I've occasionally toyed around with the idea of reprinting pieces that friends send to me. I've done it once before, when Jeff gave me a piece that I wanted to post. This morning, I received another piece that made me laugh so much that I had to share it. I may do more of this in the future; I have not yet decided. They're not necessarily formal pieces; they're bits of writing that catch my fancy and that I think are worth sharing.

Without further introduction, here's a little piece by Will Brooke which didn't have a title, but I've started calling "The Breakfast You'll Have."

Do you ever have these totally unreasonable desires for a breakfast that is about 3 times the size of you the morning after drinking stupidly?

You picture it composed of a light and fluffy mushroom, cheese, green pepper, and onion omelette, with some salsa and chives sprinkled on top; thickly sliced bacon that's just crisp, not crunchy; multi-grain toast with butter and jams; fresh, buttered, warm bran muffins; and a healthy bowl of cereal to start things off bofore the omelettes and bacon are done. Golden-brown pancakes made from scratch, with real maple syrup drizzled lightly over the top so it's not too sweet, but just right; hash browns with onions and some yellow and red pepper bits and bacon crumbled up into it; and about 6 gallons of thick frothy orange juice to wash it all down.

Then, invariably, you and your friends are all too hung over and can't remember how to make omelettes, so somebody has the bright idea to just do eggs over easy…

… and they turn out so greasy and runny that they make you want to be sick just from looking at the pale lifeless blobs of protoplasm. They burn the white toast, and there's no butter, so you have to use margarine. The bacon takes about 2 hours to cook because all they can find is the stuff in the back of te freezer that's been there since last summer's camping trip and is frozen solid.

Nobody can find potatoes or a decent cutting block or a cleanish sharp knife, so you end up with McCain's Tater Tots burnt to the pan in the oven (which starts to billow black smoke because some dolt covered the pan in olive oil or Pam and then cranked it to 525 to make it go fast).

The orange juice is watery, and they forgot to clean out the carafe, so it still has some sticky red juice in the bottom that slowly wends its tendrils of red evilness up through the juice, reminding everyone of the 8th Tequila Sunrise they had at the bar last night, and rousing yet another wave of green looks; the wooden spoon they find to stir it with came straight from the sink which has soapy, dirty dish water from two days ago.

Pancakes are an impossibility, but somebody finds some half frozen Eggo's and tries to not burn those, but they can't find any syrup. There is only half a box of slightly stale rice puff cereal in the cupboard—and no milk. Usually somebody stops the process before they get to making powdered skim milk…

And then, as everybody is sobering up, staring at the unconscionable mess in front of them and realizing they are going to have to clean THIS up too, just to make everybody feel like they never want to see a bottle of alcohol again in their lives—the bright guy who slept in till now because he managed to hook up with the cutest chick at the party; AND she had to leave in the morning for rowing practice with no hard feelings after their third time around the sack and the second shower together; walks in with a big grin on his face, says he's hungry and why don't we all go downtown for brunch, he's buying, as he grabs his coat and the keys to his BMW 528i…

-—-

I read this to my roommate. He fell on the floor laughing, then walked out, grabbed his breakfast plate, still laughing and showed it to me: eggs over easy, tater tots with lots of ketchup, weak orange juice and toast.

He is now making bacon, and he found my stash of Eggo's in the freezer.