And Now for Something Completely Different

Streams of light filtered through the blinds and fell across my face. I tightened my closed eyes and stretched as birds chirped a happy tune outside my window. I groggily sat up in bed and let my eyes adjust to the new day. "Better get ready for work!" I exclaimed to no one in particular.

"Work?" said Mr. Toodles. "You don't have to go to work today!"

I dangled my legs over the edge of the mattress and smoothed the wrinkled sheets with my hands. "Oh, that's right, it's President's Day!"

In honor of your birthday, all women's and junior's tops are an extra 20% off at Macy's.

"Yes, that's very true." Mr. Toodles chimed, his thick British accent encumbering all the vowels. "But also, you were fired last Friday."

"Fired!" I blinked hard and crooked my neck to face Mr. Toodles. He was peering at me from the edge of the bed, motionless, and his coal eyes seemed to give his words more weight. The birds outside were oblivious to the bad news and continued their gaeity. "What do you mean I was fired!"

"Oh dear, you don't remember?You were quite upset last Friday evening when you came home. Really, you don't recall?"

I racked my mind but all I could think about was how hungry I was. I would have waffles later, I decided. Maybe pancakes. "No, I don't recall."

"Well then I am afriad you have lost your marbles." Mr. Toodles said with a hint of a smirk. "The stress has made you crack!"

"That's absurd!" I rebutted. "I'm just fine!"

"Oh yes, I think you've gone off the deep end. Quite so. For example, have you not noticed that you are currently talking to a penguin? And not just any penguin, sir, but a Pillow Pet at that?"

"Seriously, you don't remember telling me I was a better conversationalist than the toaster?"

I looked at Mr. Toodles intently and considered his case. That did explain his monochromatic and polyester fiber feathers. I quickly accepted his words as true, but resigned myself to his company.

"Wha-What happened, Mr. Toodles? Did I send signed photocopies of my butt to the Board of Directors? That's how I always planned to go out."

Mr. Toodles politely giggled. "No, you apparently 'don't have a sense of urgency'."

"That's preposterous!" I retorted, standing up. I paced the floor in front of my bed and nervously tucked my hair behind my ears. "No sense of urgency? I probably went to the bathroom eight or nine times a day!"

"I don't think that's what your boss meant." Mr. Toodles unlatched his velcro strap and sprawled belly up. "Lie down, it'll calm you." I hesitantly nestled my head on the white swath of synthetic filling and relaxed my limbs as I steadied my tempestuous breathing. "My boss," I recited. "Is this the same boss that once scolded me for not panicking enough?"

'Why can't you be more like Jenkins over there, who has stripped off his 

clothing and is screaming in a puddle of his own urine?'

"Yes, the very one," Mr. Toodles assured, his voice soft next to my ear. "According to our conversation on Friday, she had some similarly absurd complaints this time. Do you recall the time you wore jeans to work on what you thought was casual day, but as it turns out was not casual day?"

The cieling blurred in and out of my view as my eyelids grew heavier. "I remember that. It was about six months ago, I believe. I apologized profusely and never let it happen again."

"Well, she held on to that infraction. Held on to it like a mother holds an ugly child, pressed into her bosom to protect it from the world and from scorn." Mr. Toodles' voice was now raspy and dramatic, and the Britishness of his accent grew more cockney. "Though all the while she nurtures it and lets it grow, only allowing its twisted, hideous face to be seen when you least expect it!"

A palpable pause filled the conversation and my eyes were now shut. "That...was an awful metaphor, Mr. Toodles. But I see what you're saying. Surely, other reasons were given for my forced departure."

"Sure, other reasons were given," Mr. Toodles replied, "but many of them were baffling, and none of them warranted expulsion. Even at the end, she still maintained that you were generally excellent at your job."

"That's crazy!" I exclaimed, now slightly more aware in the last desperate throes of consciousness before sleep takes over.

"Crazy?" Mr. Toodles chuckled. "You're the one that's currently typing what can only be described as Pillow Pet fanfiction."

Without lifting my head from Mr. Toodles' stomach I looked down to see that my laptop was open and that I had been feverishly typing our conversation. That did explain the annoying clickety-clack sound.

"Crazy like a fox!!!!!" I said while grinning and typing redundant and frivolous exclamation points, just the way my previous employer would have liked it. The glib line didn't make sense in context, but thankfully Mr. Toodles relinquished any opportunity for harassment and showed concern.

"So, what will you do now?"

I traced his words in my mind and felt a heavy peace come over me. I wasn't sure if it was because of sleep or something else. "I don't know, Mr. Toodles," I sighed. "I just don't know. Maybe I'll do something completely different."

And with that the room fell silent.

Chitlin Chitlin Bang Bang

I am not an adventurous man. The closest I want to come to hiking through jungles and traipsing across deserts is watching National Geographic documentaries in my underpants. And rest assured, all you visually-minded readers, that is a common occurrence. But I am an adventurous eater. I love new restaurants and cuisines. I’m fascinated by new cultures, but I don’t want to necessarily visit these places. I do, however, want to stick my face in all of their delicacies and then make condescending remarks about how superior American tastes are.

So it’s a shame that up until this weekend I had never tried one of the most defining dishes of the Heart of Dixie. Sure, I’ve ground my gums on grits. I’ve processed plates of pecan pie. I’ve masticated the most magnificent morsels of buttermilk cornbread muffins. But I had never eaten chitterlings.

Pronounced “chit-lins” by people who don’t want to sound like stereotypical white people, chitterlings were a staple of Southern soul food, particularly among the African-American population. They are less common today, but still served in some communities. Oh, and if you don’t know what chitterlings are, they are pig bowels. You know, like, colons. The parts of animals whose job it is to house and then evacuate poop.

Eating chitterlings has been a goal – nay, a dream – of mine ever since I was a bag boy at Johnson’s Giant Food in high school.

 Making immature people giggle since 1967

We sold all kinds of odd animal parts. Pig ears, pig knees, pork rinds, pig feet, pig intestines, a mysterious pork-based product called “souse”. Basically, if it was deemed inedible by modern society, I bagged hundreds of them.

 “Here’s your pig, ma’am. Some assembly required.”

I couldn’t convince Mom to cook these things, however. So when a friend, Amanda, found out about my desire to eat chitterlings she told her father. Mr. Bray had grown up eating chitterlings and knew how to prepare them, so he graciously offered to cook them for me.

Here’s where I need to expound on the cooking process. You can’t just put chitterlings in the microwave like they’re a frozen burrito. No sir. You’ve got to carefully prepare them OR YOU WILL DIE OF YERSINIOSIS.  Ok, you won’t die but you will have to change your permanent mailing address to Your Bathroom c/o Irritable Bowels. This preparation process involves ridding the chitterlings of leftover excrement, because the pig probably didn’t do a 24-hour Hollywood cleanse the day before he was slaughtered so you could more fully enjoying devouring his intestines. He probably ate extra slop that day as a final show of defiance. Anyway, I didn’t watch Mr. Bray do this, but I imagine you clean the chitterlings by angrily strangling them until they have taken their last breath, but instead of breath it’s poop.

“Why you little!...Yersiniosis!”

And then when the chitterlings are sufficiently clean, you have to boil them three separate times. As you might guess, this can be a smelly process. Mr. Bray told me of a chitterling festival in South Carolina that had odor complaints from towns several miles away. I'm pretty sure the festival sent dank clouds of poop fumes and bacteria to ruin their neighbor's water supplies and was the source material for Erin Brockovich. 

I picked the chitterlings up from the Bray's, thanked them for their generosity, and then headed to my parents’ house to try them out. I leaned close and took a whiff. It had a faint, yet perceptible bouquet, not unlike a child’s diaper downwind on a clear day. They weren’t the most appetizing thing to look at, either. A pile of sinewy tubes and tissue. 

Maybe if I pour in some milk and sprinkle some sugar...

Some people prepare them fried and covered in hot sauce, but Mr. Bray left them mostly unseasoned to let me taste the “natural chitterling flavor”. Excited and nauseous, I dug my fork into the most appealing bit I could find and held it to my mouth. Mom couldn’t watch. The flavor was surprisingly subtle, but gained momentum as I chewed. I ate about three more pieces before calling it quits. I was happy to finally have the opportunity to eat this notorious delicacy, but I have to admit - it kind of tastes like the inside of a pig’s anus.

I do not say that to be crude. I say it because that is technically what I was eating, and that is technically what it tastes like. How would you describe the taste of strawberries to someone who has never had one before? “They taste like…strawberries!” Well, if you really want to know for yourself what true chitterlings taste like, I invite you to try them. As for me, I have fulfilled my dream of eating pig colon. On to the next dream…

 Whale chitlins!

Special thanks to Amanda Cody and Mr. and Mrs. Bray for helping a young man put a check mark on his pathetically unadventurous bucket list!