What doesn’t kill you…

You know that saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”? In the case of this story, a more appropriate saying would be either “What doesn’t kill you makes you wish you were dead” or “What doesn’t kill you makes you stay in the fetal position for the next 5 hours”. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Make yourself comfortable because it’s story time!

In the late part of 1995 and the early part of 1996, my relationship with Andy wasn’t at its best, to put it mildly. The words “destructive” and “unhealthy” come to mind.

He worked at a little local restaurant where the owner would supply endless amounts of alcohol to his underage staff on a nightly basis. The idea of Andy driving around drunk, getting in a head-on collision, and dying at the tender age of 18 was too much for my co-dependent self to fathom.

So, I made the decision to invite his drunk butt to my mother’s house every night after work. I made promises of a “fun time” to lure him. It’s none of your business whether or not I made good on those promises and totally irrelevant in this story. More often than not, he would pass out on my bedroom floor, where I would leave him until morning. Was this enjoyable for me? No, not really. But at least I knew (1) who he was with and (2) that he was alive. Look, I already told you our relationship was destructive and unhealthy at the time, so get over it.

We’ll get back to the story in a minute. I have to explain something else before continuing.

My mom is a great cook. Fantastic, actually. But while her strength is cooking, her weakness is saving leftovers in her gigantic Sub Zero refrigerator. I’m not talking about saving leftovers to be consumed the next day. I’m talking about saving leftovers until shutting the bulging refrigerator door requires a bungee cord and/or duct tape. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but you get the point. Back to the story.

So, one night in early 1996 Andy once again found himself at my mother’s house in the middle of the night. He was drunk and hungry. I was tired. Before falling asleep, I told him he could find something to eat in my mother’s bulging refrigerator, a suggestion I would later regret.

Apparently, Andy had found some leftover smothered steak and rice in the refrigerator. His eyes were going different directions, so he didn’t notice the green fuzz covering most of the meat. He heated it in the microwave and added about a half a cup of hot sauce. By the time he ate the last bite, his eyes had started twitching and his stomach was contracting at an alarming rate.

I awoke several hours later and found Andy in the fetal position on my bedroom floor, moaning and clutching his abdomen. I asked him what was wrong. He said he ate the smothered steak and didn’t feel right. I asked him what smothered steak, since I didn’t recall my mom making it for the last two months or so. He just groaned and said something about finding it in the back of the bottom shelf.

To this day, Andy believes the reason he didn’t die of food poisoning was because of the massive amounts of cheap rum that were floating in his stomach that night. (Alcohol kills bacteria, right?) Amazingly, he never vomited, nor did he die.