[written by Floozy]
[pic]
I have these annoying small people, that follow me around calling me Mom. If I don’t feed them they threaten me and I don’t want Child Services on my case, as I have my hands full with the Building Inspectorate right now, so I provide vittles to shut the midget people up. Tonight, The Golden Corral sign glowed winsomely as I drove up 29 with one brat wailing ‘I’m so hungry I’m going into a diabetic coma” and another one just wailing. The thought of a 30 minute wait time for table service food was just horrific so in to GC I went; two minutes and twenty bucks later I have blessed silence and professed eternal love for the person that invented this porcine troughfest.
For future reference, I strongly advise against sitting beside anyone with an appendage missing…if you have a 2 year old. It’s 34F outside, and this guy is wearing what looked like a pair of Speedos and he has a stump. I guess the chap that gave him post-amputation counseling did a stellar job, especially the part about not being embarrassed about your… well…stump. It was certainly getting some air, and 2 year old declared, all in one breath before I could smother her “Silly Man… no foot…where’s his foot… what’s that?…yucky….ewwwwwwwww…Band Aid… silly man got a big boo boo…” Oh Christ Almighty… please floor open and swallow me whole.
Speedo clad fellow was in a wheelchair (cue Ma Humps) but it certainly didn’t stop him from getting around the dessert buffet. I half expected Sears to pull up and do a quick tire change at one point, as he went in for his fourth plate of some vile sticky pie, each one covered in a gallon of whippy cream. He is grossly overweight in a friggin’ wheelchair, and probably needs less than 1200 calories a day . I started to wonder if he had inadvertently eaten his own leg one night during a frenzied fried chicken extravaganza.
Next thing… THEY arrived, and my blood ran cold. Luckily my eldest saw what was about to happen and jammed a large handful of doughy bread into 2 year old just as she saw them and her mouth opened to make a 500 decibel announcement.
THEY were a pair of possibly the biggest salad dodgers I have ever seen. From my many wasted hours watching TLC documentaries I have no doubt that this pair of average height women weighed at least 450 pounds each. They made wheelchair man look anorexic.
They sat next to us.
We stayed until the doughy bread ran out and 2 year old was about to explode if she didn’t tell them the urgent news…that they were fat. But the yeasty roll lasted long enough for me to see the food choices they made, and none of it was good and all of it was excessive to the point of being comedic. It’s an All-You-Can-Eat buffet, but they both filled 2 plates at once. I left feeling sad and disgusted.
So going back to my opening quote, these people are literally eating themselves to death. Most of them are blue collar, and they are looking for value food not quality food. Should they be protected from themselves? If smoking causes cancer, alcohol causes cirrhosis and overeating causes heart disease and diabetes, why does food not have a warning on it like the other two do? Lilith suggested we experiment with some of the more ‘affordable’ establishments over the weekend, and I think it is fair to say that these restaurants supply large quantities of unhealthy food;albeit tasty and filling. Charlottesville is a town renowned for its plethora of restaurants, the quality ones only accessible if you have money… does this mean a sector of the community that cannot afford to spend $150 for two at OXO will fall foul of Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection and eventually ladies in Farmington and Glenmore will have to clean their own toilets?
[Inspired by Joe Seiffert, Lynchburg Councilman re: Payday loans discussion 01/14/2007]
Popularity: 4% [?]
Tagged as: Central Virginia, Charlottesville, Gripes, Protests, Public Transit, Questions
My God, this country is going to be a totalitarian state before this century is over.
Floozy I have a two year old, am I you? This is an awesome piece, I can’t wait to see where this goes today…..
The guy’s amputation was probably directly related to his eating habits. Poor eating and obesity=type 2 diabetes=damage to blood vessels and nerves=numbness, decreased sensitivity to pain and decreased blood flow to extremities=risk for injury=foot and leg ulcers that don’t heal=gangrene=amputation.
80 % of non-traumatic amputations are caused by type 2 diabetes.
I already reviewed fifth street burger king.
And I too, know the embarrassment of the wee ones stating the obvious. Guess what, it doesn’t stop when they get old, really… just kinda changes.
Me and my offspring were similarly stuck for quick post-youth sporting event blood sugar fix, so we popped into the Subway, behind staples. The man behind the counter was sooo slow, so clearly beaten down by his lot in life, and he spoke only marginal english. We were starting to get giggly about the pace of the sandwich building (the “line” behind us had all sat down!), and how every single item requested was misinterpeted, and had to be corrected. I could not believe there was no one to help this guy, and was commenting as such when around from the corner of the stock room popped this crazy looking guy. His eyes kinda pointed in diferent directions, and he appeared more likely to knife you in an alley than restock the green peppers. Then he dissappeared back into the stock room to, I don’t know, pick the wings off flies or clip letters for a ransom note or something. Of course we found this hysterical for some reason (we yo’s are a twisted group, generally speaking). We were reaching critical mass as far as the out of control laughter, when… on the final sandwich… our original guy runs out of provalone. So he walks slowly as a man to the gas chamber, to the back room to retrieve a “packet” of cheese. Subwway’s “fresh” cheese comes in these pre-sliced stacks with paper btw each slice. We watched with intense fascination as he held the stack over the little siver container that was the provalone’s destiny. He seemed puzzled. We were puzzled. All he needed to do was peel a couple slices off the stack and place them on my rapidly aging sandwich. There was a long still moment then all of a sudden he grabbed the very middle piece of paper in the stack, and in the most vigorous motion we had seen to this point, began to shake the whole stack violently over the container, which did in fact result in slice separation, but with ony about 40% of the slices hitting even close to their intended target. Well that was it. We lost it! I had so send the boys out of the store before their obvious uncontrollabel laughter caused psycho guy in back to come out with a bread knife or something. I managed to pay without rupturing my spleen from withholding the giggles inside me. Lordy. The whole episode took almost a half hour.
My Review: After all this, the sandwich was fairly mediocre, but the stand up improv act “Subway: Eat Wierd - Waiting for Goudot” was better and more abstract than anything I have seen at live arts. A must see!
Shit was this post even relevant? Oh who cares.
Awesome stories, Floozy and BYo! So, to summarize: go to Golden Corral for type-2 diabetes, but stay at Subway for the show?
Okay, I’ll say it… I hate fat people. Maybe “hate” is a strong word, but it’s true. They disgust me. They scare me. They make me feel ashamed of the human race. What’s worse than a 500 pound person? That person’s similarly overweight pre-teen. I just don’t understand how people can instill values that say it is okay to be so overweight that it makes the rest of the world uncomfortable. Damn it, Darwin, hurry up and fix this!
Flooze, you are awesome!
Hahahaha
Yo: Loved the story.
Funny
Yes Type 2 diabetes is a sad story. We as a nation are in the midst of a major health crisis.
ALso, great photo selection thor
Floozy, really well written story– I guiltily laughed a bit. I know I’ve said it before– I wish we invested more in preventing health problems than treating them at X times the cost. The U.S. is completely stupid about this.
Read my salad dressing rant here.
marge simpson said it best: kill ‘em all and let god sort ‘em out. (that is, if they don’t end up killing themselves first.)
marge, i’d like to be alone with the sandwich.
Great stories!
I’ll be honest, I’m a fatty-hater. I had a coworker at an old job who would complain about how she had type 2 diabetes and that if she didn’t change her eating habits that she was going to need to start taking medication and blah blah blah while ordering delivery breakfast from The Nook with three eggs and extra bacon (despite our working within a two minute walk of the place), which she would then follow with a king sized snickers bar. I promptly found a new job to escape the insanity.
I know, a lot of it is probably genetics (and some folks have actual diseases causing their morbid obesity) and you get treated like crap when you’re overweight, but if you can’t get your shit together enough to keep youself under 300 pounds, I wouldn’t trust you to carry my groceries. I honestly think I have more sympathy for heroine addicts, because I’ve never tried heroine so I don’t know how addictivie it is. I eat and LOVE food and I still manage to walk at least 4 miles per day, bother to measure out portion sizes and snack on things like oatmeal at work and not corn chips, none of which take any impressive income. And obviously this whole it’s not your fault be nice to them thing hasn’t helped, as things only keep getting worse, so let’s call a spade a spade and say it - you are disgusting, seeing you makes me loss my appetite, and no, just because I have a waistline doesn’t mean you get the armrest when I’m stuck on a plane next to you. You have earned your discomfort one big mac at a time.
Wow - that got a little out of control. Blast away, I can take it (being skinny I can dodge your verbal blows quite easily).
Oooo. Pet peeve: also doesn’t mean you lift the armrest and take 3/4 of my own seat. I paid for a full seat and I intend to use all of it.
TG - I hate that regardless of the size of the person next to me! Unless you are my husband, there is no thigh to thigh contact permitted - and if you feel me flinch and move closer to the window, that is NOT an invitation to get comfy and spread out. Who was it that said “Hell is other people?”
I work part-time at a popular convenience store (taking this PT job was the rational action of an irrational soon-to-be-first-time-father). It absolutely pains me to see the eating habits of the majority of the people that come into the store. I waited on a mother that purchased 5 packages of M&Ms that her child was carrying. The child had one of them empty and a second one opened by the time they made it to my register. While still horrified that this mother was allowing her child to eat this way, the next customer in line stepped up and bought 2 cans of Red Bull. He promptly turned around and handed one to his 10-year-old son standing behind him. A 10-year-old?? What on God’s green earth would inspire a parent to do that?
I love you Lys!!! That was perfect. For reasons some of you know, I am in a constant state of revulsion. It is absolutely sickening. And it’s always cake, and donuts, and pizza, and chips … not to mention the beef jerkey, oh and always soda (non-diet, natch). If junk food was a religion, a lot of us would have doctorates from bovinity school
Thanks for finally admitting your hatred of fat people. Fat people certainly have no idea that people dislike them on sight. You are brave and caring in your revelation.
I swear, it’s like the fact the something is free (like bad office birthday cake) makes people forget that there are calories involved. Even I have found myself taking a bite before the terrible, processed food taste hits my tongue and I just toss the stuff.
My personal favorite - people who work on the downtown mall who get in their cars to drive to McDonalds or Wendy’s for lunch. So now you’re eating crap and not taking a walk, all at the same time. Unacceptable with the Country Store being a cheap and healthy alternative.
You can accuse me of a lot of things, but not of caring.
Yikes. I’m thinking hell might involve being trapped in a plane row with someone trying to lift the armrest on one side, and a 10-year old flyin’ high on Red Bull on the other.
Silmo - Totally. All of it. And you know why.
Lys - Along the same lines, I have a problem with “food rewards” in a workplace where most of the people are sedentary. Give me a free ticket to a movie, rather than feed us all cake or ice cream or whatever. It’s as if they are trying to fatten us up, so that we can’t move away from the work on our desks.
Wow Thor and Lilith… I really didn’t expect that to be posted. I was so trashed when I wrote it.
Ah cahn noh longah fit in mah cube, suh.
That grrl… I did the “fat(ish) guy on one side freaky child on the other side plane” deal last I flew. Bonus pain? Sat on the tarmac for… wait for it… 7 HOURS!!! Before a six hour flight! Civility was severely flexed on multiple fronts.
(Jet Blue, but it was the FAA’s fault)
OMG, BYo. There would have been homicide involved, had it been me. you are a saint!
byo: in your place, i’d have brought a marker and starting doodling on any creeping bits of flesh (this is a great way to ensure a second date, btw), because clearly nothing will make them re-think their consumption choices faster than some sharpie shame!
i’m excusing myself from this thread now. i can’t be more civil than that about it.
Lys, you are my new internet crush.
Gahhhh…
Just reading this is giving me an eating disorder.
Aww, Floozy 23, drunk-writing happens. How else would you explain Hemingway’s career?
Silmo, if you’re hating on jerky, we’re fighting.
Drunk writing happens and Im here to prove it! Yay!
cruch on caroline, crush on… my bitterness and abject comtempt knows no bounds. I’m just glad I’m too shallow to turn the rage inward - god, that would take a lot of valium to fix!
[…] unfortunate given our debate on protecting people from their own eating habits. Survival of the fit-ist anyone? More like survival of the most […]