Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Getting chummy with a potato chip bag

My dad made me distrust Pringles long ago. Every time I’ve gotten excited by a can of salt and vinegar or sour cream and onion Pringles, it’s blown up in my face – literally. Well I guess technically it’s not an explosion when a large serpentine spring shoots out of a can at your face, but it elicits and equally startling reaction as it would if it had blown up.

It didn’t even occur to me to be afraid of BAGGED potato chips until today though. This afternoon, when I reached into the beguilingly yellow bag of Lays on the kitchen counter, I was disgusted to realize that rather than a friendly staging ground for crisp chips before they embarked on a journey to my mouth, the Lays bag had become a disgusting sack to house old tuna salad before it got thrown out.

 It crossed my mind for a second that maybe it was actually vomit or vomited tuna in the bag and not tuna salad as I’d assumed. Neither of those thoughts was actually more disgusting to me than the original notion of tuna salad… because to me tuna salad is the most vile revolting substance on this earth. Needless to say I got a good ab work out while I dry heaved and obsessively scrubbed my hand over the sink for the next ten minutes until the memory of plunging knuckle deep into a wad of shredded fish and mayonnaise was finally purged from my brain.

I shot my dad an annoyed look when I saw him later. “Eww dad that was a dirty trick with the bag of chips!?! “ He gave me an innocent confused look… as if he had no idea what I was talking about.

“Dad, I’m sorry if I’ve been eating too many of your chips, but I feel like deserve a verbal warning before you booby trap the bag!” 

My dad’s expression was still blank.

“I’ve come to expect a snake in the face when I go for Pringles around here, but I didn’t know I’d get a fist full of fish if I had a hankerin’ for Lays!”

My dad’s face lit up with comprehension “Yuck; you stuck your hand in that? Why were you digging through the trash? “

“I wasn’t digging through the trash! The bag was on the counter.”

“Oh yeah”, My dad laughed “it was on the counter for a while. I got a phone call and then I forgot about it until I got back from my walk. I was throwing out some old tuna from the fridge.”

“Why did you put it in the lays bag? Why not just dump it in the trash?”

He must’ve had a visual of the scenario because he was laughing pretty hard when he explained that he just grabbed the bag out of the top of the trash out of convenience and because he didn’t want to permanently taint our trash can with the smell of fish. Since I’m a survivor, an avid fish smell hater and a conservationist, I was actually quite appeased by my father’s explanation.

I was relieved to hear that my dad hadn’t intentionally tunaed my hand, but I still won’t be eating any chips in this house unless I bring them in myself and keep them hidden in my room.  I know by the time I am done checking bags of chips for tuna, I’m going to remember WHY I have to check for tuna and then I’m pretty sure I’ll be too disgusted to eat anything. This may turn out to be the thing that helps me to lose the three pounds I’ve been trying to shed for the last six months. And if nothing else its certainly a good insurance policy to protect my dad’s snack foods in this house.

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