Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Halo, Goodbye: Deleted Scenes

The "stinky chicken incident" concerns the slow and unnoticed rotting of a chicken breast in the mini-fridge of my dorm room. On one of my first few days here at Asbury, I was greeted by someone holding a bowl full of chicken. "If you guys want some, there's like forty pieces downstairs in the kitchen." Literally, too, as I would find out. He offered me a morsel. "Well, it's not terrible, and I am in college so I can't be too picky."

I made my way to the kitchen, opened the fridge and saw chicken as far as the arm could reach. There was a large aluminum pan (the kind you bake like half a dozen turkeys in) filled to the brim with white, unseasoned meat, swimming in their own fluids. Yum. Why did I even take this stuff in the first place?

As you may have guessed, I didn't exactly gobble up the four delectable blobs I took back to the room with me. After a few days, only one solitary breast remained... and it sat there undisturbed for three weeks. My roommate and I had discussed throwing the amorphous lump (and whatever was growing on it) out for days, but I finally gave in when he offhandedly mentioned that the fridge smelled. Now, keep in mind we are freshmen guys living together; when something noticeably stinks to us, that is a terrible sign.

I peeled back the Tupperware lid ever so gently -  I wanted a good whiff before I threw its contents into the trash. "Whoa." My roommate begged me to get that junk out of the room and to never open that around another human being again. "Dude, smell this," I demanded others on my hall. After making everyone around me nauseous, I went to apologize to the person from whom I had borrowed the container. "Uh, I don't think you want this back." He didn't.

I tossed the container (now with the label "HAZARDOUS MATERIALS") some distance into the garbage can and the lid popped right off. "No, no, no, no, no!" I took a deep breath and ran over to lock the stench into its resting place, but, alas, the chicken had poured out into the trash. "God, I will never do a bad thing for as long as I live if you miracle this chicken back into that box." I waited a moment and nothing. I was already clothed in the reek of farty, rotten eggs and had to take action; I shoved my hand into the bag and placed the foul thing back where it belonged, snapping the lid shut as fast as my greasy hands could muster. All I remember afterwards is alternating between washing my hands til they pruned, dry heaving, and holding a fragrant candle under my nose. I'll never look at a chicken or a breast the same way again.

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