This is me.
The Meal Of Doom

Let's have dinner.

"I think they think we're posers," my cousin, KD, quipped as we --- my cousins KD, Jonny, and Chrissy; my sister Daphy, and I --- sat around a large amount of unfinished food.

"We could ask our waiter to eat with us," Jonny offered.

"We could ask all the waiters to eat with us," KD returned.

"This is an embarrassment to our family," Chrissy put in. "How are we going to eat everything?"

It started quite innocently. The five of us, hungry from doing errands at the mall, went for dinner at a restaurant we hadn't visited since Chrissy was in kindergarten. We ordered some fried chicken, pizza, and individual pasta dishes.

The servings were all American sizes, but we had finished much bigger portions before. Except we didn't count on feeling unable to eat after five mouthfuls.

"It's so... creamy," KD said about the meat and veggie fettucine we had both ordered. And it was overly so. We were disappointed with how we couldn't taste the meat, vegetables, and even the peppers. We saw them go into our mouths, but we could only feel their different textures. All we were really eating were wide lengths of pasta drowned in bland cream.

Meanwhile, the other three people in our party had ordered spaghetti with various toppings. They fared a bit better than KD and I did, but ended up disgusted with how the pasta was the minority of the dish. They were left with different kinds of chopped edibles floating in a large amount of sauce.

So here was the problem: we were so grossed out that we couldn't take another bite. Of anything.

"Nothing should be wasted," Chrissy announced. Everyone nodded in agreement.

"Maybe we should let them pack the food now," KD suggested. This was immediately followed by a quiet but long burp. Everyone just started laughing at the absurdity of it.

We had half the food packed.

But there was still the other half.

Jonny started going at his chicken with the enthusiasm of a lumberjack chopping wood with a dull ax. He pounded the poor animal with his table knife for about ten minutes before I told him he could use his fingers.

"I feel full but unsatisfied," Daphy said.

"I don't even know if I'm full," KD added.

"I'm full but not with that 'bloated stomach' feeling." Chrissy frowned. "I'm so full that I'm scared." Everyone snorted at the comment while others choked on what they were eating.

"Can't we just overturn the plates to hide all the unfinished food?" someone else chimed in. "I feel like I'll never eat again!"

The madcap dinner did end with us somehow finishing the rest. But a unanimous vote was taken to never go back there. Ever.

This is probably how God punishes gluttons.

Daisy on 1/20/2008 06:00:00 PM