This Place Is Getting to Me

The hospital kitchen was short on staff today [We don't know what the problem was. We heard rumors that they contracted food poisoning from eating their own cooking at a pre-holiday party and also that many of them were hung over from drunken revelry at the same party] and they decided to make all the crazy people suffer because of it, probably because no one will believe us if we complain because we're all crazy. Anyway, they served us all yucky bologna sandwiches slathered with mayonnaise for lunch AND dinner. Some people ate the sandwiches for lunch. I didn't. Mayonnaise is one of the foods that I would not eat even if I were in the Donner Party, and bologna is just barely off my Donner Party list. I'm certainly not eating it unless my choices are limited to either imminent death, eating human flesh, or eating bologna. Once there's even a drop of mayo on it -- or even if someone cuts my sandwich with the same knife that was used to cut a sandwich with mayo -- it is a deal breaker as far as I'm concerned . . . and this sandwich was positively dripping with the stuff. By the time dinner rolled around and it was the same disgusting sandwiches as we had been served for lunch, positively no one was taking the hospital kitchen staff's sickening bait.

I don't even like to be in the same room with mayonnaise. If someone is eating mayo at home, I go elsewhere. My parents think it is incredibly rude to leave the table during a meal because I don't care for what someone else is eating, but then, it's considered just a bit rude to toss one's cookies at the table right in the middle of a meal, too, wouldn't you say?

In this hospital there is an eating disorder ward, with over half of its occupants reportedly being anorexic, and most of the remainder being bulimic. What would the rest be? What other eating disorders are there? I confess to being woefully ignorant on the topic, but my point remains the same as it would be if I were a freaking eating disorders savant: if someone in the hospital has to go hungry, why not the anorexics and the bulimics? The anorexics would think the gift of hunger was the greatest favor one could bestow upon them. The bulimics are just going to purge themselves afterward, anyway. Cut out the middle man and just keep the food away from them in the first place.

Most of us called our parents to complain, and our parents all told us to suck it up in different words. {I'm already scouting online for geriatric institutions of utter squalor in which to place my parents when they're old and senile. We'll see just how they like it when the shoe is on the other foot.] I then called several relatives to ask them to order a few pizzas for us, but no one with the means to accommodate my request was picking up.

This sounds like something out of a bad TV sitcom, but we actually snuck someone out of here to get food for us at a Burger King a couple of blocks away. We thought about concealing the boy in a laundry cart, but no one was picking up or delivering laundry, and there were, hence, no laundry carts. The only alternative was either to sneak him out when someone else came or wait until the nurse at the desk left her post unattended. Fortunately for us, soon after we decided on the escape plan, she went to the ladies' room without alerting another nurse. I quickly vaulted the counter and buzzed Jacob out. (Once a gymnast, always a gymnast.) Getting him back in with the food was no big deal, as the staff would be in way more trouble than Jacob or me or any of us if news of Jacob's escape were to leak.

We sent him with money and a list of what everyone wanted. I told him that my burger could have no mayo. Someone in the group said that Burger King never puts mayo on its regular hamburgers, but I was taking no chances. We couldn't get drinks because he would be unable to carry them, but we have a soda machine that's decently stocked in our wing. He came back about twenty-five minutes later with everything. I ate an entire hamburger AND an entire order of fries. I don't even LIKE fries, but extreme hunger will do that to a person. I could never be hungry enough to eat a bologna sandwich with mayo, though. Everyone has to draw the line at some point; I draw the line at bologna sandwiches with mayo.