My Baloney Sandwich Needs a Diaper

If you are going to comment that I should have spelled b-o-l-o-g-n-a, don't bother. I remember that little boy singing the Oscar Mayer song, too. But around these parts, nobody says bologna. That would make me a laughingstock. It would be like telling somebody that I laid ON the floor to watch TV. In my neck of the woods, we lay IN the floor.

But getting back to my baloney...I have been taking it in my lunch this week. Yes, it's a bit unhealthy. But have you ever eaten a school lunch for 180 contracted school days? Didn't think so. I normally take frozen chicken tenders from Aldi's. They are handy to microwave. A side of Sun Chips completes my two-course meal with a minimum of fuss. With lunch coming at 10:53 a.m. four days a week, and at 10:38 on Fridays, I need something that doesn't settle in my belly like a stone.

Because you can't have a proper baloney sandwich without mustard, and because mustard makes my Wonder Whole Grain Wheat bread soggy, I use two pieces of baloney, with mustard in between. Today, I made myself such a baloney sandwich for my Saturday lunch. Hick and The Pony were out terrorizing the chickens and goats with some project, and Genius was in town mowing yards for cash. I took my one-handed meal to my computer. Sometimes, I enjoy my lonely repast in front of the television. Baloney did not seem appropriate for The Joy Luck Club.

My computer, New Delly, as Genius and I named her, is in my basement office. My dark lair. I set down my delicious baloney sandwich and commenced to catching up on blog reading. Every now and then, I picked it up and took a bite. One such bite, over half-way through the sandwich, drew my attention away from New Delly's cheery screen. I felt something plop onto my shirt. Knowing that I had not included pickles nor onions nor any other such fixin's, I looked down. And saw a blob of mustard bigger than a Dwight D. Eisenhower dollar.

I don't use so much mustard for school. Not because I don't want it dropping on my shirt. That thought never occurred to me. But because I don't want it squeezing out on the corner of my mouth. I'm not so sure anybody at the lunch table would tell me. And wiping your mouth with a paper towel does not always remove the yellowy goodness of mustard.

I went immediately to the NASCAR bathroom adjacent to my office. I call it that, because Hick designed it with a black-and-white checkered tile floor, a custom-made countertop with airbrushed stock cars, and eleventy-thousand little hooks on the walls, each hung with a Hot Wheels NASCAR collector car. Several clock and book-cover likenesses of Dale Earnhart watch you do your business. Yes. We are the epitome of sophistication.

Some purple liquid soap rubbed into the yellow offending spot removed the stain straightaway. I returned for round two of Val versus lunch. Not to be outsmarted again, I took a tissue and wrapped it under my baloney sandwich's bottom.

Fool me twice? I don't think so.