Fainting, bad food, and freaking my friends out

This entry alternatively called: How many f’s can one girl use in a title?

I now work near City Hall, so my eating options are a lot more “hour lunch break” realistic than earlier this summer when I worked at 2nd and Market. 2nd and Market is dead center of the touristy, expensive bar area of the city, while the buildings around City Hall are almost all offices, so the food prices and options are a lot better. 

The Shops at Liberty Place has a lovely little food court that I’ve been frequenting, which I do recommend for anyone needing a quick meal. Though, as much as it pains me to say this, I do not recommend the Bain’s Deli that is there. 

I'm tempted to make a "bain of my existence" pun.

I love Bain’s Deli (which appears to not have a website. Weird). My mother is obsessed with malls, so I’ve pretty much been eating at that chain since I could swallow solids. With the exception of a few times (the number of which I can probably count on one hand) I have always ordered the same meal: a tuna fish sandwich on white with a side of mashed potatoes and gravy. (Why yes, I do fear change. How did you guess?)

On my first day of work – because fate wanted this to happen then, to make the day more special – my friend/now co-worker took me to lunch at the food court to celebrate my employment. I noticed there was a Bain’s Deli, got excited and ordered my usual. 

When I got to our table and opened the mashed potatoes container I saw that they looked weird. As I mentioned above, I’ve been eating at every location this place has in Philly, eastern Pa, and South Jersey since I was a toddler, the recipe is well-known to me and it has never once changed. Their mashed potatoes should be fluffy, cream-colored, and perfectly smooth. There’s normally no potato chunks in them, or if there are chunks there’s maybe one in every serving. 

The potatoes I was served were more home-made looking. It was very flaky, like when you make mashed potatoes from out of a box but don’t stir the liquid in all the way. There was also – excuse my french – a shit ton of pepper in it. A ridiculous, unnecessary amount of pepper. When I was thinking about this incident later, I realized its entirely possibly that the employees of this location ran out of the store-sanctioned mash. and made their own. 

Long story short, I decide not to complain because I only have an hour lunch, and I try to eat it anyway since I paid $3 for it. 

I take the first spoon full, and its hot. It’s way hot. The mashed potatoes at Bain’s usually sit out all day, and individual orders are microwaved. These potatoes were microwaved way too long, and the heat was reacting with the pepper in a very bad way. 

This could be in your stomach right now!

I let it sit for a couple minutes, then try another bite. This time its unbearable. I can feel where the bite I took is in my throat, its like a fire moving down into my stomach. (Nerds: I picture it as when the Balrog and Gandalf are fighting in Return of the King. The shot of them falling down a long, narrow tunnel before they hit the water? Picture the Balrog is the mashed potatoes, and the tunnel is me.) When it gets to my chest its like an atom bomb just hit me. It expands throughout my body, makes contact with my heart, causing my eyes to tear up, and giving me trouble breathing…

…and the next thing I remember is my friend standing over me screaming my name. I am face-down in my tuna sandwich (you’re allowed to laugh at that, it is kinda funny), my eyes dangerously close to the little skewer things they put in them. I had been knocked unconscious by fast food. If only the culprit hadn’t been a vegetable product, Peta could be all over this story. 

So, the moral: avoid the mashed potatoes at the Bain’s Deli in that mall like the plague. They will mess you up. 

What’s worst about all this for my friend is that I bounced back almost instantly. I used to faint a lot in high school, so I just sat up, looked around to make sure no one was staring at me (they weren’t, no one cared. Liberty Place at lunchtime is probably the worst place to have a medical emergency.), drank a lot of soda, and calmly asked her to repeat the last twenty seconds of the story she was telling me. Meanwhile she’s sitting there shaking, looking like she’s about to cry. 

Here’s the worst part about the experience for me, the thing its not normal to say. Every time I faint, I’m angry at the person who wakes me up. And the anger lasts for a good ten minutes even after I’m fully conscious again. People faint when situations get too much for them to bare, when its too hot or too cold. We go into a beautiful darkness. It’s just my body that shut down, I remember still having thoughts. I remember thinking about how glad I was that the mashed potato pain was gone, and how nice I felt now. I was calm, happy, completely at peace with the world. Only to be waken up, to a cold, cruel existence where I was still in pain and had to go back to work.

I have wondered if the place we go when we faint is the same as the place we go when we die. After all, it is just my body that shut down, it is just my body that will die. But that question, I think, is far too philosophical for this blog.