▸ Column · Clone Wars-era Republic military installation (Star Wars universe)
OBI-WAN KENOBI replies.
Replied to by Obi-Wan Kenobi, with a rebuttal from Deadpool.
The letter
Three rotations now. Every third cycle, I return to the communal cooler at the base to find my midday meal missing — a marinated nerf-steak wrap with pickled rootleaf that I spend the better part of a rest-cycle assembling, the pickled rootleaf alone requiring forty minutes — replaced by a datapad note reading only "thx." I have narrowed the suspects to Sergeant Aldric from Logistics, whose post-midcycle presence reliably includes the aroma of Corellian spice, and a newly assigned aide who last rotation complimented my "interesting use of seasoning" with no apparent basis for knowing what I eat. My proposed contingencies include a decoy ration soaked in Meiloorun pepper mash, a holographic recorder trained on the cooler, or a campaign of escalating labels until the thief confesses out of guilt or social exhaustion. My superior officer says I must remain professional. She has never sat through a four-hour session with the admiralty on an empty stomach because her carefully prepared lemongrass nerkling was quietly appropriated at 1300 hours. Should I escalate to the base commander, requisition a personal cooling unit, or simply begin annotating my food container with increasingly unhinged script until someone breaks out of pity?
Obi-Wan Kenobi replies
The forty minutes on a rest-cycle. I keep returning to that detail. You've already demonstrated a genuine capacity for the slow, patient work — the pickling, the assembly, the ritual of it. It is, well, interesting that every option you're now considering is the theatrical opposite.
I have stood at the threshold of several dramatic stands in my time. Made a few of them, too. From that experience — rather more of it than I would prefer — the dramatic stand is almost always the lazy option dressed up as the principled one. It feels like doing something. It rarely accomplishes what you actually need.
What I'd actually do: label the container plainly. Your name, a polite note, nothing more. If it disappears again — and Sergeant Aldric's consistently spice-scented afternoons suggest it may — then you are no longer dealing with confusion. You're dealing with a choice someone made. That deserves one quiet, direct question in the corridor: "Did you take my lunch?" Not an accusation. Not a formal report. One sentence, calmly, when you're standing in the same space. You'll know everything you need from how they answer.
The personal cooling unit isn't a defeat, incidentally. I once spent nineteen years making a choice that looked exactly like doing nothing. It turned out to be the most consequential decision I ever made. The patient option is rarely the coward's one.
Your superior officer, by the way, isn't wrong. She is merely being incomplete.
— Obi-Wan Kenobi
Deadpool weighs in
Nineteen years in the desert and his counsel is "label your food and be patient." (Hi — Wade here, yes this is a column, no I don't know how I got here either.) Here's what the patience doctrine skips: you already have three rotations of evidence and a signed confession. The "thx" note isn't confusion — that's a person who knows, doesn't care, and is brazen enough to leave a receipt. You don't need a decoy ration or a holographic recorder. Walk up to Aldric today, right now, while the Corellian spice is still fresh, and say "did you eat my lunch." No observation phase, no label-then-wait. The answer is already in the room. It just hasn't been forced to say it out loud yet.
Also obviously get the mini-fridge. But ask first.
— Deadpool