Meet You Where?

          Let me just start with a disclaimer today:  St. Bob cannot be trusted to recommend food of any kind.  This is because he has a strange condition known as Taste-Bud-Freakazoidness-If-He-Hasn’t-Eaten.

          If St. Bob has dashed off to work without eating breakfast, and even skipped lunch, by dinnertime he has lost all perspective and thinks a cracker is as good as a cinnamon roll. It's like his tongue is hallucinating.

          This makes for an easy life if he comes home hungry and I’ve made a mediocre dinner—he will think it’s a grand feast.

          On the other hand, he will also drag me to hideous dives where “you can’t believe how good the food is,” and then it is not.

          Case in point.  He recently swore up and down that a gas station, near his work, had two women making “the best BLT sandwiches you’ve ever tasted.  Bar none.  I promise.”  The lettuce was fresh and crispy, the bacon thick, the tomatoes juicy, the bread lightly toasted--  an incredible find at a gas station, of all places.

          And I, ever the gullible wife, forgot about Bob’s untrustworthiness on such matters, and agreed to meet him there for a date.  A bell dinged as I walked into the convenience mart filled with the standard pork rinds and key chains, Cheetos and motor oil.

          Two very surprised women looked up from a window in the back as Bob told them their sandwiches were so incredible that he had to bring his wife in.  They literally exchanged glances.

          But they made the sandwiches, we paid, and then we sat at the lone rickety little table near the front window, by the ice machine.  I bit into my sandwich and chewed.  Bob bit into his sandwich and chewed.

          “Okay, you are not allowed to make food recommendations,” I said, as soon as I had swallowed.  I took a big swig of my bottled water.

          Bob was looking perplexed.  “Honestly, these tasted so good the other day,” he insisted.

          “You do realize that there’s a diagnosis for people who’ve lost their grip on reality,” I said.  “It’s called psychosis and doctors prescribe medicine for it.”

And I am sitting in a gas station, on a date with a psychotic, eating a crummy BLT sandwich, which makes me eligible for some kind of medication as well, I believe.  Or at least a Magnum ice cream bar  before we leave.

You, however, can be smart enough to stay home, eat well, and curl up with a good book.  Here are some wonderful literary offerings.