croissant would have cost me at the store.  And as I later ate that sandwich, I took great pride in the fact that I had gained such a delicious feast by my own ingenuity and cheap-assed-ness.

I mean absolutely no disrespect to Andy Rooney and I am not making fun of him in the least when I say that.  So Andy, if you have googled your own name and somehow ran across these words, I want you to know you are my idol.  I'm actually making fun of myself.  I get an inflated sense of pride in making something out of nothing, especially if it was free or I paid a minimal amount for it.  Did I mention I can't shut up about it afterwards either?

When I arrived back to my office with my plate piled dangerously high with all the free goodies, all of my coworkers gathered around me salivating.

"How'd you get food? They told me I had to come back at 9:00," my coworkers whined.

"Guys, I don't think I need to tell you that I'm pregnant and therefore magical. Also, people are afraid I will eat them if they don't give me what I want. And you know, I just might. So be nice to me. Also, it helped that there was no one manning the buffet when I was down there.  Do me a favor when you go down at 9:00 though and get me another croissant will you?"

I like to think that having other people steal my bread for me makes me even more annoyingly shrewd than Andy Rooney, if such a thing is even humanly possible.  The old master has taught me well.