When Food Attacks

I had a couple of requests for the story about the butter in the tea. Unfortunately there's really not much of a story to it. And this is why, out of a fit of blogging desperation, I will also be writing about ketchup.

I know you are on the edge of your seats.

This post is also inspired in part by my family who has gone on a blogging boycott. Apparently. They have refused to do anything remotely interesting or funny. I'm certain they are trying to punish me, but I'm not sure for what. Probably because I haven't made the strawberry shortcake that they keep expecting me to make. I'd make it... if only they'd do something funny.

In fact, I whined about it today to Rob:

Me: I'm pretty disappointed in you people. You've not done or said anything bloggable all week.

Him: And your point is...?

Me: That's my point. You need to do something funny. Or say something.

Him: How about bull penis?

Me: I've already done bull penis. (He snickers.) Well, you know what I mean.

Him: Penis penis penis penis.

Me: Okay, now it's getting more interesting. What else?

Him: Nothing. That's about all I've got.

Me: Penis?

Him: Yeah.

Me: Well, that's pretty good, I guess.

So, because of all that, I have to tell you three really lame stories about food.

* * *

Similar to the mayonnaise buying incident, I recently went crazy buying butter because it was on sale. I love real butter and it's expensive. We keep our butter in the door of our fridge and currently where we keep it is packed with five boxes of butter. We also keep pitchers of tea in the fridge. I recently found an entire stick of butter bobbing, wrapper and all, in a fresh batch of tea.

I was puzzled, thinking it strange that perhaps one of the kids had put butter in the tea. They sometimes do weird things, but that didn't seem like their style. After a bit of investigation I finally figured it out. It was a serendipitous reenactment of Newton's First and Second Laws of Motion. Someone yanked on the door of the refrigerator creating a force which compelled one stick of butter in a state of rest to gain enough acceleration and velocity that it flew through the air landing in the tea where it floated around a while until I noticed it in there.

I've had this same fridge for years and years and I've stored the butter in the same place all this time and suddenly now the butter is coming to life and pirouhetting around the refrigerator like it's auditioning for the Nutcracker Suite. Well, what my family is lacking in pizazz these days, I'm making up for in butter. Go dairy!

* * *

You should learn something from my mistake.

Once I was taking a client to lunch. We went to a nice casual place where we ordered burgers and sandwiches, fries, drinks, talked about the houses we were looking at and other local topics. I grabbed the ketchup bottle and vigorously shook it up at which point the lid that was not actually screwed on went flying toward the client followed by an eruption of ketchup. Fortunately and miraculously I was the only one who ended up covered in processed tomato.

The moral of this story is make sure the lid is screwed on before you start shaking the bottle.

* * *

I got fixed up on a date with someone. I was in my 20's and in college and a professor of mine in one department asked me out on behalf of another professor in another department. (I thought that stuff stopped after you were in junior high but apparently it can extend way out to tenured college professors with PhD's.) I declined at first since I was actually in the classes of both professors, but finally accepted as the semester wound to a close and we had finished up all our classwork.

The date was pretty much a disaster from start to finish. Nobody's fault except that I am a complete dating disaster. I'm not good at it. I'm not socially graceful. He was a sweet and intelligent man, but if it's even possible he was more awkward than me. Doomed from the start.

We decided to meet for brunch at this great little local place. They had awesome food and a harpist or some other live orchestral instruments playing while everyone ate brunch. Somehow I managed to oversleep. A lot. Like nearly an hour. I called the restaurant right away and thought surely he wouldn't still be there. He was. He was still waiting! I was mortified and kept saying, "Tell him I'm sorry, tell him I'm so, so sorry and I'll be right there..."

He was gracious and I was overly apologetic. We tried to make small talk. No chemistry for me, but he gave it an excellent effort that made me wish there were chemistry. He said all the right things, was complimentary and picked interesting topics. After a while I'm sure he got that it wasn't going anywhere.

We finished our breakfast and stood. He reached to hug me, sweeping a glass bottle of ketchup off the table. I watched it flip end-over-end in slo-mo and crash down on the flagstone floor, exploding in a blast radius of red tomato. It was on me, on him, on about four people that were sitting near us, all across the floor, on the pedestals of several tables. There was glass everywhere and there he and I stood in the middle of the blast pattern, him with his arms open and leaning toward me but frozen with a look of awkward embarrassment on his face, me with my hands over my mouth, eyes wide in a horrified stare. My eyes darted back and forth at all the people who stared at us like we were rampaging Neanderthals who had invaded their upscale Sunday brunch.

My sweet date shrugged helplessly then kissed me on both cheeks, bent down and started mopping ketchup off my sandaled feet while the whole restaurant continued to stare. I've never wanted to disappear so badly in my life.

Do you have a story about when food attacks?