Another Life-Lesson, Learned

"Does this taste funny to you?"

...When asked this question, feign the sudden need to use the bathroom and leave. Or stab yourself in the leg with a pencil to distract the questioner.

This is the lesson I learned today when my wife and her mother came into my office with a box of goldfish, insisting that I check them, "to be sure". They both had a cold, they claimed, so before they dispensed with the questionable crackers, someone healthy had to sample them.

Instead of taking the box, quizzically looking it over, and saying "yup, they're bad" as I tossed them in the trash... I decided it couldn't hurt to try one. Just one, you see. How bad could it be?

Have you ever tried eating Turtle Wax?

...I ask this not as a joke, but in all earnest: this Goldfish cracker--or at least what ostensibly seemed cracker-like--immediately assaulted my mouth with the unmistakable taste of car wax. Well, at least a reasonable facsimile of how one might translate the odor of car wax to a taste.

It took a good thirty minutes and a box of Hot Tamales candy to mask the taste and alleviate the perception that water was beading on my tongue.

Foul.

But at least I learned a valuable lesson.