I have to admit something, and I'm worried about what you may think of me. A small part of me thinks this is something I should be ashamed of, but I'm not. Not at all.
I don't feel bad about what I did, but I do worry what you'll think of me when you hear it. After all, it's my body, and this is (mostly) a free country, so I should be able to do whatever I want.
I know people will judge me, condemn me, and even shun me from polite society, but as Shakespeare once said, "Let heaven and men and devils, let them all, All, all, cry shame against me, yet I’ll speak."
A few months ago, I ate a roller dog from a gas station.
There! I said it! It's done, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. I'm not even sorry I did it, and I might even do it again.
But I won't, because it was terrible.
I usually go to a RaceTrac gas station near my house, so I have their loyalty mobile app. One day, the app said I had earned enough points that I could "enjoy" a roller dog of my choice.
I put "enjoy" in quotes because I don't know if they used it ironically or if they meant it with all their heart.
I thought, "I've lived a long time, and I've never had a roller dog. Maybe this is a sign."
It was a sign, alright: Beware of Dog.
Dear reader, it was not like that at all.
If you make it properly, a supermarket bratwurst can be moist and delicious. Even if you make it improperly and pierce the sausage with a knife as it cooks, it will still be moist and delicious.
This was like eating sawdust wrapped in a cardboard tube but with cheese. In fact, the cheese was the most moist thing about it, but it was overpowered by the dryness of the cardboard tube.
Imagine trying to hydrate the Sahara Desert with a bucket of water.
But free food is free food, and bad sausage is better than perfect broccoli, so I wasn't about to throw it away. I bought a nice cold pop — we Hoosiers don't say "soda" — to wash it down. Trust me, it was a big pop.
As I dressed my dog with relish and onions, visions of my future were laid out in front of me. I wondered to myself, "Could I be a roller-dog influencer on social media?"
As I opened my mouth, I envisioned my entire publicity campaign. I would visit different gas stations and convenience stores in the US, sample their roller dogs, and rate them. I'd become a famous influencer, get invited to visit different convenience stores for grand openings and product launches. I would expand into baseball stadiums, comparing hot dogs and sausages at all the major and minor league ballparks.
As I shoved the first bite into my mouth, another memory bubbled up. About 15 years ago, I had a friend who stopped at a Speedway gas station every day, took a picture of the gas station pizza, and posted it on social media.
It became a running gag for his friends on Twitter and Facebook: Wherever he traveled for work, he would stop at a Speedway and post a picture of that station's pizza.
The Speedway marketing department heard about this and wanted to share his crazy antics on their own social media. So they arranged a photo shoot, and he promoted his new celebrity status for days.
One of his wife's friends asked her if he ate gas station pizza every day, given that he was making such a big deal about it.
She said, "He's never had gas station pizza in his life." At least, not until the day the Speedway marketing team came to town. That was the first and last day he ever ate gas station pizza.
This memory and my roller-dog-influencer dream flashed through my mind as I chomped down on that first bite.
There was a bit of resistance, like you would normally get from a sausage with a natural casing. Except this felt more. . . fibrous. More cardboard-ish. Dryer. Crunchier.
The only other time I have crunched on a hot dog was one that had been left on a barbecue grill too long.
I finished the jalapeño-and-sawdust sausage and decided I needed a new plan to become a food influencer because I wasn't going to do it with roller dogs. I don't care how much I hyped it up or how famous I could become, this was not something I could "enjoy." These things were nasty, dry, and desiccated, and I didn't want to be the kind of person who would encourage other people to eat them voluntarily.
I guess I have a little shame after all.
Photo credit: Willis Lam (Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0)
My new humor novel, Mackinac Island Nation, is finished and available from 4 Horsemen Publications. You can get the ebook and print versions here.