Bad Diner

Years ago, my grandmother told me that if I ever went into a restaurant or any place where food was being served and the bathroom was nasty or unkept, not to eat there. "Get up and walk out because if they can't clean the restroom, chances are, they ain't cleanin' the kitchen." Now this is common sense and it makes more sense to me today than it did many years ago when she said it.

She, my mother, my aunts said many things. Some stuck with me and other things, like this, went in one ear and out the other. So, why did I go into this Jamaican joint and order up a plate of ox tails one night four years ago? (Something that horrified my mother and aunt upon hearing that I had consumed it.)

The food was really good... ox tails with rice and peas. In all fairness, I ate the food before I went to the restroom and it was bad. It was so bad that I decided I wasn't going to use it. Instead, I walked three blocks to another restaraunt where the restroom was cleaner. For a "guy" to say a public restroom was bad, says a whole lot about how filthy this restroom was!

I went home, went to sleep, and then went to work the next morning. Soon after I arrived at work, I noticed that I was sweating profusely. I felt weak... weaker than I'd ever felt before and pains wracked my stomach in a way I'd never felt before. I began to panic. I realized that something was wrong. I was in trouble. I tried to dial my cell phone for help but didn't seem to have the strength to do it. That's how bad I felt.

I called a friend for help and he walked me to the hospital, which luckily wasn't that far away. They pumped my stomach and put a cold towell on my forehead and told me to rest. Apparently, I had suffered a mild case of food poisoning.

My wife and my daughter came up to the hospital and I told them my story. I still hadn't put together the "restaraunt and restroom" thing. It wasn't until later... much later. So, this morning on my drive to work, I see the owner of that same restaurant (which by the way, I never ate at again) being walked to a police car in handcuffs and I had to wonder...

Whatever he was accused of doing probably didn't have anything to do with the cleanliness or "lack of" cleanliness in his establishment, but it did make me think. I saw my grandmother in the rearveiw mirror of my car, sitting in the backseat with her arms folded, saying... "See? He shoulda cleaned that nasty bathroom. I told you not to eat in places like that."

If there was a lesson to be learned from this, it was simply that a lot of things your parents and grandparents tell you, might not make sense at the time they are telling you, but it's good to listen to them. What they say always seems to have a way of manifesting itself at some time in your life when you least expect it.