“Hey, remember that time you cried over the sandwich?”

“It was a wrap”

“Same difference.”

“Ugh”

 

I was about a week post op from an emergent gallbladder removal. Emergent mostly because after about four or five ER visits with crippling attacks that ended with me going home because I felt better after some drugs, or had no insurance, or honestly was just afraid – they were like, ‘Nope you’re staying this time’

The morning I am released the surgeon who performed the surgery told me that he also repaired an umbilical hernia. I remember saying “I always thought that bump was because my jeans dug in to my belly”; he went on to say he was surprised I had even noticed with the folds in my belly.

FOLDS.

Well, at least he didn’t call them rolls.

He comments on my weight and advises me to make some changes to my diet, but sends me on my way to resume mostly normal activity and says I am free to eat anything. I have minimal appetite for days, and am treating saltines and cranberry juice like steak and champagne a few days later. After a full week or so I accompany Steve to a shopping center nearby where he is going to buy a new laptop. Short and sweet, but fresh air.

After we leave, out of habit mostly, he asks if I’m hungry. To our surprise, I am. There’s a restaurant nearby where we have gone a few times and I decidedly say I want to go there and know exactly what I am going to have.

Thrilling.

We sit down, order drinks and peruse the menu. My eyes dart up and down, flipping pages; where is the Southwestern Wrap? Come ON.

When our server returns I ask her if they took it off the menu; she says she’s never heard of it and has been there for a few months so she assumes so.

I grimace.

She tells me she can ask the kitchen if they have the ingredients and if they do, she can’t imagine they wouldn’t make it for me. Do I know what’s in it she asks … As if I have been studying for this moment all of my life I say “Chicken, black olives, cheese, sour cream, lettuce, diced tomatoes, black beans and jalapenos”

She comes back happy to report that one of the guys said of course he remembers it and can still make it.

Crisis Averted.

The plate placed in front of me may as well have been gold, covered in lace, with diamonds strewn across it. I mean, I had barely eaten in a week, but my eyes must have widened like a child on Christmas morning.

With sky high levels of anticipation I take a bite and instantly shake my head in disappointment, spitting it into a napkin. Before I could even tell Steve what was wrong with it, I’m crying.

Full on, SOB crying.

In my defense it was just lettuce, sour cream and chicken in a wrap. That’s it. Gross.

He tells me to get something else …

“I don’t WANT something else. I fucking wanted this and they said they could make it and this is disguuuuuuuusting”

Our poor waitress. She offered me every resolution but I just asked her to take it away. With tears running down my face I explain that I had surgery a few days before and was still taking pain medication and it was my first experience with anesthesia and I’m really sorry and she laughs and consoles me and takes it off the check.

I leave her a big tip because I’m a fucking downer in the middle of a lunch shift, I KNOW. I even wrote an email a few days later to the manager to tell them how awesome she was even when I was acting like an irrational baby.

The story is funny because who cries over that?

But what’s not funny is that this is just another story in a long repertoire of stories about being annoyed or upset over food. Almost anyone who knows me, and has known me for years probably remembers me throwing something out of a car window, in the trash or in the case of foods that you eat with your hands, violently squishing things that were not prepared the way I expected or requested.

When I think about it now, I just see this sad fat girl uncomfortably sitting in a booth crying over a sandwich. Er, wrap.