The Chipotle Paper Bag Essay
When I went to Chipotle today, the paper bag essay was written in Pig Latin. 40 years ago, I was pretty fluent in Pig Latin, so once I started translating the essay, I realized the paper bag essay was just about how high quality Chipotle food is.
I went into a rant (my rants are relatively tame) in front of my daughters about how Chipotle paper bag essays used to be written by literary authors and how Pig Latin must be what you do when you can’t get a literary author to write a paper bag essay. My oldest daughter reminded me that I used to complain about the literary authors who wrote the paper bag essays.
She is right, and now I’m embarrassed. I wish I had a paper bag to put over my head.
It’s tough to read an essay like this, but at least nobody can watch you eat. (image via wikimedia)
First of all, I don’t want to seem like I’m giving Chipotle free advertising. I don’t have anything against the fast food chain; I’m just not that kind of blog. Besides, Chipotle doesn’t give me free advertising, so why should I help them out?
Anyway, Chipotle is printing short essays from several prominent authors (like Jonathan Franzen and Joyce carol Oates) on the chain’s paper bags and cups. The Cultivating Thought paper bag essay isn’t a bad idea, but it would have been more useful 10 years ago before smart phones and tablets. Still, I guess it’s better late than never.
Literature in restaurants isn’t a new idea. Ernest Hemingway supposedly wrote his six-word story on a napkin in a public place, but it probably wasn’t at Chipotle. His tale, “For…
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Dysfunctional Literacy 