|
| Tomato Snot is not Fatal to Rome I am a rather picky eater. I'll go to a restaurant or fast food and special order my food. I have to, because I don't fall into the 98% of people who actually like all the extra crap restaurants will put on or in their food. Prime example? Pickles and tomatos. When I order a hamburger, most places want desperately to put tomatos or pickles on my sandwich. This would be just dandy if I actually liked either of those items. However, I don't. I try to be as specific as possible when ordering, all but begging on bended knee to not put these items on my order. Sometimes this works and I get a blissfully plain sandwich. Most of the time, it does not. I get tomatos or pickles or whatever I asked be omitted from my meal, piled on as though I had said nothing. This would not be an issue either, except that even if I remove the offending item, I still have the remnants of the unwanted thing on my wanted food. I refer to these remnants as snot. I call it snot because it resembles snot. It is often a near liquid, semi-solid goo, and it is very distasteful. I also call it snot because one of my best friends, Dan, had a relative that referred to remnants that way and I liked it. I believe she was referring to raisins in bread, but that isn't important to my story. I was having lunch with my friend Rome today. He went through the line at work to get a cheeseburger. He requested, "Just lettuce, please" from Rudy, the grill dude. Rudy then put lettuce and tomato on Rome's cheeseburger. Rome looked at it, shrugged and walked to the soda fountain, got his Diet Coke, paid at the register, went and sat down and proceeded to peel the offending tomato off his cheeseburger. However, plainly seen was enough tomato snot to fill a thimble. I made a face and told him he was eating tomato snot. His response? "Tomato snot is not fatal to Rome." Yes, he really does refer to himself in the third person sometimes, weird, huh? Rome is the type of person who will eat anything and so it doesn't bother him, he just has food preferences. He doesn't eat tomato on a cheeseburger for instance, but he will eat it in a wrap. I think he has deep seated food exclusion issues, but I could be wrong. I just think it is odd that he could still eat it. If there is snot on my sandwich, I have to take it back because it grosses me out. Especially pickle. Pickle snot is the worst, it seeps into every part of the sandwich, permeating to the core of what could have been a joyous meal. And the smell! The smell is the worst! I can usually smell the pickle before I actually find it. What is so difficult about making a plain cheeseburger? It is almost sad that these days, people are making more work for themselves by covering my meat and cheese delicacy with ever-so-unwanted vegetables. You would think that grill dudes and cook-types would rejoice in not having to put all that stuff on once in a while. But no, they put it on anyway. And then they get mad at me for sending it back! Where is the sense? Oh well ... maybe someday I'll just open my own restaurant ... "Everything Plain".
|