Gremlin Grill

Yeah, they’re at it again, or they were. I had to have an “emergency� root canal on July 10th. It was an emergency in the sense that I’d polished off the bottle of generic vicadin that Sara had leftover from getting her wisdom teeth out. I needed help, fast. Ok, remember me mentioning the root canal I had this spring? The pain from this one was worse. Now the roots are gone, the infection that caused the pain is dead: I win. Although I confess that after the procedure was done and Tera the dental goddess was cleaning the body parts off of my bib thingie and she said, “Hey, you wanna see a nerve?� I grunted “unht-unh� through the gauze. I couldn't look. I don’t know what it looked like, but I hated that nerve and was sure I’d puke.

Anyway, back to my defeat. I went to Swagat for lunch with a group of co-workers yesterday. It’s as good-a Indian cousine you get in KC, and they have a lunch buffet. Now, I know what you’re thinking: Buffet means good price, but the food is usually sub-par and there’s no service. Well, shut up. Who the hell do you think you are? The food is damn good and the service is excellent. For a buffet.

Anyway, I was at this buffet for lunch, crammed for time and therefore obligated to stuff the food in as fast as possible. I couldn’t do it. I have a temporary crown where the root was mined from my skull, and another temporary crown from a nearby tooth that was cracked (because I’m older than dirt). I couldn’t chew that fast. Matt (boss) and Jason (designer extraordinaire) out-consumed me on every level.

The moment I realized I couldn’t keep up, and that the reason that I couldn’t keep up was dental work that I had to have done because of aging teeth/fillings/psyche, that’s the moment I knew I was passed my prime.

I couldn’t eat the aloo tikki as fast as they. I’m old.
I couldn’t bite down enough to properly chew the papadam. I’ve lost.
I had to cut my vegetable samosa in little bites. I’m pathetic.
The Chicken Bombay took forever to chew, not because it wasn’t tender, but because my mouth was tender.
The chicken korma just mocked me.
I'm done.

Matt and Jason were on plate three before I was on plate two. They lapped me. The waiters brought me water refills and suggested I try the rice pudding stuff. I just chewed (on the right side only) and half-smiled. I'm defeated.

Then I got to the vegetable pakoras. I ate one. It was soft. Slightly doughy with a nice crust that scared me at first, but it wasn’t as mean as it looked. In fact, it was perfect. I ate 16 of them. This doesn’t mean I’m not way passed my prime. My grill is busted and I’m so old, weather-beaten and dull that Nu-Vinyl wants to use me to show how they can bring me back to life. But the pakoras convinced me that if I hold on until I get the permanent crowns, I’ll be back. I’ll be gnawing rib bones like a horse chewing the creosote off his stall in no time.

I’m the only one who gets the horse/creosote analogy, aren’t I? dammit.