The week of meat / Fat Baby

I once drove by an accident on I-4 where a Honda Fit was wedged between two concrete overpass pillars... It didn't fit.

Thanksgiving was great, in fact, it closed out what I called The Week of Meat. I was asked to smoke turkey for work, so last Friday I, along with my boss, bought 5 turkeys and put them in the fridge at the office to let them thaw over the weekend. Friday night I went to a local meat market in Plant City and picked up a meat order for a lady at work who asked if I would also smoke for her family's thanksgiving meal, took it home, and seasoned it, and smoked it the next morning.

Sunday was quiet.

Monday we put four of the work turkeys in brine and I dry rubbed one for the heck of it. Monday night we took out my family's 3 turkeys (two to smoke, one to roast) to let them thaw. Tuesday My boss and I smoked the five turkeys for work in one of the worst storms of the year, then Wednesday I prepped and dry rubbed the two turkeys for my household. Thursday came and I fired up the smoker around 12PM. We had a late thanksgiving, so the smoked birds were ready just about one hour before the family arrived, and My God, they were amazing.

1 week.
8 Turkeys
20lbs of chicken
10lbs of ribs
90lbs of turkey

Now that I've devoted two paragraphs to meat, let's move on.

We had to take my little guy to urgent care on Sunday, he came down with an upper respiratory funk and needed antibiotics.

While in the waiting room we encountered a man, probably in his early 30's with a sick kid of his own. The child was around a year old, and the dad was super concerned about him. So concerned in fact that he went to the girl behind the desk and demanded to know what time he could expect to be out the door, he had to leave by three... The desk girl sheepishly reminded him that that is not how doctor's offices work.

He returned to his chair, holding the child close to his chest, and sang a sweet little song to calm the kid while banging his head (not the kid's head, his head) against the wall behind him.

You're a fat baby.

You're a fat baby.

You're so faaaat.

This warmed my heart, but not in the good way. Like a mentioned before, the kid was about one year old, so one of his earliest tangible memories will be of his father singing to him about how fat he is while banging his head against a wall in a waiting room while other people stared. The real problem with this is that the poor kid wasn't even fat.

In that moment I saw a vision of the future which I just made up, of a 20 year old very skinny man (let's call him Danny for the sake of the next sentence). 

Danny is sitting at the dinner table in his apartment, alone, staring at a triple stacked burger and fries on his plate, singing 'You're a fat Danny, You're a fat Danny, You're SoooOOO FAAAAT!' before feeding all of the food to his grossly overweight chihuahua, Jabba, berating him and rolling him around on the carpet. Finally Danny cradles Jabba like a baby on the couch while hitting his head against the wall and singing the fat baby song to the confused, fat dog. Danny himself has a wheat grass smoothie and cries himself to sleep while The Nutty Professor family table scene plays on a loop in the background.

Man, that got intense. Sorry about that.

-Austin