Always Spread Your Condiments

I went to a Bull Roast tonight. There is no greater pleasure at a Bull Roast than to get a great heaping mound of roast beast with onions, slather it with barbecue sauce and horseradish and mustard and scrunch the whole thing together between slices of rye bread in a gooey contraption worthy of John Montagu himself.

But there is a hidden danger in such a concoction -- like the Japanese Fugu (blowfish) which is deadly if not prepared correctly. For your own sake always spread your condiments. Don't assume that your grand heaping dollop of horseradish will somehow, magically, spread itself across the rye bread, as if in a sandwich centrifuge.

How did I learn this lesson? As hard as it is to believe, this universal truth was not part of my instinctual repertoire. That's right,I had to learn this the hard way.

Sitting at the Bull Roast, half surrounded by friends, half surrounded by strangers, I began gnawing through my sandwich. At the half-way point I felt a small piece of meat begin to fall to my plate. Without thinking, I inhaled trying to use pure suction to fight gravity's pull on my hard-won roast beef.

What follows is sometimes called a God Smack. True punishment against my hubristic desire to conquer gravity.

Instead of inhaling the falling piece of roast beef I inhaled the entire load of horse radish that had been dolloped into the center of my sandwich. At least 3 heaping tablespoons of white pain was in my mouth before I knew what was happening. Without thinking, I swallowed. This action is sometimes called a "major mistake".

The pain was just incredible. I thought I was having an allergic reaction. I couldn't breath, my throat swelled shut, and in shock, I stood up so quickly that my chair fell backwards. Then the coughing began much to the startled stares of everyone at the table. When the coughing began I knew I could breathe again (whew). My eyes teared up and it took me a full 5 minutes to regain something even remotely resembling composure.

Even as I type this, hours past the event, Jabba The Horseradish Dollop sits in my belly. I fear he is not done with me yet. On the odd chance I had expired due to horeradish poisoning, I would have enjoyed my high ranking in the Darwin awards. Perhaps a grim limerick could have graced my tombstone:

Here lies Ed,
Too much horseradish was he fed.

or, perhaps,

Here lies Ed,
The only thing holier was his stomach

The moral of this story? Don't eat horseradish out of the jar and always spread your condiments.