Did not our heart burn within us?

I'm back from an unexpectedly long blogging hiatus. In the first week of January, I had mandatory overtime at work every day, and in the second week, I taught Gospel Doctrine, so I spent time preparing a serious lesson rather than a snarky blog post about the subject matter. Hope you all managed to prepare for the last two Sunday School lessons without said snarky posts.

But now I'm back! We've begun our once-in-four-years study of the Old Testament, the book of scripture I believe provides the richest material for funny, tangential blog material. Allow me to demonstrate. This week's Sunday School lesson is on the Creation, which of course culminated in the placement of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Eve's unusual origin story includes the line "And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman" (Moses 3:22; see also Genesis 2:22 and Abraham 5:16). I can't read that line without thinking of the Ribwich, the McRib knockoff sold at Krusty Burger in a memorable Simpsons episode. Eating the sandwich clearly has a powerful effect on Homer.

For some context, here's the commercial that sucked Homer in, and here's the GIF with the original audio. Actually, you should just watch the entire episode. The main story involves Lisa competing in the "Spell-lympics," which will help get you in the mood for the upcoming Winter Games, and the Ribwich B story is just the barbecue sauce on the cake. Seriously, go watch it. Don't worry, I'll wait.

Processed rib-inspired sandwiches are ok, but I generally avoid eating them off the bone. Too messy, too much effort, but beyond that, I once had a very bad rib experience. My parents took my older brother and I out to dinner to celebrate our graduations--he had just finished high school, and I completed junior high. We ate at the Old Salt City Jail, and I got the ribs. Bad choice. I didn't finish my meal, and had a stomach ache for days. The restaurant closed 8 years ago, ostensibly to allow for Anniversary Inn expansion, but I'm convinced that they finally got caught selling tainted ribs.

Here's every other time I can think of where I can trace feeling terrible to a specific meal:

November 1990--My family had just sat down to dinner. My youngest sister, barely a year old at the time, sat in a high chair at the corner of the kitchen table, right next to me. With very little advance warning, I started feeling weird and then passed out, face-planting into my sister's food. When I came to, I had a seizure and threw up. This fainting-seizure-vomit trifecta repeated itself several times over the next few days. Scary stuff. I would end up spending a week in the hospital and enduring months of neurological tests, but they never really figured out what was wrong with me. Obviously the family dinner was not what triggered this event, but I must have mentioned I passed out into my sister's green beans when I first recounted the story to my friends, because a few of them remembered that detail for years ("Remember when you passed out in your sister's beans?"), and so that's how I remember it now too.

Summer 1996--I was on a lunch break at my job at Mrs. Fields, and from many appealing food court options I chose to dine at Sbarro. The pizza tasted ok, but my intestines weren't fans. I experienced post-meal indigestion (and worse) faster than I ever have at any time in my life. I went home shortly after my lunch break, the only time in my life I've left work early due to illness. And I've never eaten at Sbarro's since, despite this ringing endorsement from Michael Scott.

I remembered this amazing Jon Stewart performance also involving Sbarro, but it turns out I had the wrong restaurant chain. Still definitely worth watching.

September 2008--Not long after watching BYU football team's season opening win with friends at the Times Square ESPN Zone (also since closed; hmm, starting to notice a pattern...), I started experiencing severe abdominal pain. Figuring it was just heartburn, I tried to tough it out, but when the pain remained just as intense 48 hours later--and especially when the pain became more severe in the upper right abdomen--I knew I was in trouble. Within a few hours, I had swapped my gall bladder for a 10-inch scar and another week-long hospital stay. You can read more about this over on my old blog. While the experience itself was awful, the first line of that post is one of my favorite things I've ever written: "I have staples in my stomach and am not wearing underwear, but for the last few weeks I haven't looked or felt much like a centerfold." Brilliant, no?