Now That’s the “Woist” Tasting Pickle I ever “Hoiyd”

I went to the Carnegie Deli the other day with some friends. This place is known for it’s ridiculously large sandwiches. I’m not much into sandwiches usually, but there is something rather “Flintstones” about the size of them as they weigh down the arm of the waiter who speaks little English but does it so quietly that you can’t hear the broken syllables. All good if you ask me! It’s part of the New York City experience. The plate of pickles arrived on the scene during the 4 ½ minutes that you have to wait for them to prepare your sandwich. (yeah…their turn around on these $23 sandwiches is quite good!) For those of you who can’t picture what I mean by this, imagine a line of people outside the door being shuffled in in groups of 4 to 10 to a bread basket full of pickles and sandwiches with 4 Lbs. of beef on them that can’t be wrapped up to go because, logically, what would you do with a pocket full of beef while you walk around NYC for the day? –All in 20 minute intervals! It was really fun though. I reached for one of the pickles and took a crunchy bite….um…what the heck?…I paused to figure out if I had accidentally bit off the handle of a porta-john flusher….nope…No porta-john. Hmm…I took another bite to be sure I hadn’t been too hasty in making the rash decision that it indeed did not taste good…Nope. I was right!…It sucked. I tried to rationalize it in my own head so I wouldn’t be grossed out the rest of the day. It was like those jelly beans that they make to taste like things other than chewy sugary candy?…hamburger flavored jelly beans, popcorn flavored jelly beans…etc…It somehow makes it okay after you figure out what the original taste intention was before you spit it out on the floor. I decided that this pickle must’ve been meant to taste like nacho Doritos or something…no…still didn’t help the memory of it’s taste to not make me spit up in my mouth a little. My sister smelled it and laughed. She said, “I only put my nose on it and I knew that it was not a good pickle.”…We replayed the incident all throughout the night saying, “That was not a good pickle.” Again, my sister would laugh at me and reiterate that she didn’t even taste it and even she knew how bad it was. After laughing and discussing the incident about 14 times, I replied, “No. You don’t know how bad it was. Not only did you not taste it once, you did not taste it twice in order to come to terms with its badness.”…Bottom line though- it was one crappy-ass pickle! I’m not sure I’ll ever try another nacho pickle in my life….It was not good.

I suppose the point is that as much as I talk about people not learning their lessons, it seems that even I still have to go back for more before I know that something isn’t good. What is it about human nature that makes us need to prove to ourselves that something is bad? The same thing applies in dating. People meet each other and the signal goes off in their head on the first date: “Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding! I hate this guy. From what he’s just told me about all of his previous relationships, he appears to be a lying sack of cheating crap!…But I bet he won’t cheat on me! I should see if I could change him.” …For God’s sake, set the skanky pickle back on the plate and move on to the sandwich that will soon be delivered to you with a mouth-quenching beverage. Don’t put the pickle back into your mouth! I guess it’s a good lesson to learn though. For some reason my sister knew not to even taste the pickle. Maybe because she is divorced and already knows that sometimes things just suck and it’s just not worth the time or energy to try to make a square pickle fit in a round hole. I, as a single girl who has never been married and ironically doesn’t believe in divorce with no basis for judgment having never walked in someone who has been married’s shoes, have a view of life that believes that you keep trying and just get a bigger and bigger glass of water to wash it down until you die! I suppose each case is different, but in this one, she was right…and now I have a life-long memory of a really bad nacho-porta-john flavored pickle at the Carnegie deli.