There’s a happy place for people like me in the Gustavus Adolphus Market Place. I can’t take credit for it as I learned from those before me. Thanks to them, I now rely on it to feed me during busy lunch hours.

Thanks to you, dear Gusties, for without those of you who throw out half-eaten chicken strips and cheeseburgers, I would not eat lunch most days.

You’ll find me stationed around the conveyor-belt-trash-line searching for your recently disposed trays of leftovers. I love the “freegan” meal plan I’ve inherited, for it allows me to save the food in my pantry and feed instead off the ridiculous amounts of scraps thrown down the disposal.

I wouldn’t consider myself a diehard-ecofriendly-world-saving-green man, but I know a major waste when I see one. And paying multiple dollars for a banana then dispatching it without so much as a single peel is both excessive and a damn waste of money.

However, it’s people like me that thrive on such foolishness. For if everyone ate every piece of food they bought, I’d be pretty hungry.

A professor actually called me a hero. James Freetly, who graduated last year, wrote a paper for some philosophy class about something and apparently made references to my freeganism.

That’s really all I know. I didn’t even know that until I was walking with James to the library from the caf with a plate of partially eaten chicken wings in hand, and he said, “Oh, Professor, this is the guy I wrote about. The Freegan.” He shook my hand and congratulated me. Hell, I was just hungry.

Sometimes I wonder why so much food is left untouched. I can understand a few reasons, having not eaten all my food before. For instance, something doesn’t sit well and you suddenly feel sick; this would cause me to stop eating.

Or there were so many good choices that you had to get a bit of them all and you greatly overestimate your stomach’s capacity (this, I think, is my most common diagnosis).

But it certainly wouldn’t happen every day, so how could there be entire meals abandoned in the trash line any day of the week? To feed me, I think is the answer. Therefore, I would like to thank you, dear Gusties, for providing a lunch for me every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

You could tone it down a little, though. I mean, I’ve got a hearty appetite but I can’t eat all of your leftovers. I don’t need every caf-eater to feel obligated to donate rations to my survival cause.The way I see it, if you’re reading this, then you no longer have to submit half your luncheon.

This way, all of my other dear Gusties that fail to pick up their Weekly on Fridays will continue (as they would have no way of knowing not to) paying good and no doubt, well earned money on their caf-food before quickly discharging some or all of it to my incessant lunch plate.