At first, like everyone, he was only slightly annoyed.  As time ticked on, however, his curiosity grew.  What made them such positive people?  After all, they could no longer eat bread.

He couldn’t live without bread.  Really, he couldn’t–he had checked.  Right on the Hot-n-Ready box it listed bread as an ingredient.  What could he possibly eat instead of pizza on weekends?  Next he lifted the stack of pizza boxes off the top of the trash can to retrieve the wrapping on his most recent McDouble; sure enough, the material encasing the all-beef patties and cheese was bread.  Even if he was able to find a pizza substitute, there is no way he could give-up his lunch and dinner staple.   Not finding ‘bread’ on his Canadian Hunter whiskey bottle, he thought he was in luck.  Nope.  Mr. Google decreed that ‘rye’ was another word for ‘bread’.

Flustered, he shouted to the night, “How do they do it?”  He couldn’t figure how the new wave of gluten-free eaters were able to stay so positive when life had handed them such a lemon.  Then it hit him.  Gluten itself must contain the answer.  “What even was gluten?” he wondered.  On his way to discovering its chemical signature he deduced the simple truth:  Gluten must contain a healthy amount of realism.  It had to.

Yep, life made sense again.  Until now, he had found himself unable to make sense of the situation.  He couldn’t believe that for the last year he had actually felt bad about himself when he was around glass-half-full gluten-free crowds.  With his discovery, though, he could remorselessly return to his simplistic worldview.  “Finally!” he exhaled, collapsing onto his couch.

Make no mistake, the afflicted’s resilience is remarkable.  It’s just that now he knew it wasn’t difficult to be positive–what with an ingredient lacking.