The Rise of Valentine's Day Part II

Following up on last night's post regarding my anxiously awaited dinner shift at Ocean's, allow me to regale you with a tale that neither Nostradamus, Professor Trelawney, nor I saw coming. (you can read last night's post here http://legendarywig.blogspot.com/2012/02/rise-of-valentines-day.html)

Our hearty staff braced for the worst tonight. A torrent of happy, rabid couples looking for a romantic dinner loomed just beyond the horizon, we were sure of it. The foreboding moments before turning on the open sign felt like that aerial shot of Agamemnon's fleet in Troy; a thousand ships bringing suburbanites with dangerous appetites for love and shellfish to our shores. Aye, I was Hector readying my battalion, for I had the most years of experience at Oceans... also because I too have a chiseled jaw and a burly chest carved by the gods themselves. But I digress.

First a few regulars came in. Then a slow conveyer of customers began setting the moderate pace that would dictate the night. Everything was fine! My crew and I could handle this. There was no need to call for reinforcements or whip out the readymade altar for a quick bargaining with the gods to take back my chest of envy in return for mercy on this restaurant. No, everything was fine. It was smooth sailing in the horizon.

At the height of the dinner rush, a typical octogenarian couple entered the building and sat at my table. When I approached them to give my usual, enthusiastic speech, I realized that I had just transported into an Eli Roth movie. Upon the old man's bald head rested a boiling pustule of mammoth proportions. I stifled a shudder and diverted my eyes from what looked to be a goddamn oatmeal cookie of horror pasted on his head. Nothing in the world could have prepared me for this visual and gastrointestinal assault. While both he and his lady friend were cordial and generally nice people, the blight on his head made me want to run away shrieking "Troll! In the dungeon!!!" Perhaps that makes me a heartless person, but that's because my heart seemed to have left my body and perched itself on top of his head where it now sat pulsating and staring at me. Judge me all you want, but you weren't there. You didn't witness the horror that happened next.

When I returned to take their order, I avoided the glare of his massive boil by staring down at his menu while he decided on what he wanted to eat. I thought, "This is safe. Don't look at it, I'll just take their order and... what the sweet baby Jesus on a biscuit is that?" I notice a red dot on the page of his menu. A dark red dot. Against my better judgement, I peered up, following the red dot's trajectory until I reached the site of its launch. Sweet Lady Gagalupe of the Holy Pokerface, it was just as I feared. His boiling pustule had breached its containment. The cherry on top of his cranial sundae of nightmares was dribbling down and planting itself deep in the fibers of our menu. I suddenly felt the cold sweat creep all over my body. Did someone turn on a fan? I started to feel a little lightheaded as I took the now-contaminated menu from his hand. 

"Keep it together, man. Don't freak out...." I thought to myself as I walked away as steadily as I could, holding the infected menu out in front of me like a bomb. Normally I am not a weenie by any means when it comes to blood, but this time I felt like I deserved an Oscar just for acting normal after coming into such close proximity to a real life creature from The Walking Dead. I am proud to say that I did not throw up, faint, or cry. While my instincts told me to burn the menu, I put it in isolation containment for disinfection at the end of the night. At least the page that came in direct contact with the droplet was a throwaway Valentine special.

Later on I was informed by my co-worker Justin that the blight on the old man's head was not a boil. It was some sort of medical Play-Doh that doctors put on one's head after removing infected flesh. Well this was something I did not know. I'm not a doctor. I'm not George Clooney. I don't know anything about medical Play-Doh. What I do know is that there is a doctor out there who is being remiss with his Play-Doh seals. Never before has the term "paper-bag it" ever  been so appropriate at a restaurant.

Happy Valentine's Day!

click to enlarge the horror!