Pancakes

I ate pancakes today.

I know what you're thinking.  "Wow.  Stop the presses.  If this is the direction the blog is going I'll have to find my daily dose of banal musings elsewhere.  Sure, he's handsome, has great teeth, a firm handshake, and his smile can light up a room, but pancakes?  Really Rob?  Tomorrow he'll write about tying his shoes.  Now, why do I have the sudden urge to listen to "Batdance?""

But wait a second.  Pancake noshing might be a common occurrence in your household but in mine it's Haley's Comet.  I haven't eaten a pancake in nine and a half years.  And not just pancakes -- any combination of flour, egg, and milk that is poured onto a hot stove hasn't crossed my lips in nearly a decade.  I haven't gorged on griddlecakes, binged on blintzes, chomped on crumpets, pounded any palatschinke, consumed crepes, pigged out on pannekoeken, killed a few kaiserschmarrns, nibbled on a naleśniki, or even feasted on flapjacks.

Whooo.

As I've mentioned before, I hate throwing up.  Loathe it.  Abhor it.  Anathematize it.  (Wait…let me check the thesaurus for more synonyms.)  I'd rather have my leg caught in a beaver trap than toss my cookies.  I'd rather spend an entire day strapped to a chair and forced to watch Sandra Bullock movies.  While You Were Sleeping.  Miss Congeniality 2:  Armed and Fabulous.  Hope Floats.  All in a continuous loop.  I'd rather have Rush Limbaugh read the Twilight books out loud to me.  I'd rather…well, you get the idea.  At the slightest stomach discomfort you will find me on my knees praying to a variety of deities, hoping one of them will answer my prayers and spare me from the barf demons.  Vishnu?  Buddha?  Jesus?  Anyone?  Please?  It doesn't matter to me.  Any one of them will do.  But, if those prayers are not answered, I will curse those same gods and swear off religion all together.  What kind of higher power would create life that regurgitates?  How is that divine?  People say that the beauty and magic of life is the proof that there is a god, well I say that regurgitation proves that there isn't.  Or that whoever created the universe has a sick sense of humor.

After I'm done cursing deities (which, depending on the violence of the episode, can take quite a long time) I try to move on with my life and step one in moving on is swearing off the offending food forever.  I take that back, step one is crying.  Step two is pulling myself together, looking in the mirror, and then crying some more.  Step three is swearing off the offending food.  It wasn't a stomach bug that slayed me.  No, of course not!  It was the Apple Cinnamon Cheerios.  It was the chicken curry.  It was the bacon cheeseburger at Applebee's.  It was the Au Jus that I dipped my roast beef sandwich in.  It was the margherita pizza at…well…I happen to be friends with the owner of the place that made the pizza so I'm not going to say.  All I have to do to ensure that I never throw up again is never eat the food that caused me to throw up in the first place.  It's a foolproof plan.

OK, I'll be the first to admit that it's a silly system.  Why do I ban the Apple Cinnamon Cheerios but not the milk in that disastrous bowl of cereal?  Why did I refuse to eat at Applebee's but continued to eat burgers until the day I gave up red meat?  Instead of blaming the au jus, maybe I should blame myself for riding my bike from sunrise to sunset on a hot summer day, pausing only to wolf down a roast beef sandwich and a milkshake.  It's purely selective and I'm the only selector.  The judge and the jury.  The little g god.  Something or someone has to pay for the insolence impacted on my innards.

And then sometimes the "incident" is so violent, so memorable, that I don't have a choice.  The mere sight or smell of the offending food makes me want to run for the hills.  (Or even worse, start watching "The Lake House.")  Such was The Great Pancake Disaster of 2000.  One month into a life of newlywed bliss, the poor pretty, brown-haired girl with dimples had to see me at my absolute worst.  Crying.  No, sobbing.  Flipping back and forth between incanting prayers and shouting curses to every god from Ah Puch to Zeus.  Curled up in the fetal position on the linoleum bathroom floor of our tiny one-bedroom apartment.  Purging every last teensy bit of pancakes from my swollen stomach.  Good times. 

(I thought I'd test that whole "for better or for worse, in sickness or in health" bit right out of the gate.)

For nine and a half years the "incident" haunted me.  Every other brush with barfing was compared to it and nothing came close.  And the thing was, I loved pancakes.  No, love isn't a strong enough word.  Where's that thesaurus?  I cherished pancakes.  I treasured pancakes.  I, wait for it, fancied them.  My ideal day started out with a stack of flapjacks that reached to the moon and now, now that was gone.  Like a kid finding out there wasn't a Santa Claus.  Like a woman figuring out that Sandra Bullock makes bad movies.  My life would never be the same.  It took months for me to summon up the courage to walk into a Cracker Barrel -- and you can forget about IHOP.  There was Rob before January 2000 and Rob after.

I started getting the hankerin' for some hoecakes about a month ago.  Out of the blue.  Numerous times I started to make the batter only to get cold feet after cracking the eggs.  I'd break into a cold sweat, start crying, and three hours later I'd wake up in closet -- with no clue how I got there.  But I couldn't shake the desire.  The craving.  Pancakes were calling me.  It was time to move on.  To turn the proverbial page.  I couldn't live my life in fear, right?  Carpe Diem!  I wanted to live damnit!  Live!!!

So I made pancakes.  I fought off the gag reflux when I stirred in the baking powder.  I wiped away the tears when I poured the batter onto the griddle.  I ignored the cold chills crawling up and down my spine when I flipped the first flapjack.  And I ate the pancakes.  Not one.  Not two.  But three, three pancakes!

And now I have a stomachache.  Let's see…oh Baal, wise Baal, if you can hear me…

R