Spooning At the Buffet

Carl Sagan was always one of my favorite astronomy guys and next to Mr. Wizard one of the smartest guys I ever heard on TV. When he talked about “billions and billions” of stars and how, with that number, there had to be intelligent life on some other planet I took that to mean all the politicians in the universe lived here on earth. The odds were just too great for it not to be.

So when I took mom to one of those crab leg buffets and watched this hairy guy reaching under the plastic guard to get some cocktail sauce, I knew the odds of there being a hair left in there were, well, astronomical. They had the crabs’ legs way down on the end, after the roast beef and mashed potatoes, beans and chicken fingers. I guess they wanted us to fill up on some of that before we got to the really good stuff, which supposedly comes all the way from Alaska, which is why it cost twenty four dollars a piece to eat there. Thank goodness I didn’t find that out until the check arrived. My nephew was across the table and I probably could have gotten my fill just watching him eat. He ate like he thought the twenty four dollars meant you could eat the legs of twenty four crabs. The next time we get a hankering for seafood, mom and I will probably go to Mickey D’s, split some fries and a fish sandwich.

Buffets have always made me feel like a cow waiting for the farmer to splash some grain in the trough and although I’m sure the food is clean, those plastic shields they put over the trough are there for a reason and it’s got body hair written all over it. Whenever I eat at a buffet I try to do a couple of things. One, never get in line behind a hairy guy and two, wait for the fresh trough. You can’t tell me when Mr. Neanderthal reaches under that shield something’s not falling off his body and into dinner. But I digress, again.

Tonight I did something I thought only others did. I dropped the serving spoon into the cocktail sauce. You know, one of those really long spoons just loaded with all manner of germs from a thousand Mr. Neanderthal’s hands. You never see anyone going to wash their hands BEFORE they eat, only after, and that’s the problem. That spoon could have everything from follicles to fly dung on it and I knocked it into the sauce trough, which just happened to be full. I made a quick grab for it, looking around to see if anybody was watching, no one was…too busy loading up on farmer Brown’s sweet feed, I suppose. But it had too much sauce on it and slipped right through my hoof.

Now I watched like Anthony Perkins in Psycho when he drove that Curtis’ woman’s car into the swamp in order to hide what he’d done to her in the famous shower scene. I wanted to run but instead stared helplessly as the spoon took its time sinking into the sauce and I don’t know how much time went by but Mr. Neanderthal was halfway to the legs when I finally saw the spoon submerged. The handle made a sucking sound as it bubbled beneath the cocktail quicksand, leaving only the sound of desperate people trying to eat their way through twenty four dollars worth of cold food and hot butter.

I quickly moved over to the steak…knowing I wasn’t about to pick something requiring cocktail sauce, and loaded up on cow. There were other troughs containing other sauces and I began to wonder just how many spoons lay hidden beneath the green beans or banana pudding. Or, how many others for that matter, had been waiting to spoon with my spoon in the trough I’d left behind. According to Dr. Sagan’s theory, “billions upon billions” of germs could be quietly waiting for exposure when some unsuspecting bovine beauty hits the bottom of the trough. I walked slowly to a table (didn’t want to arouse suspicion) to await the scream I knew must be coming.