Barbara Poelle
I have just returned from a vacation back in Minnesota where I brought Husband to the time honored and deeply religious experience known as the Minnesota State Fair. We have been in training now for several weeks, reintroducing meat into our vegetarian diet and such. Go to itunes and turn on Joe Esposito’s You’re the Best Around from the movie soundtrack for The Karate Kid and enjoy this montage:
Clad in matching monochromatic sweat suits, I am broiling meat for the first time ever in our oven and Husband is gesticulating wildly while we argue about what actually constitutes the broiler….Husband stands with a stop watch to time me while I devour a turkey leg and simultaneously dig for a five dollar bill to purchase a funnel cake…Husband doing sit-ups while I hold his feet with one hand and extend the other to hold a porkchop-on-a-stick for him to bite at each apex ….Husband slapping a handful of lettuce out of my hands and replacing it with a bratwurst….Husband and I stepping on the scale in our (noticeably snugger) matching sweats and high fiving…me weeping and shaking my head after only two servings of deep fried cheese curds while Husband screams in my face and I find a deep well of determination I didn’t know I had and plunge into a third, a fourth…Husband and I staggering into our apartment, our sweat suits and mouths stained with what appears to be both powdered sugar and barbeque sauce, leaning, exhausted, against one another but smiling knowingly…..we are ready….
So we get to The Bigs. The Show. The Stage. The original Great White Way. And we’re not crazy. We know we are up against some of the best. The family from Chisago Lakes who boast they can eat their weight in Sweet Martha’s. The Fair-Do’d Foursome from Elk River who practically invented chocolate covered bacon. And of course, the 250 lb bikini-top-cutoff-jean-shorts-clad twin sisters from Bemidji who hold the record for single sitting pronto pub consumption since the Fair’s conception back in 1859. But the twins ain’t nicknamed Smoke and Mist for nothing. No one has ever even SEEN them chew- there is just a noise much like a sonic boom and then a pile of crusted over pup-sticks while they sip coyly at their apple cider floats. These were the fierce contenders we were up against once we entered these hallowed fair grounds. But we had trained. We were ready.
Husband and I shyly duck our heads under the front gates of this coma-inducing nirvana, and squinting into the summer morning sun and breathing deep of the colliding smells of cinnamon and cholesterol, Husband turns to me and asks, as if in slow motion, THE question, “Whaaaat shoooould weeee eaaaaaat fiiiirst?”
Now, I realize that it’s impossible to misplace 7 hours of your life without sustaining some sort of head injury, but let me tell you, what happened after that starter-gun of a question was so awe-inspiring, so pornographically carnivorous, that my puny human mind simply couldn’t process it without folding in on itself like a tapioca omelet. It was like dusk on the Serengeti.
I needed to fugue to mentally survive.
I do remember at one point, somewhere between the pot roast sundae (yes I did) and the elk bratwurst (yup on that one too) turning to Husband and saying, “Is this not the greatest day of your life?” and from the depths of his deep fried steak quesadilla he may have mumbled a response but then it’s all darkness again. Although, at one particular point- one of which I am not proud of, but maintain it was all in the throes of combat- I had my hands full of my all time fave deep fried cauliflower and a 20 oz MDG, when I felt what could only be some sort of organism with more legs than I care to reflect upon land heavily on my head and then sort of root around in my hair for a while, but rather than lose valuable chewing time by putting anything down, I just thought to myself, “Well, if he nests, I can get at him when I get back to the car”. (Listen, we all have to choose whether or not to be winners or whiners and I fall stoutly- uh, perhaps a bit more so now- on the winning team.)
So, siiigh, I am back at my desk now, and although everyone is still pretty much on vacation for another week, I don’t feel lonely at all because my belly is sitting gently in my lap like a puppy. And my good friend, The Vegan, back home is a simple gchat away so we can send snarky profanity laced commentary to one another while feigning looks of reflection and consternation to passersby.
I jovially explained to her the things I had consumed at the Fair, but she seemed to focus predominantly on what rotting flesh is doing to my previously pristine intestines. From what I can gather, my colon now basically looks like the BQE at rush hour. This visualization made me a little nervous, but I continued amiably to talk about the bull bites and their accompanying sauce which OMG is like crack cocaine, you might find me shaking and scratching myself trying to score some down by the bridge, but her little gchat voice stuck in my head I hope you liked that sirloin because you just increased your risk of heart disease by 87% hahaha! So I kind of started to panic and I was like, OMGOMGOMG the shish kabob gave me E.Coli and so I gchatted another friend and was like, “Hey! So, haven’t talked in a while, how’s it going, how are your kids, am I gonna have to get a triple bypass yadda yadda…” to which she responded, “Well, what did Vegan say? She’s the expert after all. She’s been doing this a lot longer…” Then the Vegan popped back up with her gchat with some helpful links to what was going to happen to me and my children and my children’s children if I continued to consume the flesh of animals, and I started to flop sweat from my hairline down and I pitted out my souvenir shirt and I cried desperately what does this mean what do I do I take it back I wanna take it allllll back and I called my agent in a white hot blinding panic and told her what the Vegan had said and….
Oh, wait. This isn’t about ME at all, is it? It’s some sort of witty parable. Hang on; let me see if I can sort this out:
Let’s see, I was upset because one person who has had experience not eating meat started to dictate to me what would happen if I did…okay…and then our third friend chimed in not so helpfully…right….and then I panicked really hard and continued my dialogue with them until I was hysterical then called my agent..okay, so, now, I am a little slow what with all of the animal flesh digesting inside of me, but I THINK what I am supposed to take away from this is that if I have a question about something I should just drop my agent a quick email before listening to my friends. Is that about right? Phew. So despite the impending heart attack I seem to still be able to suss things out. Good to know.
(Psst, hey, my clients. This story is NOT about you. I promise promise promise. It was actually a request from someone else to address this today. Cross my heart and hope to clog an artery. You guys are perfect and never panic. Well, except for Bo. He does. But he’s getting better. In fact, do me a favor and just go ahead and preorder now: http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Bone-Memoir-Doggie-Blogger/dp/0806531290/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251759285&sr=8-1 you’ll keep him from piddling in anticipation.)
