Bacon is evil

So today at the office we had this breakfast potluck thing. The word “potluck” directly translates to bring the most delicious foods you can possibly find but make sure they are high enough in fat and carbs and grease and sugar to kill a small herd of elephant, because no one will live through this anyway. And I go in thinking, with my bran muffins and fruit salad that I am awesome. I have this thing licked. I do not need fourteen breakfast burritos, because I have bran.

People are laying out their contributions in the form of coffee cakes and egg casserole things and doughnuts and bagels and low-fat cream cheese (hilarious, right?) and all I’m thinking is here I sit with my fruit and my bran and, heck, it is all good. I mean, there was even biscuits and gravy there, people, and I didn’t flinch. Fruit. Bran. Good. And regular!

Then, as people start saddling up to the counter like you might to a bar after a long day, oh, I don’t know, herding cattle or bringin’ in the nets, I see one last person come over and set down a 9×13 dish of bacon. BACON. Nine inches by thirteen inches of fried, crispy, stacked-on-top-of-itself-there-is-so-much-of-it bacon. Now, I know due to dislike (please), or religion, or allergies (as if), or diet (stop), or down right insanity some people don’t get excited about bacon. I am not those people. I have often said the entrance to my heaven has a bacon buffet right at the door. I like it that much.

That said, I do not eat a lot of bacon. Bacon, you see, is my potato chip: one is not an option. And today, the day before I go to chub club where they’ll tell me these last few pounds are going to be with me forever so we might as well just get married and live happily ever after, I have bacon. Which, of course, becomes a deep, meaningful experience for me and before I know it, burritos sound good. And cheese. Lots of cheese. And after this plateful, which was breakfast and lunch’s allotment of food all at once, I realize that bacon isn’t just evil because it’s so wonderful all in and of itself. It’s evil because it is the gateway food. One slice of bacon and, brother, you are conquering that buffet like some bad-ass pirate after booty. Except your booty is bacon.

Which brings me to what happened next: I left work an entire two hours early just to get away from food. And I took my bacon booty right to the gym. Where I would redeem myself. Yep.

So I’m running on the treadmill and I decide I need to get lots of mileage in to make up for my bacon weakness. So I’m running and I’m running and before I know it, five miles have passed. (Sidebar: Okay, so not really before I know it. Really, it was quite long and all I had to watch was politics on CNN, or Fox, or whatever every other television station because this is all we care about right now. That combined with the guy that kept clapping every time Hilary Clinton appeared on one of the screens about drove me insane. Insane and nearly right back to the bacon.) So I’m pretty happy with myself and I’m on the treadmill and think, okay let’s make this an even six so we can get to the weights. And, because I’m now my own personal hero in my bacon defiance, I up the treadmill speed.

Then (last paragraph, promise), something happens to the treadmill. The belt just speeds up, and makes this weird noise. People are looking, my legs are flying. Faster, faster, faster. I can’t keep up. What am I going to do? And what is that burning smell?! Before I know it, the belt is shredding under my feet. It’s there, flapping in the breeze of it’s own speed. I try to move and grab the handrails to pull myself off this death trap, and my foot gets caught up a little in the flapping belt. And I sort of trip, and half way into the trip I awkwardly grab one hand rail while the rest of my body flies backward. At this point I’m at least three-quarters airborne (read: not in control of a damn thing) and so I go flying, with one leg still perched on the shredded belt, into the mirrored wall behind me. The thud is so loud I believe people in Europe could hear it. I am not sure which made more noise, my body hitting the wall, or the sound I made when it did.

(I lied.) So by now the entire gym is around me and, just like in high school when I slipped on ice and knocked the wind out of myself and couldn’t breathe, the hottest possible man you could ever imagine (think all the good-looking men you know of combined in one person) walks over to me, puts one hand on my back and the other on my arm and asks me if I’m okay. The words that come out of my mouth are something like “huh? Oh, yeah. Sure. Fine. Just my luck. Ha ha ha.” The words I’m thinking in my head? Damn bacon.