Viva La Onion Ring!

Actually it should be more like:

Long Live the Onion Ring!

Viva la Listerine!!!

It's a training day, and I made a bad lunch choice this afternoon. Well, not really 'bad' per se. More like 'Downright Mean.' But my love of Onion Rings shall now be quashed!!! Luckily today didn't require any major one-on-one tutoring at a student's desk so offense was kept to a minimum (I hope).

Bad, bad, tasty ring of stinky goodness!

My earliest memories are of being tempted by baskets of golden brown and delicious. It was considered a harmless treat, passed about at family picnics and baseball games, the perfect accompaniment to hamburgers and sunburn. But those smiling faces tempting you to “Take some more; there’s plenty” never want to break the spell of a slow, lazy summer afternoon spent spinning in a pool of cousins and troubling warm spots with Truth and Knowledge and Consequence.

Onion Rings are a gateway drug.

On blustery afternoons, I’d catch myself jonesing for just one more crumbly bit of the perfect combination of crunch and goo. When a fix couldn’t be found, I could be found in all-night convenience store searching in vain for just one more bag of Funyuns, just something to tide me over until a deep-fryer could be located. After a while, Onion Rings just weren’t enough. I needed more. More fun. More Fried. More FIXIN’s. There’s no turning back when you’re buying in bulk and cramming 20 pound bags in a side-by-side’s freezer.

Next came Okra, but instead of helping to curb my fried-food-fixations, it only led to an even more disturbing Ranch dependency. Once I started scrounging money for gallon-size jugs, I knew I was a goner.

After Okra came mushrooms, cauliflower, pickles… Anything that could hold a batter was fair game. To this day, Mounds bars cower in fear.

I’m happy to say that today I’ve got this affliction under control. I no longer see all vegetables as a possible brush with grease fire, and Ranch is solely social fodder. Though I still have minor relapses (Darn you, Whataburger!) I can honestly say that I am mostly tempura-free. I just take it one day at a time (as if 2 or 3 were an option) and whenever a craving strikes I remember my mantra:

Colonel, grant me the Sensibility to accept the things I should not fry,
Common Sense to resist the things I can
And Will-Power to walk the hell away from the Fry-Daddy.

Note to to the Somewhat Uptight: I am in no way making fun of others with more life-threatening or destroying addictions. Those who know me know why I’m free to mock and those who don’t, well it ain’t any of your business anywhoo. :-P