Wednesday, January 16, 2013

#848 I hate pickles

Just a quiet night for us here at home, so I'll tell you a story.

I hate cucumbers. You know how they say that pregnant women get heightened senses of smell? That totally happened to me. When I was pregnant, I could smell a cucumber that was being sliced from far away. Like I would be at my desk at work and someone in the breakroom would be slicing a cucumber and I could smell it like they were right next to me prepping their salad. And my desk was nowhere near the breakroom. Even though it's been 15 years since I was pregnant, the smell of cucumbers still bothers me. One day I was having a working lunch with a couple of my co-workers. They had cucumbers on their salad and I could not eat my sandwich because all I could smell were those dang cucumbers. I tried to be cool and discreetly cover my nose, but they are bright people and quickly picked up on what was happening. It was embarrassing for me because I don't really like to make a big deal of dumb stuff like that, but I couldn't help it. It was nasty to me.

By extension, I also hate pickles. However, I have hated pickles much longer than I have hated cucumbers. I don't care for dill, so I don't like the way pickles smell and I hate the juice they leave on a hamburger bun or on a plate. It ruins everything. There have been a few times that I forgot to check my food to pick off the pickle, and it can seriously ruin my whole day.



 A few weeks ago, the three of us met Kevin and Janet for dinner at TGIFriday's. They were coming through town on their way back home to Arizona. We've met at Friday's before: it's easy on and off the freeway for K and J and Friday's has a nice menu with lots of options. The last time we were there, I had the pulled pork sandwich and it was delicious, so I wanted to have that again. I was really looking forward to it.

My sandwich arrived and I poured a little BBQ sauce on the pork, smashed the bun down over the whole mess and took a bite. There was something not quite right there, something a little crunchy. I swallowed it and took a sip of water to wash it down. I thought it might be like a crunchy piece of pork, like the top if they cooked it in the oven. Maybe they changed their seasoning and that's why it tasted funky or maybe I just bit into a big piece of onion. They have these fried onion rings on the sandwich, so maybe I just bit into a solid piece of crunch.

I took another bite. There it was again, but it was bigger this time and there were two pieces of crunch. I knew it before I spit it out: it was a pickle. I had forgotten to order my sandwich without pickles because I was so caught up in the conversation. I discreetly pulled the offensive chunks out of my mouth and quietly put them on the side of my plate, then proceeded to open my sandwich again to remove the pickles. There were three or four BIG pickle chips on the bun and they were those thick cut dill chips. DISGUSTING. To make it worse, all that pickle juice had soaked into the bun, therefore making it inedible along with the pork that it had touched, which was just about all of it. I was really hungry, so I tried to just eat the pork that had touched the other, pickle-free bun. I smothered it with BBQ sauce, but it was useless. The sandwich was ruined. All I could taste was pickle. To make matters worse, I think there was a cucumber in my side salad. I couldn't eat that either.

For the rest of the meal, I just sat there, pushing around my pork and my salad, drinking my soda and listening to the conversation. I was sad. And hungry.

The moral of this story is always ALWAYS check for pickles.

The end.

1 comment:

Kteach said...

I totally agree! I always order "no pickles"

Onbly times I buy a jar of pickles is when T comes to visit :)