You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Food assault.
It starts innocently enough.
A piece of pizza delivered by the waitress.
“Careful, it’s hot,” she says.
It’s a cautionary tale. Like objects in mirror closer than they appear or don’t feed the dog.
It’s a suggestion at best right?
The pizza arrives. The steam rises like a culinary apparition, from hovering over the table.
“Right out of the oven,” the waitress says backing away.
I glance up at the plasma over the bar. One of a 1000 ubiquitous baseball games is playing. I smile at my friend, and pick up the slice of smoking hot pizza.
I blow on the tip cautiously. I do this more out of habit than fear.
I put the tip into my mouth.
The reaction is normal, nothing out of the ordinary. I wait for the sweet delectable juices to flow.
Then, somewhere between the crust and the sauce, the cheese begins to percolate. Under this layer of Italian flavoring and true American food, there lies a nuclear furnace of hot.
It is a boiling cauldron of sauce and thyme and oregano.
The tomato sauce is a bubbling lava pit. The cheese is a fiery furnace forging steel. The super heated slice instantly begins to melt my tongue.
I jerk the slice out of my mouth.
As I do, the force of the rapid extrication creates a centrifugal force on the liquefied cheesy goo. The melted substance, smoking hot, like molten steel is now coming loose.
Mutated angry cheese has grown horns like a piece of angry barbed wire forged in a fire of culinary hell, it goes rogue and looks for a target to victimize.
Like some kind of lactose crazed Tarzan on a gooey vine, the glowing, burning ember of super heated cheese swings off the pizza and splatters onto my lower lip and chin.
I feel the scalding scream of pain receptors flair. It’s as if a piping hot arrow of melted heat has just been fired into the bulls eye of my nerve center.
I am the dopey patient in the game OPERATION. Somewhere emergency lights begins to spin and a siren wails.
My skin is on fire, melting, becoming one with the lava cheese that is rapidly melting my epidural layer into a viscous stew of facial unrecognizability.
OUCH! I holler swatting at my face. I attempt to dislodge my molten facial.
Have you ever seen road crews fill a pot hole. They put in a tarry like super heated asphalt hot patch. It’s broiling, steaming, as the men shovel it into the hole.
That’s what this cheese is doing to my chin. It is burrowing into the top layers of my face like a voracious fire breathing mole, gnawing, burning, melting.
I wipe my chin forcefully yelping like a small child stung by a fire ant.
“You OK?” my friend says.
“Pizza burned me.” I say stupidly.
My friend laughs.
It sounds stupid. Pizza burned me.
I feel the heat on my chin. It’s isolated to one spot under my lip. It’s like a localized sun burn that is just starting to rear it’s ugly head.
I take a swig of a Blue Moon resting the cold glass on my lower lip.
It feels good.
“I’ll be OK,” I say.
Like a baseball player struck by a pitch and trying to walk it off. I figure if I use my mouth, talking, drinking and eating, the pain will go away. I’ll essentially talk it off.
The pizza cools, the beers flow, the game continues.
We devour the delicious pie without calling 911.
The next day I wake up and look in the mirror.
Under my lip there is a bright red dot, as if someone has taken a red sharpie and blotted my skin with a pronounced red circle.
I looked like a woman from India, only the red dot is on my chin.
Freaking ridiculous I think to myself, wondering if I should pop it, wipe it, or simply ignore the hideous festering dot.
Two days will pass and the dot has only become more conspicuous. I realize this as I dress for my daughter’s graduation. I will wear a dress shirt, slacks and a tie. My hair will be designer cool and my feet shiny neat.
But the chin?
It is blinking awkward like a school crossing zone.
It screams to strangers “Hey what happened to your face?”
Did a gigantic fire ant attack you in your sleep?
The dot is one part wound and one part demon. I expect it to jump off my face and begin killing children in the neighborhood. It is like a bloody, oozing, pussing eye under my lip. It’s like a hieroglyphic symbol on an Egyptian Tomb.
I am self conscious of the hideous red lava burn like a man with extreme perspiration problems is conscious of a silk dress shirt.
How does a piece of molten hot cheese do this much damage? It is hysterical while embarrassing. It is painful and hard to ignore.
I go to the graduation. I am self conscious. I wonder if the burning cheese wound is glopping onto my dress shirt.
I see a small child point and recoil in horror. I immediately grab for my chin wondering if the wound has shot out a blast of liquefied disgust. It feels dry.
I see the boy’s brother laugh. Apparently he broke wind and I am only imagining the creature festering on my face.
I see a woman with pancake make up. I think about asking her if I can borrow her compact. I think better of it.
The graduation concludes. The graduates graduate, the parents cheer. My cheese wound has killed no one.
I consider this a good moment and pray for the healing powers of the Epidermal gods to release their magic ointment into my pores.
“Hey dad, what’s that bloody eye on your chin?” my daughter quips.
Great, I think, as we head off to a crowded restaurant where dozens of diners are about to lose their appetite.
Life’s Crazy™