Tuesday's prompt

"Write about the worst meal you have ever had."

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It’s not that the meal was so bad. It was just that our expectations had been so high. Picture this - two second grade boys. One, my friend, Simon. The other, me, his friend tagging along with him while his parents (Dan and Lynn) traveled to Grand Forks to buy suits for his father - the newly elected county attorney.

Every step we took through Sears and the mall was torture. Our stomachs grumbled, and we eyed the food stands. While his dad was in the changing room and his mom was handing suit after suit over the door, Simon and I finally had enough and began scouring the floor for spare change in hopes of using it in the gum ball machines. We needed something to tide us over.

With several hundred dollars worth of suits in hand, Simon’s dad lead us out. Instantly we began clamoring for food. It had to be around 7 and I was used to eating at five sharp every day. Actually, after breaking my leg two years earlier and getting used to lounging around the house and eating often, I was used to five square meals a day, which accounted for my large belly at the time.

Finally, the torture was over and Dan pulled us into Happy Joe’s in Crookston. I about fainted as I opened the door and saw the light bulbs in the shape of pizza in the window. I am fairly certain both Simon and I were salivating like a couple of dogs. We didn’t care. I certainly didn’t. This husky boy (as my mom and grandmother liked to call me - they never said the word “fat” - always “husky” or “stalky” - this ended, though, one day when we were shopping in the “husky” boys section at JC Penny, and I looked around and saw all the other boys shopping were chunkers. It hit me: I was fat, regardless of the adjectives they tried to spin).

To take our minds - and stomachs - off the wait for the pizza, Dan gave Simon and I several dollars worth of quarters. Playing video games was well worth starving for back in 1983, so we bolted to the arcade, buying a dime piece of gum to tide us over.

After a few tries at Pac Man and Donkey Kong, Lynn called us to the table. All I could picture in my mind was a big fat Pepperoni pizza dripping with grease. I couldn’t wait. I’m fairly certain I was able to launch my considerable girth airborne and skip to the table.

However, both Simon and I were shocked to see instead of a pepperoni pizza - or even a cheese pizza (we both had been to enough birthday parties over the years to know kids only eat two kinds of pizza) instead we were greeted by an exceedingly large supreme pizza.

Words fail to express my disappointment. I am certain I tested out my first cuss words in my mind - borrowed from eavesdropping on my brother as I listened to him work on his car -- as I eyed that pizza. If there were pepperonis, they were buried under what looked to be salad. And if you are a seven year old kid, there is nothing worse than lettuce (except maybe getting clothes for Christmas or a shot in the ass at the doctor’s office. Actually, I would have preferred a damn shot. The nurses always gave me a sucker to offset my stinging backside. That sucker would have hit the spot back then).

“Dig in guys,” Dan said, obviously proud of himself as he lifted a great slice off the pan, strings of cheese oozed back to the pan and chunks of odd food began to fall off the pizza. There were purple and green things on there; there was oddly shaped meat burried under there too.

Both Simon and I, despite our hollow bellies, just nibbled the curst and picked at our slices.

Lynn tried picking off the supreme toppings, but that wasn’t fooling us. They had been there. They contaminated the pizza.

“Oh, you won’t even taste these,” she said referring to some mushrooms.

“If I can’t even tast them, why are they on the pizza?” I asked. She was nonplussed. I tasted them all right. They were spongy and disgusting. I didn’t eat supremet pizza for at least another decade. And I’m not sure I liked it all that much better then either.