Salmonella. Waffle House. Ringold , Georgia . 2001

Egg Waffles

Well, you have to eat breakfast right? What better place to do that than at the venerable Waffle House, an empire of breakfast restaurants spread throughout the East Coast and South, but whose corporate headquarters has somehow effectively shunned the West Coast market. Having lived within 100 miles of the Pacific Ocean my whole life, I fell in love with the Waffle House rather late in life, while traveling for work through the South and East Coast. Having discovered my own personal breakfast paradise, I would take every available opportunity to sit at their counter and stare hungrily at the sizzling grill before me, short order cook slaving to keep up with the volumes of orders, waiting my turn to be breast fed my own warm share of the Waffle House Nectar. What could beat a southern-style diner environment with scrambled eggs, soft bacon, and a waffle, prepared right in front of your eyes? No sooner does the food leave the grill than it touches your drooling lips. Mmmmmm. A form of perfection.

Believe me, I look forward to a Waffle House breakfast at every opportunity, even after the wicked story of fate that follows. Even so, this experience has permanently altered my breakfast eating habits, and I think you'll see why:

Well, so then, I sat down one lovely warm Georgia morning to another breakfast at the House. I couldn't wait. I remember some small talk with the short order cook, a thirty year old man or so. His demeanor and cooking skills raised no suspicions. However, when the meal arrived, I noted that the scrambled eggs looked a bit undercooked. I don't really prefer my eggs in that manner, half of the reason being concerns about health risks, but when they arrived that way, I always managed to rationalize in my memories the many times I've seen my friends order their eggs 'over easy,' which is essentially raw embryo. They never got sick, so why bother sending eggs like this back? Paranoia, right? I was about to find out otherwise. Yes, I ate all the eggs, and everything else on the plate, and after that, I wouldn't be surprised if I got kicked out of the restaurant that morning for licking the enamel off the plate.

So I have a long drive ahead of me that day, like ten hours worth. At about 2:00 pm, I felt that something was wrong, I didn't know what, but I knew something bad was happening. Shortly thereafter, I found some rather disturbingly flavored gas emanating from each of my digestive orifices (top and bottom), and both brands of gas I had never experienced before, each declaring a differing (thankfully) but decidedly pungent sulfuric tinge. Oh. My. Gosh. What is happening? By 7:00 pm, I knew something was horribly, horribly wrong. Adding to stomach discomfort and the horrible sulfuric gaseous emissions, I had a headache, and my legs were killing me. They were completely sore in a numb sort of way and it was getting worse. All I could do was find a place to crash out, and I hit the sack very early. I called my boss and told him I was really sick, and told him I wasn't going to make my appointment, and that he'd have to find someone else. Luckily, a substitute was available, so I was left to suffer, at the very least, without the added guilt of screwing up a job. I laid down at probably around 8:00 pm, and tried to sleep. My legs were so sickeningly numb, that the only remedy I could find to distract myself from that was to repeatedly kick my legs. All I could do was try to sleep, kicking my legs, waking up only to drink water, pee, and kick my legs some more. This went on for 36 hours. I slept that night, all through the next day, and all the next night until around 9:00 am, and to say it again; waking only to pee, drink voluminous amounts of water, and kick my legs like a freak until I could go back to sleep. Oh, it was horrible.

You knew it was coming. Needless to say, the final morning, I had to go to the bathroom. Yes, it was our old pal, the exalted Number Two, and the result was none other than an output of epic volume and proportionate salmonella-infested-colon horror. I know that I know... that I know that the substance could easily have been bottled up and injected into chemical warfare artillery aerosol warheads, and wiped out legions of unsuspecting Enemies of America. The rest of the day I was mostly functional, but still in a sort of a state of shock from having to endure all that.

If I had it to do over again, I would still have eaten the Waffle House that morning, salmonella and all; that’s how tasty their breakfasts are. Rather, I would have just checked myself into a hospital at the onset of symptoms to ride out the experience in a medically induced coma.

Imaginations aside, the way it went down, the whole experience was awful. I mean world-class awful.

The End.

Morals of the story:

1. Always eat at Waffle House. Always!
   
2. Never eat an under-cooked egg. Never!
   

Posted by: Feaster from NW