Sunday, September 24, 2017

No Quiero Taco Bell

When I was a teenager, Taco Bell was one of my favorite fast-food restaurants as my friends and I could order tons of food after practice for dirt cheap, and I’d still have enough money from a fiver to order my mom the priciest item on the menu, a taco salad, to take home to her. As a young adult I remember going through the late-night drive through after picking up the girls at the end of their drag shifts and ordering a family-pack of tacos…for just the 2 or 3 of us in the car.  

Living in Wrigleyville in Chicago I lived a mere block 2 blocks from one of the only fast food joints in the ‘hood, The Bell.  After the 4am call had been made at the bars, if my roommate Michael and I hadn’t asked the cab to take us through the drive-through at Checkers on the way home, one of us might suggest, “You fly, I buy,” and the unlucky one got to stagger down the street for nachos and bean burritos to sop up the alcohol from the night before.  

But somewhere along the line, my body started reacting to the food adversely.  A little sour stomach here, a bit of diarrhea there….you get the picture.  Maybe it was after kids or maybe it was when I started to lose weight and eat better and exercise, or possibly even after our family gave up fast food almost entirely, but at one point I started actually rejecting the food altogether and deciding not to eat it, as it more-often-than-not made me drastically ill. 

But every 2-5 years, I get the urge for a Taco Supreme or a Beef Chalupa.  I try to push down the want and I usually slide through the craving unscathed as I remind myself of the nightmare that will ensue after the great taco taste.  Sometimes though, I fall prey.

This past weekend I had my 14-year-old daughter at bay to cheer me on with my hankering, as she loved it too, having only had her first Taco Bell just a few years ago.  Not only did we get Taco Bell after having eaten some snacky stuff as a form of dinner earlier, but we ordered it from a delivery company, as it was 9:30 on Friday night and we were snug as a bug in a rug binge watching Arrested Development.  We had both zonked out on the couch by the time the driver showed up an hour and a half later, but we still managed to throw down a few bites (in my daughter’s case or all 3 of the items ordered in my case) before hitting the sack.

Before I even hit the sheets, I was sick as a dog with massive stomach distress that kept me up all night and lasted through late Sunday morning, which yielded me unable to leave the house all weekend and a 3-lb head-start on next week's diet.

Lesson of the day:  A 'run for the border' is never a good idea in the long run.

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