I was eating out with my daughter the other day, and she slopped sauce all down her front. As she used the wet-naps I supplied to clean up her shirt, she noted she was glad it was just me who saw the mishap instead of someone important.
This reminded me of the most disastrous business dinner I’ve ever attended, which occurred shortly after I graduated from college and started working for a consulting company (no, I am not Chelsea Clinton). I think it’s pretty common for young professionals to feel like imposters — children in dress-up clothes pretending to be competent adults and fearing exposure.
That fear goes away eventually, but I had a pretty acute case of it back then. I was invited to attend this dinner at a fancy restaurant with my boss and some of her colleagues as well as some senior executives of a client company.
I had no business being included in such an august gathering. My boss, who was a wonderful mentor and deserved a much better mentee than I turned out to be, thought it would be instructive for me to tag along. She assumed I had basic table manners and could competently handle dining utensils. Tragically, she was wrong.
Anyhoo, I’m at this dinner with these people, seated at a big, round, candle-lit table with white linen tablecloths and fingerbowls and a bewildering array of cutlery. Wishing to be invisible, I ordered things that I thought would minimize the potential for disaster, i.e., no lobster or other foods that require special tools, leverage and physical exertion to eat. (I had thought this through!)
But innocent French onion soup proved to be my downfall. When it arrived, I was happy to see that it had a particularly thick layer of toasty cheese on top, because really, that’s the chief selling point of French onion soup. I eagerly plunged my soup spoon into the delicious cheese goo and attempted to hack off a bite-sized portion.
Once I’d freed a raft of cheese from the side of the bowl, I tried to hoist it up to my mouth, but it remained attached to the main cheese glob by long strings, which failed to break even when I risked lifting the spoon past my head. So I lowered the spoon back to bowl level and started spinning it, hoping the goddamn cheese strings would end as I wound them around the bowl of the spoon, but no luck.
I tried sawing the strings off on the edge of the bowl, but it was futile — they just fucking merged with the remaining cheese in the bowl, making the problem worse. Between the spinning and sawing, the portion of cheese on my spoon grew until it became a golf ball-sized cheese lollipop with the spoon handle serving as the stick.
I tried scraping the giant cheese ball off the spoon with the bowl’s edge, but it appeared to have bonded to the metal of the spoon. I knew it would be uncouth to simply chew the cheese off the spoon as if eating a corn dog, but my increasingly frantic efforts to dislodge the cheese were beginning to attract attention. In my panic, I made the terrible decision to attempt to ingest all the cheese on the spoon in one fell swoop.
As soon as my lips closed around the giant cheese ball, it seemed to bond to my teeth, so now, I not only had a golf ball-sized glob of cheese in my mouth, I was unable to remove the spoon! For an awful moment, I considered lurching away from the table with my dinner napkin covering the protruding soup spoon handle and walking to the nearest fire station for assistance.
Contemplating that scenario gave me the super-human strength required to remove the spoon from my mouth despite the Gorilla Glue-like bonding power of the molten cheese, but it took wrapping both hands around the spoon handle in a death grip and using great force to extract the spoon sans cheese ball. Once the cheese-spoon bond released, my fists slammed onto the table top, and the spoon popped loose and clattered onto my bread plate. At this point, I noticed that all conversation around the table had ceased, and everyone was looking at me.
The lovely Swiss-Gruyere cheese blend transformed into a hideous ball of humiliation and failure, and it presented a bleak choice that virtually all women face at some point in their lives in quite a different context: spit or swallow?
Faced with the choice of either raising my napkin to my lips and disgorging the giant cheese ball or swallowing it whole, I gnashed it down like a python ingesting a beach ball. Because that’s what grown-ups do.
My daughter found the story amusing when I related it to her (minus the “spit-swallow” reference) and said something along the lines of, “Only you, Mom.” But I suspect I’m not alone. Has anything like that ever happened to you?
kc
LMAO, Betty, you’re the best.
kc
Not nearly as bad as your cheese fiasco, but I ordered a veal chop at a business dinner once (I’d never had one, was doing Atkins, and thought it sounded good), and the thing came out and was bigger than my HEAD. It looked like it was meant to serve the Duggar family. And tough as a petrified stump, to boot. I gave up trying to saw edible bites off of it.
I went home hungry.
Butch
Which leads me to recount my first dinner in a professional setting; it involves white wool pants and marinara, and just to clarify since I don’t think I need to say much more, not a few drops but the whole plate.
Nick
I am physically unable to read this — it is describing the basic nightmare that I go through life fearing.
MomSense
Went to one of those horrific corporate get to know (inspect) the family cookouts. I was chasing my cute toddler all around having a lovely time when he started holding his stomach and crying. I picked him up and he proceeded to projectile vomit like crazy over my left shoulder–all over everything.
Fortunately it was just a 24 hour bug. Unfortunately, practically everyone who was at the cookout got it including the big boss who had it hit while he was on a business flight.
Josie
I am laughing so hard there are tears in my eyes. I have never done a big faux pas, but I invariably spill food on the place on my blouse exactly in the middle of my boobs. I always try to look on the bright side by thinking it is better there than on my stomach. My youngest son, upon seeing me do this many times over, just shakes his head and says, “Here we go.”
peach flavored shampoo
What’s the “it” twice mentioned in this sentence?
scuffletuffle
I shot an entire cornish game hen across the dinner table at a fancy do…it landed in the lap of a complete stranger. Not the best way to break the ice…
Mart
I was sitting between two customers who started arguing with each other about whatever. Spittle and meat shards were spraying on my face, suit, and vegetarian dinner. I started to hurl, but made it to the restroom toilet before anyone noticed. When I got back to the table said I was not feeling well and excused myself to get some fresh air. No desert that night.
Belafon
Y’all (to quote Nate Silver) should read Wonkette’s rant about the internet’s reaction to Gwyneth Paltrow attempting to do the SNAP challenge: http://wonkette.com/582860/jesus-internet-whats-the-matter-did-gwyneth-paltrow-bone-your-dad. Just like people attempting to avoid seeing that cops target blacks, the people attacking her refuse to see the problem with the way we’re helping the poor.
Betty Cracker
@peach flavored shampoo: The fear of being exposed as a fraud — poor editing on my part, which I fixed. Thanks!
@ everyone else: I feel better already.
dp
Betty, you’re my favorite blogger!
Paul in KY
@MomSense: That’s a good one!
Cervantes
@peach flavored shampoo:
The feeling that you’re an impostor and the fear that you’re about to be exposed.
@Josie:
Why?
Josie
@Cervantes: Because my stomach is not as big as or bigger than my boobs.
Joe Bauers
Betty, reading that story is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. Bravo.
Punchy
I once went for what I thought was a grad school pre-interview meal with some profs from the dept. I was looking to join. Simple chit chat, until my food comes out, and then the profs proceed to continuously pepper me with questions. Non-stop. Not wanting to talk with food in my mouth, I decide not to take a bite until I think the questioning is done. It never ends. 45 mins later, my food is completely cold, I’ve had at most 2 bites, and I’m furious. A-holes.
Needless to say, I didn’t choose that school.
Mojo
OMG, this made me laugh so hard.
rlrr
It was the greatest night of my life. I’d been invited to the Captain’s Table. I’d only been with the company fourteen years. Six officers and me! They called me “Arnold.” We had gazpacho soup for starters. I didn’t know gazpacho soup was meant to be served cold. I called over the chef and I told him to take it away and bring it back hot. He did. The looks on their faces still haunt me today! I thought they were laughing at the chef, when all the time, they were laughing at me as I ate my piping hot gazpacho soup. I never ate at the Captain’s Table again. That was the end of my career.
— Arnold Judas Rimmer
catclub
As a freshman at college, being invited to join a group of sophmores and eating barbecued chicken leg the simple way – holding it in ones hands and covering one’s face with BBQ sauce while eating. Ever since, I can virtually dissect a chicken leg with knife and fork, but clean hands and face!
Face
@Josie: Allow me to be the first with the “pics or we dont believe you” retort.
JPL
Laughter is the best medicine or so they say. Thanks Betty.
Violet
When I had braces on my teeth I was at a dinner with my parents where French onion soup was served. The cheese on top of the French onion soup got stuck in my braces and I could not get it dislodged. I took my first bite of the cheese, some of it went down my throat like a normal bite of food but the other end was stuck on my braces. I was gagging on this mess of stringy cheese that I could not get to go up nor down. I tried as much as I could to politely remove it from my braces but eventually I had to excuse myself from the table, go to the bathroom and dig around in my mouth to dislodge it. It was disgusting.
I don’t think I’ve ordered French onion soup since.
Mandalay
The upside to frivolous lawsuits…
catclub
@peach flavored shampoo: Fear of being identified as a fake adult.
Cacti
Someone toppled the tombstone of Hillary Clinton’s father, Hugh Rodham.
Wow.
Link
Mike E
@Nick: But, in that nightmare, are you wearing any pants?
Roger Moore
Fortunately, I work with scientists, so imperfect table manners are generally ignored. I also worked as a waiter in the faculty club when I was in college, so I managed to pick up a modicum of manners as part of my education.
In fact, perhaps my most interesting final when I was in college involved dinner at the faculty club. It was a class on the history of the far West and Great Plains, taught by the head of research at the Huntington Library*, who had a joint appointment at Caltech. The class was taught seminar-style. The final was to have dinner at the faculty club, discuss that week’s reading, and not embarrass ourselves with our table manners. Yes, table manners were officially part of the grade. I passed, so I must have picked up something useful along the way.
*I later learned that this made him more or less officially the head of the Frederick Jackson Turner school of western history, so taking a class from him was more of a privilege than I realized.
MattF
The one sure way to prove that my sister and I were brought up in the same environment is to take us out to dinner together. After the plates are taken away, one will note the food stains and piles of crumbs at both of our settings. Maybe it’s genetic…
James E Powell
1978 – Sophomore at Ohio State – young, idealistic political wannabe working for state representative gets invited to Big Time Lunch with our party’s candidate for governor to discuss my coordinating volunteers. They take me to the kind of place where lobbyists and politicians ate lunch back then, the kind of place where Don Draper would go. It’s very dark in there, the only light comes from a candle in a red globe on the table. They order for me. Prime rib, the specialty of the house. There’s a little dish of something white right next to baked potato and I assume it is sour cream so I put the whole thing on the potato, slice of a chunk and put a very large wad of horse radish in my mouth. It was the first time I every ate horse radish. I am very proud to say that I did not spit it out. I did not cry out. I swallowed it and did my best to act natural. Nobody noticed or I don’t think anybody noticed. I cried a little. Thank god it was dark.
Josie
@Face: Lol – at my age, it is something to be happy about, but no polaroids, please.
Violet
@Roger Moore: When my aunt’s son (my cousin) got to high school age she invited all his friends over for a table manners class. She made them wear suits, served dinner with the good silver and nice china and served every single course she could think of. Years later they’d still thank her for the lesson. Served them well in various situations in life.
She loved doing it. There aren’t that many excuses to get out the good china and silver.
boatboy_srq
Two separate instances:
1) Seven courses of Italian feast at one of THE Italian restaurants in town (not Fior d’Italia, but close). WAY too many utensils.
2) Lunch with the Big Boss and all her (similarly ranking) staff. At THE local Caribbean joint. I made the mistake of ordering the Angry Beef (not the Jerk Chicken). VERY spicy. BIG mistake – but not discovered until several glasses of water later.
Honorable mention: dinner with the ex, at a good seafood restaurant, and discovering that shellfish in the shell was a non-food item according to the ex. Never seen anyone turn so green so fast as that one on realizing that the stuff in the shell wasn’t just the yummy fleshy bits (though all still edible…).
pamelabrown53
Once, at my partner’s uber republican family Thanksgiving Dinner, they were ganging up on me (“pathetic” liberal) and I was lubricated enough to allow my gestures to be broad and dramatic. Short story: I knocked a glass of red wine on an antique damask tablecloth. Not only was I humiliated but the family enjoyed my “just desserts”. Since that time I always remain sober, (well, semi-sober), while avoiding #Thanks Obama and red wine.
Cervantes
@Roger Moore:
Martin Ridge?
Billington and Nevins were before your time, yes?
Tree With Water
You could have sold that cheese story to Lucille Ball, and she could have transformed it into a comedy classic. Decades ago I was very hungry, and dove into my plate of food at the table of one the few families I’ve ever known that said grace before a meal (which shows the kind of company I’ve kept over the years). They graciously overlooked my faux pas, if that’s what it was, and because I was a first time guest at their place I shook the embarrassment off pretty quickly. As Jesus would have wanted me to, by the way…
Cacti
With retirement on the horizon, Harry Reid is channeling his inner Harry Truman.
When asked which GOP candidate he thought would win the primary, he responded:
“I don’t really care. I think they’re all losers.”
Link.
The Thin Black Duke
@Cacti: And I’m sure the sick bastard who did it imagines himself to be a fucking hero too.
Roger Moore
@Cervantes:
Yes, shortly before his retirement; this would have been in 1992 or 1993.
cmorenc
@Josie:
So presumably, you also have lots of practice giving guys that “AND JUST WHAT ARE YOU LOOKIN’ AT, BUCKO” laser-eye stare.
Paul in KY
@James E Powell: If you ever order sushi & they bring you a big glob of this bright green stuff…do not pick up the whole glob & eat it.
I did. Spitting it up was not a nice sight.
K488
@James E Powell: When I was twelve my family went to the New York World’s Fair. Lots of fun, but then came dinner at the restaurant at the Japanese Pavilion. My first encounter with Wasabi, which was served as an actual radish-like thing on a plate. I thought it was a Brussels Sprout, and popped the whole thing in my mouth. I’m still feeling it.
Violet
One time I was having dinner at a Mexican restaurant and the waiter hit my full glass of water, knocking it over onto the table. The water ran down the table, off the edge and onto my purse, which I’d placed on the seat of an empty chair next to me at the table. The purse had a side pocket that gaped open which caught most of the water. Everything in the purse was soaked and getting wetter by the second as the water soaked in from the pocket. I had to empty it and them tip it upside down so the water could get out of the pocket and not soak into it worse. I made an effort to dump the water back into the glass but it wasn’t entirely successful.
Needless to say I wasn’t very happy. I got a little upset with the waiter, but he just shrugged and walked off. Didn’t apologize, didn’t offer to bring extra napkins or a towel. Nothing. I had to grab the napkins from my friends at the table to mop it out and I had to place all my stuff on the table while I dealt with it, which was a little embarrassing. No woman wants everyone to stare at the crap she’s carrying around in her purse. I guess I could have gone to the restroom to deal with it, but the restroom was on the other side of the restaurant and water was leaking out the purse as I sat there so I would have trailed that all the way through the place. Just a complete mess.
The waiter disappeared. Finally had to flag down another one to ask for more napkins and ask for the manager. The manager refused to comp the meal or even offer some free nachos or something, let alone pay for something related to the purse. Told me it was my fault for putting my purse on the chair. The purse itself was ruined and I had to get rid of it shortly after that.
K488
@Paul in KY: You, too, eh?
pamelabrown53
@Belafon:
Belafon, thanks for the link. It’s so demoralizing to see someone like Gwyneth Paltrow be excoriated because she’s not good enough to lend her voice. Talk about purity police wrecking a good cause…
boatboy_srq
@Violet: Mum had a story of going to an Italian restaurant – and overhearing the manager tell her waiter (in Italian, which Mum spoke fluently) to tell the kitchen to make smaller meals, because the diners were women and wouldn’t eat much. She didn’t tip – and on the way out, thanked the manager in Italian for the excellent meal, because everyone had been very hungry. Apparently the looks of astonished horror were rewarding in themselves.
BTW, these instances are what Yelp reviews are for.
NonyNony
Does it? I just figured we all eventually get old enough to a) stop caring or b) realize that none of the other adults around us is actually competent. As long as I can fake it better than them, I figure I’m doing all right.
mainmata
My wife is looking at me strangely as I bounce up and down laughing. Such a good story-teller you are, Betty. Only thing vaguely comparable for me was attending a dinner at a work colleague’s house in Indonesia at which baked cow’s lung was presented. Gray, it had the consistency of tough plastic and was completely inedible at least to me (who will eat almost anything). I vainly tried to hide it on my plate wishing that the family had a dog but no luck. And so it just remained on the plate with teeth marks in it but none of it actually eaten. Mildly embarrassing. Fortunately, most Indonesian cuisine is really good.
Phylllis
Nothing food-related, but I did have to go to work one day with a spiral hair brush stuck in my hair and have my supervisor (who’s also a good friend, thankfully) untangle it.
Ann Marie
@James E Powell: That reminds me of one of my mother’s dinner parties when I was young. For dessert she served pie with homemade whipped cream, which she had made before and kept in a plastic container in the freezer. She was serving everyone and it was mainly family so she said to go ahead and start without her. I wasn’t having any pie, but everyone else took a bite and got a very odd look, but politely didn’t say anything. Mom sat down and started her pie and exclaimed that this was the horseradish sauce she also had stored in the freezer. Moral: Always mark what you store in the freezer.
Ellen
I used to work for a very old-line company that was interviewing for an executive position. One of the final steps in the interview process was the big boss taking the candidate out to lunch. The big shot came back from the lunch absolutely livid because the candidate had eaten French fries with his fingers instead of a knife and fork. Not only was there no job offer for Mr. French Fries, the manager who recommended the hire was told in no uncertain terms that if he ever sent up someone like that again, his job would be on the line.
Paul in KY
@K488: At least you were 12 when it happened! I was 24 or 25.
It just looked so yummy!
SiubhanDuinne
@pamelabrown53: My best friend from high school married a guy who was heir to a (then) well known fortune. His family, for several generations, had married into families that populate the pages of Town & Country, Vanity Fair, and the Social Register. Thus it transpired that when I attended the christening party for her firstborn son, I drank several glasses of champagne on an empty stomach, began gesturing broadly (as one does) while deep in conversation with one of the distant in-laws, and ended up tossing a full glass of sparkly at a Vanderbilt.
Arclite
I still feel this way, and I’m 45 and manage 8 people.
Sourmash
First date count? I was so nervous meeting her father, a self made millionaire built like a defensive end, I bit a big hole in the top of my tongue on my first bite of appetizer. Blood gushed forth. I tried to spit, but that ruined my first napkin and there was no stopping it. I swallowed, the salty blood making me sick to my stomach eventually, and making her Dad think I was a junkie because I had blood foaming at the edges of my mouth. Eventually, he asked WTF was going on and I had to come clean. I ended up throwing up the blood in the bathroom and the parents left, VERY disappointed. She married her old BF a year later.
Peale
@Belafon: Yep. Something about forest and trees, something something. Let’s pile on Ms. Paltrow for not being scienfic about her demonstration so that liberals don’t have to admit how much they have failed to protect the users of SNAP. I think that’s what’s behind the outrage.
Roger Moore
@NonyNony:
I think most people have occasional attacks of this kind of thinking, especially when they do something new. I remember that very distinctly when I was buying my house. I looked at the amount of money involved and thought, “When did I turn into a trustworthy adult who can borrow that much?” Then you realize that everybody else probably feels the same way, and they’re just muddling through.
I think that realization can have one of two effects on you: panic or reassurance. On the one hand, it’s very distressing to think that there aren’t magical, hyper-competent people out there making all the important decisions. For people who genuinely believe that authorities are somehow better and wiser than the rest of us, that can be a very rude shock, and I think many people remain in denial about this for their entire lives. The flip side is the realization that even great historical figures must have felt the same way. Washington, Lincoln, FDR, et. al. didn’t have access to some mystical wisdom that the rest of us lack; they were just trying stuff to see what would and wouldn’t work. That means we can accomplish as much as they did the same way they did.
SiubhanDuinne
@Violet:
Can’t believe the restaurant treated you that way. That is awful.
This might be worse.
schrodinger's cat
I almost threw up in my advisor’s car when we were coming back from attending a Society of Women Engineers banquet. I got food poisoning from the hollandaise sauce served at the banquet.
pamelabrown53
@SiubhanDuinne:
Hah! Great story! At least it was sparkly and not projectile vomiting.
Jay C
@SiubhanDuinne:
You shouldn’t have worried: if they were real Vanderbilts, they’d probably had practice ducking flying champagne….
Elmo
@Paul in KY:
When I was in college, a wealthy friend used to take carloads of people out of sushi, because he loved it and nobody could afford to join him unless he paid. This was my introduction to the stuff.
So when he sent the waiter back for another glob of green stuff to mix with the first glob in the soy sauce, I thought nothing of it. He then instructed me to make sure the nigiri rice cake was fully saturated with the greenish-brown, fairly thick gravy-sauce that resulted. And put the whole thing in my mouth, no little experimental bites.
I thought the top of my head was going to come off.
Roger Moore
@Ann Marie:
I would strongly suggest adding a date of preparation while you’re at it. It helps to figure out if you really want to eat that stuff.
Face
My prob always seems to be, while at dinner in the company of My Betters, I encounter a fatty bit while noshing on a steak or prime rib. Do I pull it ouf of my mouth straight up, attempt to spit it into a napkin ala Seinfeld and the mutton episode, or swallow it whole and risk involuntary emesis?
Easy call if the napkins are paper, but much harder with cloth napkins. What’s the protocol?
Violet
@SiubhanDuinne: Yeah, you should have seen my face when the waiter walked off and then the manager refused to offer anything–not even extra napkins–to compensate me for the damage to my belongings. One of them said something like, “It didn’t get on you so it’s not a big deal.” I’m sure my jaw dropped so far it almost hit the floor.
This particular restaurant is no longer in business.
HillaryAkbar
This was better than the Chili-Cookoff story that’s been around the web.
trollhattan
@Paul in KY:
Oh. God. We were working on the array of sushi we’d ordered and as the rolls have evolved for American tastes, many include avocado chunks. And that’s just what I thought I was retrieving from my plate when I popped a relatively enormous wasabi chunk into my mouth. The bout of gagging, coughing and eyewatering remained unmatched until last Friday. At a very crowded Mexican restaurant with the mariachi playing literally two feet behind my chair I took a second bite of the previously delicious and moderately zippy fire-roasted jalapeno and plowed into the hottest goddamn thing I’ve eaten maybe ever, or at least since my first habanero encounter. It’s a different kind of heat than faux wasabi’s horseradish rotor-rooter heat and had me in dire pain but no waiter anywhere near because seven mariachi were cranking it two feet behind my chair and the icewater (only available on request, thanks drought) and beer were already gone. I could do was feed myself tortilla bits to try and mop up traces of the fire, but actual recovery took a couple hours.
At times like this my mantra is WWLD?–what would Larry David do? Several seasons of “Curb” have taught me a lot about getting myself into situations of public humiliation and just plowing through them with a sort of perplexed, unapologetic cluelessness. Larry is the best I can do.
Suzanne
One time when drinking a soda from a bottle, I accidentally slurped so that I created enough suction to suck my lower lip into the bottle. It made a horrible farting sound as it sloooooooowly released.
And I was in a quiet classroom at the time, listening to a speaker.
I also tripped over a seeing-eye dog once.
MomSense
@pamelabrown53:
FML
The next day I had to pick my older son up at school and we barely made it out to the parking lot before we both started projectile vomiting right in front of the school for all the kids to see. It was like a scene out of South Park.
Violet
@Face: Protocol is to cut very small pieces of the meat so you can swallow the piece no matter how fatty or gristle-y it turns out to be. If you can’t cut an area, move on to another area of the meat. Leave alone difficult bits to cut. That’s if you are with a crowd you need to impress and don’t want to be seen having any difficulty with your meal.
One of the etiquette ladies says with things like cherry pits you put them back on your plate with the utensil you used to eat them–so like you’d put the pit back in the spoon, then dump it from the spoon onto your plate. Maybe the inedible bits of meat go back onto the fork and then back onto your plate?
Violet
@trollhattan: Never go for water to quench the fire of hot peppers. Use dairy. Milk if available, but sour cream, yogurt, cheese, even butter will work. Water doesn’t really help. Milk products kill the heat much faster.
Amir Khalid
Y’know, for a moment there I thought I was reading Hyperbole And A Half.
@mainmata: I’ve eaten quite a lot of cow’s lung in my time. When not baked to a plasticky hardness, it’s quite tasty.
Punchy
When I was younger, I was at camp and decided to cover my toast in yummy Nutella. All brown and chocolately, and sweet. Very very sweet. Unbeknownst to me, it wasn’t Nutella; it was Vegamite. Extremely salty and bitter.
Nothing says “instant spit out” quite like when your brain’s expecting sweet chocolate and your taste buds are instead registering extreme salty and bitter. God awful mix-up.
Tenar Darell
Does a date count? I was told in no uncertain terms by my date that Indian food made him sweat. I did not understand. Hilarity ensued.
I’ve never seen anyone sweat through an undershirt and a dress shirt after only a few bites, and then have sweat trickling down all along his hairline and dripping and pouring off him! Napkins and water galore did not moderate the flow. At least he had a sense of humor about it. We never ate spicy food together again.
KS in MA
@Roger Moore:
Well said!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Face:
Per Miss Manners, you put it back on your fork (could take a little oral maneuvering) and return it to the plate via the fork.
As someone who was once asked if I bought my shirts pre-stained, I have many messy food stories. I even have pictures from my wedding of when I dropped berries on my dress at the reception. Fortunately, Tide To Go pens are magic and it didn’t even stain.
Tree With Water
@schrodinger’s cat: My mom’s landscaper sent a crew over to do some work around her place in mid-summer. Around 1 PM a ambulance suddenly appeared to attend to one of the crew who, it turned out, had eaten a bad tuna fish sandwich that he had left out under a broiling sun before eating. My mom, being mom, felt bad because she hadn’t thought to offer her refrigerator to them. On the other hand I’m a big enough asshole to have thought it was pretty funny, all things considered. The guy bounced back just fine.
trollhattan
@Violet:
Believe me, I was eyeballing the napkins I was so desperate. “Maybe I can just wipe my tongue off.”
Hildebrand
Betty, you are the best storyteller on this site. Hmm, that may be damning with faint praise, allow me to rephrase – Betty, you are one of the best storytellers on all of the blogs and intertubes sites that I read (yep, much better).
Gin & Tonic
@Elmo: I was once eating at one of the tiny but high-end traditionalist sushi places you’ll find around Orange County, at the counter, eating respectfully. A young Asian guy with his date came in, immediately started ordering O-toro (trying to impress the date), mixed up that abominable wasabi-soy sauce crap and started to dip his piece of sushi when the itamae barked at him so loudly I thought I saw the kid jump.
In a good sushi establishment, you trust the itamae to season your fish properly. Anything less is disrespectful.
sharl
@Belafon: The topic of family poverty hits close to home for Becca, since it’s the story of her own youth. Here’s something from a piece her mom wrote in 2012:
trollhattan
Anybody else notice flags at half-staff today? State and federal buildings downtown are, and am wondering if it’s for Lincoln? Either that or somebody died and I missed it.
JCJ
Not the same, but one of my nephews made an astute statement once at Thanksgiving – he stated that growing up in his family (mom is an ER doctor, dad is a medical oncologist) he had no sense of what proper dinner conversation was since any and every topic could be brought up at any time, including dinner. Then when he would be at my house I also had no problem with these topics. My daughter and my nephews may well be scarred for life.
JustRuss
Betty, that’s the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time. My best restaurant story happened to be in Florida, which I visited with an athlete I coach to compete in Special Olympics a few years ago. Several of us accompanied our state athletic director to Applebees or the Florida equivalent for dinner, dressed in our finest, of course. My athlete ordered ribs, I didn’t think anything of it and had a nice conversation with my counterparts for ten minutes or so before I noticed that, in lieu of a napkin, my athlete was using his pants and shirt. You’ve never seen anybody wear that much BBQ sauce, he was covered from knees to shoulders.
The next morning we went clothes shopping.
Gin & Tonic
@trollhattan: You’re right.
boatboy_srq
@James E Powell: A classmate made lunch once. She made kedgeree. She didn’t know the strength of the local “chilies,” so she used four. For lunch. For two.
Three nights later a flatmate made savoury potatoes for dinner. Everyone else complained: I could taste the potatoes.
trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic:
Hey, thanks. And I learn of a website, too.
Emma
@Josie: I am so glad I’m not the only one. I finally have perfected the trick of eating in tiny, tiny bites — and even then, it happens. Like I have a target pinned to my boobs.
Denali
I have learned never to eat pizza while wearing braces. I was the adult who wore braces after the kids wore braces.
You told this story so well. French onion soup can be very tricky to consume.
Mike J
@trollhattan:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/04/14/presidential-proclamation-day-remembrance-president-abraham-lincoln
Poopyman
Thanks for the laugh, Betty. This thread has brought me through a dull afternoon.
And in return, via the Baby Blue Satan, I give you Florida Man.
gene108
@Peale:
I remember on an internet discussion, when conservatives retort that food security should be provided by charitable institutions and not the government, such as churches, someone mentioned that churches had a tendency to demand conformity or they could exclude you from their charity,
I think the wingnuts, who want to tell the poors how to conform aren’t waiting to do it through churches and are doing it anyway through government programs.
Hungry Joe
At a restaurant birthday party for a woman I had been seeing only a short time, I leaned back in my chair to put a couple of saline drops into my eyes because I was still adjusting to new contact lenses. I was also, at the time, addicted to those powerful liquid breath mints. I reached into my pocket, withdrew the wrong tiny bottle, dropped a couple of breath-mint droplets into my right eye … and twenty minutes later I was in the ER, getting my eye flushed repeatedly with cold water. She married me anyway.
Doug r
@JCJ: my dad used to work for the parole board in the used to forgive us with stories of what the inmates and Dunn names redactor of course
Poopyman
@Doug r: Say what?
Doug r
@JCJ: my dad used to work for the parole board so we used to hear stories about what the parolees had done including what they had done to wind up there. Names redacted of course.
Paul in KY
@Elmo: I had the worst head rush/headache ever!!! LOLing!
Paul in KY
@trollhattan: Wow! That one had me laughing too!
Interrobang
Not a professional story, thank goodness, but I once made the mistake of going out to dinner with two friends who are both individually funny people, but who had a “comedy accelerant” effect on each other. I wound up in stitches, which caused me to inhale spaghetti, choke, gag, and spew all over the table and myself. Almost 20 years later, and I’ve never been back to that restaurant (it’s still there); I’m too afraid someone will recognise me as “that woman who puked all over the table!!”
Not my finest hour, food-wise.
Hungry Joe
For some of us, fear of being thought of as a fake adult never goes away. Not long ago I was in an elevator with three businessmen/lawyer types. They were in suits; I had on a (nice!) t-shirt, (respectable!) cargo shorts, and (high-end!) sandals. They were all over 6′ tall; I’m 5’11” in (high-end) sandals. They were all in their 30s and 40s; I am 64.
And I felt like a little kid. Later I decided I should have pushed the buttons for every floor and run off laughing.
Chris T.
Really? When? It’s been more than 30 years so far… :-)
JPL
@Ellen: Did you work for Trump? The story goes that he cuts his pizza with a knife and uses a fork.
JPL
@boatboy_srq: That is hilarious.
Belafon
@JPL: My fifth grade teacher (35 years ago) required us to eat hotdogs and pizza with a fork. With chicken, she would make us pull the meat off, and then eat that with a fork. She told us she would have made us eat a hamburger with a fork if she could have found a way to make it work.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: Now everyone goes out with their personal bodyguards. At least it wasn’t a Dupont. The ending might have been different.
trollhattan
Florida Man, at it again!
Thank you, Florida Man, message received.
JPL
What a fun post to read and the comments are great.
Amir Khalid
@trollhattan:
Some major studio should make Florida Man: The Movie. I’d pay to see that.
Chris T.
@Roger Moore:
If I can be serious for a moment (is that even possible?), just look to the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
Poopyman
@trollhattan: Betty’s local rag has the story, starting from before today’s exploit.
Gordon
Hey, if President Bush the elder could barf in the Chinese Prime Minister’s lap at a state dinner and not die of embarrassment, the rest of us will survive our gaffes.
trollhattan
@Amir Khalid:
Make it so! If it were a Carl Hiaasen-Mike Judge collaboration I’d throw big bucks at their Kickstarter campaign.
p.a.
Went to the local pho place with friends, luckily not a date night. I was the only one to order the soup. It of course comes with sliced jalapeño on the side. Now jalapeño flavor varies from warm and grassy to mildly hot. I am a regular there and just dumped the peppers into the soup. I don’t think they were jalapeño. I think someons gave me sliced Thai green peppers. Just from the broth, not even having eaten a slice, my lips and tongue went to condition red: fire and numbness. Not that big a deal- I like heat. Then my eyes started watering. I went to dab them with my handkerchief and saw in the mirror wall of the booth (place used to be a d’angelo’s) something on my upper lip. Snot. Absolutely clear mucus, from one corner of my mouth to the other. Never felt it on its way out of my nose, it was just there. When i went to wipe it with my handkerchief, it stretched to it and my face like some kind of elasticized glue. General hilarity ensued (all-male group).
cckids
@Violet: Wow. I should introduce you to my mother in law, the champ of passive/aggressive vitriol. I’ve seen her make wait staff cry for messing up her order. Now, I don’t condone that crap, because it is abusive as hell, but . . . in a case like yours? She’d drive home in the manager’s car, after probably getting comped meals for the rest of her life. Holy hell, that is a terrible story.
Mandalay
@trollhattan:
Actually, that’s a bit grandiose for Florida Man. This story reflects his character so much better….
That’s how Florida Man rolls.
Mark H
As an aspiring marine biologist in high school I was invited to dinner with a famous underwater photographer (he did the filming for “The Deep” and some of “Jaws”). The night before I got caught with the girlfriend of the captain of the baseball team and got pummeled to a pulp. I wasn’t looking my best at dinner the next night.
Frankensteinbeck
Open Thread moment of epiphany:
I grew up in the 80s, and was bathed in the message ‘a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged.’ I picked up (and rejected) the message quickly, that (supposedly) liberal ideals of being nice to people don’t work in the real world, and that once you become mature and experienced you learn that only conservative hurt-you-to-help-you policies like more draconian law enforcement create a better world. That was growing up and becoming mature and responsible. You can see the damage a generation of that thinking has done, and how television, newspaper, and radio national journalists cling to it like divine scripture.
What I did not notice until 15 minutes ago, and I don’t know how I missed it, was the subtext: The person mugging you would probably be black.
kc
Another one: A grad school professor invited a group of students to a lunch with him & his wife at a nice restaurant. When the food arrived, the wife began holding forth at length about something or other. I waited politely, along with my mannerly fellow students, for our hosts to begin eating, until I couldn’t stand it any longer, and picked up my fork and took a tiny bite, hoping no one would notice. The wife, sitting down at the other end of the table, spied me with her eagle eye and only then said ostentatiously, “Oh, I’m sorry, everyone DO go ahead and eat.”
I was slightly embarrassed, but then again I always thought everyone else owed me a thank you, or we’d still be sitting there with our food getting cold.
hitchhiker
holy baby jeebus, betty. just . . . omg that was brilliant.
geg6
You people are killing me, especially Betty. Thankfully, I have no stories of this type. Now if you want ask about humiliating oneself while drinking…
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
Is it going to be scripted, or would it be more like a Jackass spin-off? I could easily see it working either way.
p.a.
@Frankensteinbeck:
Correct response: a liberal is a conservative whose pension fund and 401 have been gutted, whose health insurance has been dropped, whose child has ‘come out’, whose fishing hole has been polluted…
kc
@Belafon:
The first tweeter quoted in that Wonkette piece is already accusing Rebecca Schoenkopf of . . . racism.
https://twitter.com/boldandworthy?lang=en
Tone in DC
Back in 1996, after a meal at a kabob place in Arlington (just across Key Bridge from Georgetown), I had some less than stellar sauce on my gyro. After my old friend and I finished eating, we started walking down the hill back to my place.
The taste in my mouth turned truly rancid in a hurry, and I started coughing. After a few moments, the sickness doubled me up, and lunch came back with a vengeance. In the middle of Wilson Boulevard, on a sunny Saturday afternoon. People walked by as I heaved that damn gyro onto the sidewalk. Hella embarrassing.
Lesson learned, no more damn sauce.
trollhattan
Florida Man follow-up:
Dick Cheney’s gettin’ himself a new gyrocopter!
Gindy51
@Violet: My mom did ours, think Queen of England type of table setting, mom had it all from the stem ware to the silver and beyond. I was really good at setting and using it for ages but have lost most it as I rarely use more than a spoon and fork. Also I always hold a champagne glass by the stem, some shit does not fade away.
joel hanes
When I joined The 3DO Company, the new boss organized the meet-your-new-cow-orkers business lunch
at the Woodside Thai Spot. I’d never had authentic Thai food before, and ordered the daily special, beef with stringbeans. The waiter said “how hot?” and, since I like a good vindaloo, and am accustomed to adorn my tacos with habanero sauce, I replied “Hot!”
“Thai hot?”
“Sure, why not?”
Fifteen minutes later my face was glowing red, I was sweating profusely, and the waiter and new cow-orders were all pleased to note the tears streaming from my eyes (while I tried to separate
the flakes of red pepper from the delicious morsels of beef.)
JPL
@geg6: Just one little update please… Are the pups allowing u to sleep?
Tree With Water
@joel hanes: I had the exact same experience at a Vietnamese restaurant. I was even given a head’s up as I unknowingly doused my rice dish with their liquid fire. “I like my sauce hot” I think was the last thing I said before I began reaching for every glass of water in sight (which did no good at all). Turned out I’d never tasted hot sauce in my life before that night.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Tone in DC:
(iPhone hiccuped)
Is this also a non-food related public embarrassment thread? Because I took a spectacular fall on a crowded sidewalk in Westwood, to the point that multiple people were trying to help me up. I shrugged them off and limped into the nearby Rite Aid to stop the bleeding on my knee.
kc
Non-rich white Tea Party guy beginning to realize the GOP hasn’t done squat for him: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/james-webb-tea-partier-obamacare-hillary
gratuitous
Not me, but my roommate. He had just gone to work in Oregon for a large East Coast-based megacompany. He and another young man were on the road with the statewide head honcho on a sales trip, and pulled into a nice sit-down restaurant for dinner. Everything on the menu is $6 or $7 or $15, nothing in between (this was years ago, the $15 dinner would be $28-$32 nowadays).
Naturally, he’s the first one asked for his dinner order. Go cheap or go expensive? It doesn’t occur to him to pass and say he hasn’t made up his mind. He decides on one of the cheaper meals. The big boss is up next and orders the prime rib, the other guy, taking his cue, orders steak and lobster. He said the club sandwich was pretty good, but . . .
Tone in DC
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I don’t know the rules on this thread. ;-)
All I can say is I learned not to consume mass quantities of gyro sauce.
Soonergrunt
That’s fucking hilarious.
JPL
@kc: In order to retire at such an early age, he had to have some resources.
I’m pleased though that those who are able to retire early because of ACA are rethinking their views.
J R in WV
First wedding anniversary. Even though we were woefully underpaid, costs were not bad, and so we were able to spend some money, and save too. So we dedicated some savings to a planned anniversary dinner.
There was a well-regarded French restaurant just down the street, so we made reservations. Very upper crust!
The menu was in French, so I felt lucky that Mrs J’s mom was a French teacher. I asked her what was Vichyssoise? and she said cream potato soup. She didn’t mention that it was a summer chilled soup.
So when it came, I got a soup spoon full and held it over the bowl to cool. When I took that first bite, my eyes bugged out, and Mrs J laughed her ass off, quietly and politely, of course!
The soup was great! I make it often…
Roger Moore
@kc:
Somebody needs to prepare for a countertop inspection.
Tree With Water
Truer words were never uttered (scroll down to the Lincoln reference):
https://twitter.com/Senate_GOPs
cckids
@Tree With Water: Saw that earlier. Such competence.
Gravenstone
@trollhattan:
If only he’d be so kind as to walk into the blades, as they were spinning full speed.
Gravenstone
@joel hanes: We had a going away lunch for a co-worker who was going to grad school. Went to a local Thai place. He (Vietnamese national) and a couple of others (Polish national and American) ordered their dishes “Thai hot”. The kid and the Polish guy were tucking into their meals with great gusto and showing no ill effects. The American was growing redder and wetter by the bite. Quite amusing as his shaven head turned into a giant radiator.
Joy
It wasn’t exactly me, but close enough. My company had a dinner at a fancy seafood restaurant. Spouses invited. Mine came. He sat across from me. He ordered crab legs. I had a horrified look on my face, like don’t do it dude! Once we were served, he uses the crab crackers. A big ol’ piece of shell flew up and behind him, lodging in the bouffant hair do of an older lady sitting behind him. He didn’t even notice it happened. I almost choked to death trying not to laugh and praying that no one else saw it.
Tree With Water
@cckids: I tend to think they knew exactly what they were saying- think FOX chyron, or whatever they call the scroll that intrudes at the bottom of live broadcasts. Then think of FOX’s history of obnoxiously denying their scroll “mistakes”. Mistakes coincidentally always made at the expense of the democratic party. I’m not kidding around when I say again the GOP is the party of American fascism.
FlipYrWhig
@joel hanes: There was a Thai food truck in Philadelphia called “Jow’s Garden,” as I recall. One dish was called the Crying Tiger. Big warning signs everywhere: No Refunds, Order at Your Own Risk, etc. So I ordered it once. My Puerto Rican friend said I proved that the dish should rightly have been called the Weeping Caucasian.
Gravenstone
Playing off of Violet’s horror story, my family went to Red Lobster for my sister’s 21sr birthday (her choice). Very busy Sunday lunch time. The server accidentally tripped and spilled a pitcher full of ice water onto a gentleman at the table next to ours. At least they were polite enough to express remorse and offer compensation.
Most egregious behavior I’ve even seen at a restaurant, several friends and I were making a late night run to Country Kitchen (don’t judge). There was a couple from Hell sitting a couple booths over. They looked enough alike to be brother and sister, but I think they were married. She was extremely picky, sending things back several times and just being a general ass to her poor waitress. Finally, they finished their meals and I watched in abject horror as she licked all of their plates clean. I don’t think they tipped when they left, either.
Svensker
Working at a major film studio in L.A. in the 80s and big executive has noticed my work and takes me out to lunch to talk about my future. I order soup (figuring it’s easy to eat without making food faux pas) — curry soup. While I’m chatting, the cold damp glass of iced tea SLIPS through my hand and lands right smack in the middle of the bowl of soup. Which, in my slow-motion memory, looks like orange stochastic flow which lands not only in my lap but in the impeccably tailored suit lap of the big executive. Who never spoke to me again.
greg
@Violet: Just break the good stuff out whenever. In the end, it’s not going with you anyway.
Turgidson
Nothing too severe in the “dining etiquette follies” department. When I was maybe 12, my family was out to dinner with the department chair of my dad’s department – so, not a direct boss exactly, but the closest thing he had to that. Got fairly dressed up, was gently but firmly told to behave myself. Oddly, we were at a high-end buffet style place. It wasn’t brunch, or an Old Country Buffet type place. Not sure any such place exists now. In any event, I loaded up my plate, and in my 12 year old goofiness, I mistook blue cheese salad dressing for vanilla pudding. Took what I considered to be a tasteful, but large scoop.
After I’d eaten everything else on the plate I turned to the “pudding”, took a large bite, and nearly spit it right out, but managed to hold it together and gulp it down. When I feverishly reached for my water, undoubtedly with a hilariously disgusted look ion my face, I noticed the whole table was watching, which was strange since I’d been mostly ignored up to that point, which was fine. Decided to fess up to my mistake rather than cower in embarrassment or lie. Department chair and his wife sort of chuckled, and the matter was dropped, no big deal. My brother teased me about it later, maybe. But being at the time a shy kid in neverending fear of humiliating myself, I thought the whole episode was mortifying.
The other fun experience wasn’t my fault at all. Was at a friend’s bar mitzvah, and at the reception afterward, one of the mischievous scamps at my table decided to pull the “unscrew the top on the salt shaker” prank on someone. Not me, because I saw them do it. But someone else got burned. The surly person who discovered this when they came to clear our dishes lost her shit and started chewing us all out. And while she was busy doing that, she spilled an entire cup of milk onto my lap. So I spent the remainder of the party looking like I’d pissed my pants. The staffer offered no apology or even acknowledgment of the spill. Fun.
Tree With Water
@Svensker: “Who never spoke to me again”. Well then, he was an asshole. Unless you didn’t offer to have it dry cleaned. You did, didn’t you?
Svensker
@Tree With Water:
I have no idea. I was a very shy type and the only thing I remember is the frozen look on his face and the absolute mortification I felt.
He may have been an asshole…but my career at the studio died that day in the soup.
Hawes
That post deserves a Swift Award
SWMBO
I have never tried to post a link to the middle of a youtube before. I hope this works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B1stBYMJUM&feature=player_detailpage#t=1375
This is how you handle eating at a fancy place…
Drowned Rat
This happened to a friend of mine, not me, many years ago. She’s an undergrad, a scholarship student at an elite college, grew up in a working class Italian family. Falls for a blue-blooded dude and is invited to meet his family — back at their estate. They must have had it in for her, because the dinner entree is … barbecued ribs, served in a formal, sit-down white tablecloth setting. She tells herself she will call on her inner reserves of coolness and whatever social elegance she has managed to absorb from various wealthy & snobbish classmates. She attempts to cut some meat off a rib with her dinner knife. Instead, the knife slips and just catapults the rib into the air like a pole vaulter leveraging the force of a well-timed explosion. The rib flies across the table, turning end over end and throwing off BBQ sauce in all directions, then lands in the tastefully, expensively dressed lap of her would-be future mother-in-law.
Mercifully for my friend, the romance died a very short time later.
daize
Betty, thank you so much for the laughs. I still have your french onion soup recipe saved from Rumproast and I mean to try it soon.
A few years ago I worked for a company that had just acquired a very interesting and lucrative client, and were taking their executive team out to dinner. One of the appetizers was served on an iron skillet. As I passed said appetizer to my left, the handle on the skillet connected with my full wine glass causing the contents to jet across the table and explode on the shirt and sports coat of our Vice President of Sales. Everyone was pretty good natured about it, but I was mortified.
cckids
@Tree With Water:
I think so too; it is written in just such a way as to be deniable.
NeenerNeener
No embarrassing restaurant stories, but….
I was in a job interview once when both of my feet went to sleep. I stood up to shake the interviewer’s hand and fell over. I struggled to my feet and fell over again. He hired me anyway. Go figure.
joel hanes
@Tree With Water:
reaching for every glass of water in sight
Neither water nor beer helps, of course. Capsaicin is fat-soluble, not water-soluble.
So to damp down the flames after eating hot peppers,
you want ice cream. Or a glass of not-skim milk. Or sour cream. Or a pat of butter. Or some brie.
Ruckus
Closest dinning disaster I’ve had was when I was 16-17. In a pancake house with 3 friends for lunch. (Only restaurant in a small town, not bad food, and plenty of it) When our food came the waitress had all 4 salad plates, one in each hand and one balanced on each arm. Of course she had to reach across me to put down the plate in her hand. Salad up ended and dropped straight into my lap. Now comes the best part. She tried to clean up my lap. How much fun do you think my friends had with that?
Ruckus
@mainmata:
Attending a school at Great Lakes Naval Station we were marched every day for lunch to the mess, rather than let us find food on our own. Every Thursday they served a brown lump, which they called beef. At the time I carried a knife which I kept razor sharp. It wouldn’t cut this “meat.” Also every Thursday they placed an extra trash can with a sign to put your “meat” in it. I swear they just reheated them every week, there for sure was no risk of anyone getting sick from it.
Ruckus
@schrodinger’s cat:
On the road on business I stopped at a national chain fast food place for an early breakfast, at about 6am. Tasted fine but about noon I had to make a run to the restroom. Linda Blair has nothing on me as far as projectile vomiting. Not color, not distance and for sure not volume. Of course someone had to clean up the restroom. Any ideas who that might have been? And of course I got to do both the messing and the cleaning a second time for good measure. That was Thursday. Stayed in bed at the hotel for 3 days with a 103-4 temp, didn’t/couldn’t eat anything. The plane ride home Monday was a hoot.
Ruckus
@Hungry Joe:
I like being dressed in shorts and tee shirt when guys in suits are around. I know I’m the one who is comfortable, not them. I think I got over either trying to be an “adult” or caring about what any pompous person thinks of me when I was about 30. I figure you don’t like how I’m dressed, that’s your problem. All the important bits are covered and no matter what I dress in, nothing really makes me look like a “proper adult.” And that includes when I owned a tux.
BruceFromOhio
@Suzanne: I will be laughing about this for days.
And I have totally new level of respect for you.
John Thomson
@Face: I believe I read many years ago from Miss Manners, “You take it out the way you put it in.” You could use a napkin, but you’d still have to dump the food on your plate and that could get messy. That’s the way I roll!
jafd
Well, ’twasn’t a formal occasion, but …
Still in my second decade, I came out of the cafeteria line at college dining hall, with a tray full of nourishment for a skinny young man, and went to my friends’ table. ‘Twere picnic-style tables they had there, and the vacant places were in the middle of one side, so I set tray down, stepped over bench, and sat down. But I’d left tray overhanging table edge by an inch or two, and was wearing blue jeans with a big-ass beltbuckle…
Which caught the edge of the tray as I sat down, and catapulted the mystery meat, salad and dressing, cool-aid, ice cream, catsup, etc, allovatheplace.
I stood up to try and disentangle the carnage…
and then I noticed that my fly was open.
bad Jim
My father’s partner recounted a dinner during which my father spilled fondue into the boot of a prospective investor, who was never heard from again.
Paul in KY
@joel hanes: Joel, got one for you on that note: When I was in military down in Homestead, me & 3 other junior officers went out to eat lunch. 1 of the other suggested a Thai restaurant nearby. On the way there, they talked about how hot Thai food was. At the time, my only idea about Thai food was that it was sorta like Chinese. Had no experience at all with it. I did think of myself as someone who could handle hot/spicy food & thought what a bunch of weenies they were.
When we got to restaurant, I ordered the Thai Beef Salad & mentioned that I had heard Thai food was hot & that they should ‘bring it on’. I got my dish & dug in. Had a glass of ice water of about 20 ounces. about 1/3 way thru, I had drunk the entire glass of water & had a righteous sweat going. My friends were beginning to snicker, as were the owners. A waiter brought me some lemon slices & suggested I suck on them. I did & also downed another 20 ounce water. managed to finish the plate, but I had to go into the bathroom & scrape my tongue off. Also had to go home & put on another uniform, as I had sweated out the one I had on.
Needless to say, the audience for this enjoyed every bit…
Paul in KY
@jafd: Was at a vacation house, right on beach. had a back patio with a little picnic table. My friend & I both whipped up one of the best seafood feasts you will ever see. Both wanted to look out over ocean, so we sat down on same side of table. Had food all right in front of us. When we sat down, the table was much less heavy than we had thought & we turned the table top into a catapult that put our dinners all over us & floor.
Luckily we were both pretty stoned, so we ended up laughing about it.
brantl
@Ellen: What a bunch of assholes. Good lord.
Miki
@NeenerNeener: The exact thing happened to me once – I went right down onto my knees as if I were ready to service my future boss. I got the job.