On a normal workday, my lunch-break is spent in the fitness room.  Today, however, it was spent alone at Minsky’s, wolfing down a cheeseburger and chugging iced tea.  I suppose that’s a perk of having a foot that hurts too much to try to do cardio class.

Regrettable?  Maybe…

But it DID spur on a CHERISHED memory–the first time I ate alone during a lunch-break…

It was in the beginning of my entrance into the delightful necessary world of working full-time; I was 16 years old, and the second semester of the school year had ended.  I had been working as a teller at the Bank of Lee’s Summit since that previous December. 

Most days, I packed my lunch and ate it in the security of the bank’s kitchen.  The day finally came, however, that I decided I would be more “like an adult” and venture out to a restaurant for my lunch.  Since I hadn’t been driving very long, you see, I was not the most adventurous person when it came to driving unfamiliar places.  Plus, it was hot out that day, and my car at the time had no air conditioning.  But now I’m just making excuses for my past self…

So, I clocked out for lunch and strolled my on-a-mission butt to my hot-as-an-oven Honda, and set off to find a glorious plate of sustenance.  Of the many choices in the restaurant world, you KNOW I was going to only pick the most classy place in existence!!

FAZOLI’S!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hey, I was 16…..LIKE I KNEW what CLASS was in the restaurant world!!!  I thought fast-food Italian was GENIUS…….  Plus, they offered unlimited buttery breadsticks!!!  And this was back in the day where they had people walking around with BASKETS FULL of those little salty treasures!!!  YOU COULD EAT TEN OF THEM WITHOUT JUDGEMENT!!!! 

I ordered a plate that included three of the restaurant’s specialties, a portion of this food being lasagna.  I triumphantly picked up my plastic fork, and immediately dug in to the saucy, meaty goodness.  As my fork carried the first bite to my famished mouth, gravity decided to play a joke on me, and PULLED the food off the fork, then thwarted it DIRECTLY at MY BOOBS!!! 

But pffffshhh……. did I panic?  …..

FUCK YES, I DID!!!!!  I was NOT ready for this adult situation!!!!!  To make matters worse, I was wearing a white dress!!  I immediately grabbed ALL the napkins on the table, and begin dipping them into my glass of ice-water, and then frantically patting away the red sauce that then adorned my breasticles.  The mark of the SCARLET SAUCE must be removed!!!!!!!

After a frantic five minutes, I didn’t see any trace of the sauce on my dress.  I breathed a sigh of relief…I had done it.  I won.  Gravity had NOTHIN’ on me!!  I finished my meal with no more haphazard bites, and with a smile on my face that said, “I have conquered my lunch…ALL of you people SHOULD be FULL of AWE and WONDER!”  (Okay, so no one even noticed my debacle, to my knowledge, but in the first moments of sauce-falling, I felt as if ALL eyes were on me.)

I returned to the bank for the remainder of my full-time, barely-above-minimum-wage job, continuing to grin like an idiot.  Victory was glittering in my eyes as I helped all my lobby customers with the utmost confidence!!!  For those next couple hours, all was right with the world…

until I went to the bathroom.

Here’s the thing about wiping off your boobs at a restaurant table instead of in the bathroom….from the vantage point of my face, I can’t see directly under my boob.  And THAT, my friends, is the EXACT place that some lasagna meat sauce had decided to hibernate.

Don’t wear white to work.  IF you do, DON’T eat Italian food from a plastic fork.  Lesson learned.