Other People's Food

Other people's food

noun

Any nutritious substance not made for sale and not prepared by relatives or close friends.

Phrases

Other people's food usually tastes like ass.

Origin

Completely made up like just a few minutes ago.

Other people's food can originate from several different sources. Probably the most popular, would be a pot luck supper held by your church or social club. You could also find it at dinner parties held by people that you barely know who are trying to be upwardly mobile, but don't know exactly where to start the process. Or, you could have it delivered to you by a sympathetic neighbor in a glass or plastic receptacle covered with plastic wrap or aluminum foil immediately following the death of any close family member.

As a rule, I generally dislike other peoples food. And this includes the first meal that Jan cooked for me, which I believe was beef stroganoff. I smiled as I ooohed and aaahed, but just under the surface .. well it tasted funny. Of course, as I got use to it, it became the gold standard and then my mother's cooking tasted funny.

Food delivered to you after a funeral is not as funny tasting, but I think it's more of "not wanting to cook, so anything is better than that" kind of deal. Or maybe you have drank too much after the funeral, so that you don't really care what it tastes like, such as the case when my sister died, and I was drinking a whole lot so I could forget the image of my other sister propping her up in her casket so she could brush her hair because she didn't like the way the mortician did it.

But that's another story.

The first time I ate other people's food was in college. My girlfriend decided she was going to play grown-ups and have a dinner party for me, her room mate, and a crazed Vietnam veteran.

The evening was stressful, partly because the Vet showed up in a camouflage jacket with matching spit-shined combat boots and immediately started telling stories about how many VC he had iced and his hobby of collecting ears. So when my girlfriend brought dinner to the table, which I think was chicken, I was too busy hoping to God that this guy wouldn't find out that I had a low draft number, but a college deferment to save me from jungle life.

I ate without even tasting the food, and afterwards, I made some lame excuse about having to feed my dog or something and beat feet before this guy could collect my ears.

The next morning, I woke up with a horrible burning sensation in my chest. And it scared me, so I called my Mom and told her the symptoms and asked her what the hell was wrong with me. She just laughed and said "Well Robert, looks like you have your first case of serious heart burn." So, I ran to the encyclopedia, to see if I could find anything to combat it, but of course that didn't tell me shit except that Hartford is a city in Connecticut. And seeing as the internet wouldn't be discovered for another 20 years, I just went to the drug store and bought everything I could find that said "heart burn" on it.

After swallowing half a bottle of Pepto Bismo, a couple of Tums, and washing it all down with a big frosty glass of Alka Seltzer water, I promptly threw up ... and felt better.

Since that time, I think I've had heart burn only once, during Jan's creative cooking phase, when she made chocolate covered chicken thighs, or something similar to that.

I threw all of her cook books away the next day.