Life after Death by Chocolate

There are times in your life when you can’t help but be a glut. When you think, 'I can't possibly eat another mouthful or my stomach will explode, splattering everyone in the vicinity with semi-digested food particles'. But you still have that extra mouthful.

One of those times, for me, was at a restaurant called Death by Chocolate.

I know. The name should have warned me. It was basically saying that should I choose to dine with them, I could expect the main meal to come with a complementary eulogy, and the dessert to be accompanied by their finest selection of coffins.

But I still went. In fact knowing me, I would have had my nostrils pressed up against the restaurant window, eager to show the chef that there was a giant pig at the door who would really enjoy rolling around in their muddiest mud cake, if they would just let her in.

My little heart must have been beating its fists against my rib cage yelling, 'Get me the heck out of here! I'm not ready for stints! Do you hear me? If our life together has meant anything, DO NOT go into that restaurant!'

But I didn't hear it. Or if I did, I chose to ignore it. In the same way I ignored my liver, pancreas and other vital organs.

Little did I know, I was about to suffer from what a dietician might term a ‘chocolate mousse lobotomy’, where you eat so much of the gluttonous dessert, that your brain seizes up and all decision making tasks are relegated to your stomach.

Had I known about this strange affliction, I might have tried to prevent my tummy from taking over and running up a huge bill on my cholesterol account.  Because by the time my brain finally came to, my body had gone into a catastrophic meltdown. The only positive being that every other patron looked just as sickly and remorseful as me.

Looking back, I'd say that restaurant actually did me a favour, because instead of eyeballing dessert menus with a blatant disregard for the nation’s shortage of hospital beds, I started to approach them with a little more sense.

So in a way, I don't regret my decision to dine at a dessert only restaurant. At least it taught me that normal restaurants have savory meals for a reason and a little moderation never killed anyone. In fact, it's probably the reason I'm still alive today.

Text © Jessica Rosman 2015

Would You Like Gagging With That?

Young people are drawn to fast food restaurants the way moths are attracted to light bulbs. The food is cheap, there are no parents to badger you and it’s usually full of the opposite sex.

Fast food chains spend a great portion of their advertising budgets attempting to draw in teenage boys because years of market research has told them the same thing: to a teenage boy, the fastest way to get to first base is by buying a girl some fries and Coke.

I know this because I was once that stereotypical teenager, who spent her first date in a smelly, grimy fast food restaurant.

A teenage boy took me there because 1) it was probably all he could afford 2) it was more private than his parent’s living room and 3) he wanted to get to first base.

Unfortunately, when you choose to dine on super-sized junk food that is loaded with preservatives and sugar, a normal kind of date is completely out of the question.

After ordering our food we squeezed ourselves into a booth, which had the kind of lighting that made my chin pimples look like a row of ice-capped volcanoes. I then told a joke that was not remotely funny to anyone but myself. Whilst caught in the grip of hysterical sugar-induced laughter, I took a slurp of my soft drink.

Two terrifying seconds later, my throat was constricting, my eyes were bulging and I knew at that moment I was choking, quite badly, and there was a strong chance I might not survive my first date.

There is no attractive way to choke; the gagging noises emitted from my throat that day were reminiscent of the alien sound effects used in Men in Black, which was ironic since we had only just watched that movie an hour before. I was unable to point out this amusing detail due to the fact I had no air supply but from the horrified look on my date’s face, it was clear he had made the connection.  

So in a last and desperate attempt to salvage some dignity, I threw myself sideways and ran for the bathroom. I felt it was much more gracious to slowly suffocate amongst female patrons queued for the toilet, than choke to death in front of a handsome French boy. But as I slumped to the floor of that seedy fast food bathroom I finally started to relax and the next thing I knew, the horrible gurgling and raspy breathing had stopped and … I was still alive!

The morals of the story:

• If you laugh at your own jokes, stop.
• And if you go on a first date, suggest a homemade picnic in the park.

Text © Jessica Rosman 2015