The Sandwich

Years ago, I worked with this guy who everyone called Booger.  Now, since this is a story about food, I won’t gross you out with an explanation of his nickname. I’m sure you can imagine without my help.

Booger was a big man. Not fat, just big. His personality was gruff and his exterior gruffer.  His mental state was indicative of a brain that had been damaged by too much coffee, or sticking a pencil in the ear way too far, or maybe even falling fifty feet out of a tree headfirst onto a boulder several times.  He was not stupid, but he was about five cans short of a six pack.  He was quiet most of the time, but when he wasn't, he was rude.  He was also a creature of habit.  He came to work at almost the exact same time everyday, drove the same speed, took the same route, etc.  Pretty much everything he did was rather “obsessive”.  He didn’t like change, he didn’t like variety, and he didn’t like the applecart upset. Maybe he was an idiot savant? Yes, I think so, if you leave off the savant.

He always packed a large lunch to bring to work (well, his wife packed it).  His lunch was carried in what we had so aptly named “The Magic Lunchbox”.  It was an old style, faded black, tin can looking lunch pail. You’ve seen the kind before, like the coal miners carried way back when.  It wasn’t large, about the size of a kid’s school lunchbox.  Much like the Batman lunchbox I had in high school…ummm, I mean kindergarten. We called it “magic” because in an 8 hour shift he would take out the following; a bologna sandwich, a container holding the contents of the previous night’s leftovers, a TV dinner, two packs of pop-tarts, three snack cakes, two big bags of potato chips, a box of cookies, some candy, four cans of coke, napkins, plates, utensils, a magazine, the daily paper, a monkey, a bird, and an oversized stuffed animal he won at the fair.  Ok, I started exaggerating at the monkey, but the rest is true.  He always cherished his lunch like it was his last meal.  When he ate, he hovered over his food with his head down, eyes up, and arms outstretched in a bear-hug pattern to protect his precious from the evils that lurked the earth.

One day, Booger showed up to work at his usual time, walked into the control room and put his lunchbox on the shelf in the same place he always did.  He then grabbed a clipboard and proceeded outside into the plant to take process readings and make his required rounds.  Soon after Booger stepped outside, someone had the brilliant idea to take a bite out of his bologna sandwich, just to mess with him, and potentially mess with the fine line between sanity and pure maniacal madness.   

Keep in mind, this story takes place years ago when practical jokes were not a terminating offense, and they were almost always, innocent harmless pranks.  However, this is not one of those.

So, while Booger was outside making his rounds in the same old direction at the same predictable time, someone (not me) went into his lunchbox, opened the zip-lock baggie and took one big bite out of his sandwich, then put it back as Booger had left it. (The guy who took the bite later confessed that he saw no bottom in the dark abyss of the magic lunchbox.)

Exactly 57 minutes later as always, Booger came back in the control room. To our surprise, he grabbed his lunchbox and sat down (we found out later this was a habit we had overlooked).  It was still near the beginning of our shift, so it was not a normal lunch or dinner time.  Had he suspected something was amiss?  Were we busted? He reached in his lunchbox and pulled out a snack cake (thinking back, I believe it was a rich, moist, chocolaty Swiss Cake Roll…man those things are good. I guess I must be hungry while writing this). He then closed up his lunchbox and put it back on the shelf in its proper location.  We all breathed a sigh of relief.  If he had discovered the molestation of his sandwich right then, he may have conducted a thorough criminal investigation by lining us up one-by-one then examining our porn star mustaches for crumbs and smelling our breath for mayo and bologna.

Lunch time came and all 6 of us gathered around as inconspicuously as possible to witness the terror that was about to unfold.  Booger opened up the lunchbox, took out his sandwich and immediately turned red-faced when he saw the bite taken.  As everyone chuckled, he angrily jumped up, shouted some newly invented curse words, and demanded to know who was responsible. No one confessed.  He threw the sandwich in the garbage and stormed off.  After all, he wasn’t too concerned, he still had a week or two supply of food left in the magic lunchbox.

Like a guppy taunting a shark, this same sandwich biting prank continued for two more days.  This, of course, made Booger so furious we knew he would suffer an aneurism at any moment.  After it happened the third time, Booger had reached his breaking point.  He loudly made an announcement to all of us “This will never happen again! From now on, I will carry my lunchbox with me all day long and not let it out of my sight for a second!  And beware! I will find out who did this and I will retaliate severely!”

The next day, Booger kept his promise.  He walked in with the magic lunchbox under his arm and kept it there all day. Whether he was outside, or inside, or in the bathroom, it never left his sight. There would be no prank today.

Lunch time came and he sat down with a huge smirk on his face.  He went into his protection mode, took the sandwich out of his lunchbox, opened the zip-lock baggie…and there… staring him in the face, was the impossible…a bite was missing from his sandwich.

I'm sure somewhere in the depths of his damaged mind, he was thinking "How in the world could this be? It's been in my hand all day...what the...??" 

And then it happened. 

His face went completely white.  He stopped breathing.  An eyebrow twitched.  One eyelid closed partially.  Chill bumps rose on one arm but not the other.  Hairs stood up in his nose. The corner of his lip turned up in such a manner that Elvis would have been jealous. His chin quivered. I'm pretty sure he peed himself.  To say he was absolutely stunned and shocked comes no where near describing that moment. Without saying a word, he stood up slowly, walked over and dropped the entire magic lunchbox and its contents into the trashcan.  He then sat down on the floor in the corner of the control room, pulled his knees to his chest, put his head down, rocked back and forth, and muttered some strange sounds only a dog or alien could comprehend.  As for us, we stood there in silence.  No one laughed.  We had crossed a line.  We had broken him.

He was never the same after that.  He requested, and was granted, a transfer away from us to the other end of the plant. Not one of us ever heard from him again.

Oh yeah, I guess you are wondering…It just so happened, one of the guys in the control room named Joe knew Booger’s wife.  After Booger had made his announcement and promised not to let the lunchbox out of his sight, Joe called his wife later that evening and said “Hey, as an inside joke, when you make your husband's lunch for tomorrow, take a bite out of his sandwich”.  Not knowing about our ongoing prank, she obliged.  You know the rest.