Happy Birthday Karen! Thanks for having a birthday so I could enjoy a large slab of coconut cream pie. Although, I knew there was trouble on our first date. What could go wrong with a large shared pizza?

I once heard of a college girl who ordered a single biscuit for her meal on a date at Shoney’s. So I knew that normal food consumption on dates is somewhat unique for each dating experience, but generally, a red-blooded-American male is entitled and sometimes the table just slants my way. So we were circling the 8 slice pizza and doing the math. I was thinking of a 5 to 3 ratio food sharing arrangement. But then, I noticed with slice 3 in hand, that she also was munching on slice 3, and my heart sank. She was going toe to toe, pepperoni to mozzarella, belly to belly with my consumption pace. It was a dead heat, 4 to 4. Karen likes to joke that I am her Friday night binge friend now. I’ve never been quite the same after that pizza date.

I’m also a recovering food junkie who grew up watching Captain Kangaroo as I munched Lucky Charms cereal, tossing aside the spoon after the cereal was gone and drinking the sweet colored milk with the gusto of a nomad drinking oasis water. Food makes me crazy sometimes, and if it really tastes good, I make soft but audible yummy noises, while Karen likes to sing and dance while binging, which makes me uncomfortable in fancy restaurants.

Eating a slice of lovely coconut cream birthday pie made me think of Flannery O’Connor’s opening paragraph in her story “The Jesus Flag”:

“If God, in cursing Lot’s wife, had turned her into a pillar of sugar instead of salt, Mrs. Wilhellper would have fit the bill. With her tight bun hairdo and squat body, she was five feet three inches of sweetness as determined as a dump truck. She had two sayings— ‘Too Sweet for Words’ and ‘Perfectly Marvelous’—which she uploaded on every aspect of the universe as relentless as a manure spreader covering a green field.”

I ate that pie with whispered mumbles on green fields, too shameful to repeat, too sweet for words. And yet, after I ate a second slice, I felt like I had been run over by Mrs. Wilhellper and her sweet words. Why must comforting food that elicits mouth noises be accompanied by a deep sense of manure run amok on a green field?

I eat food with a fairly intentional 80/20 plan. The 80 is healthy, grainy, greens, vegetables, fibrous, good for you fare. The 20 is bombard my palate with the best epicurean delights without nutritional label disclosure.

And, I love to find hole-in-the-wall eateries when traveling. In fact, this is an immutable rule my wife and I abide by on the road. If we can get it in Bartlesville, we are not eating it while traveling. Famous places are fun also. So we were standing in the order line at Pat’s Steaks in Philadelphia, and I noticed a guy who looked like Salvatore Tessio in The Godfather (Abe Vigoda of Barney Miller fame). He was staring at me with a steak spatula leveled in his right hand as cheese and beef painted his white apron like a counterfeit Monet. Since the lines at Pat’s King of Steak often stretch out onto Passyunk Avenue, you had to order quickly or risk the disdain of the cashier, not to mention the withering stares of South Philly veterans. “I guess I’ll have a…umm…a cheese steak. Oh, and provolone cheese. Ya know, I’m from Oklahoma. We have license plates on the front of our vehicles that say, “Eat more beef…it’s what’s for dinner…or something like that, I can’t quite remember how that goes, but it’s really catchy.” I threw a twenty-dollar bill on the counter and slid down past the order window. “Keep the change,” I mumbled, leaving a 100% tip, but I was more than grateful for surviving the death stare of the Philly steak man.

Food can make you crazy and sometimes even a thief. Not so much in the vein of petty French bread theft in Les Miserables, but rather, the Finnish sort of crazy. As in the notorious Finnish man, Rosov Ronkainen, who was known for stealing food and women from nearby villages. He required his accomplices to go through an obstacle course while carrying something heavy on their backs to be sure they could handle the stolen bounty. Finland even has a word and a competition for it: eukonkanto, or the wife-carrying tournament. People must carry their partners on their backs and complete an obstacle course without dropping them. The winner receives enough beer to match the weight of the wife. Beyond my imagination is the quantity of vittles required by a Finn who drinks enough beer to offset the weight of his bride on a teeter-totter. Nonetheless, I admire the gusto of one so bold. Although perhaps Rosov, the beer swiller and wife toter, may have mellowed in old age and come to a place of more gentle aspiration, preferring his food to be less stolen and healthier.

It seems like restaurant food is getting better these days, healthier, less added stuff. And the portions are shrinking, or is it our appetites that are diminishing? Karen and I still share entrees at restaurants, saving money and calories, while dancing around the pizza platter in 4/4 time, like a great Bob Marley reggae song.

Happy Birthday Karen! I love that we have shared so many equally yoked feasts together, as you dance and I mumble in 4/4 time.

One love (hear my plea)

One heart (hear my plea)

Let’s join together and a-feel alright (and I will feel alright)

Let’s join together (let us pray to the Lord)

And a-feel alright (and I will feel alright)

One Love (4/4 time)

Bob Marley and the Wailers