by Rob Gunther
But then later in the day, I was pouring hot water out of the giant coffee machine. There are three nozzles, one for regular, one for decaf, and one for hot water. While I was holding the lever down for the hot water, my hand was directly under the regular coffee nozzle. And out of nowhere, hot coffee started pouring out right onto my hand. It was maybe two seconds, just long enough to give me a nice, scalding burn. I spazzed out and threw the half-filled pot of hot water, and guess who was walking by just as it flew out of my grip? That’s right. It was that guy that told me the totally made up ghost story. And he got burned too. He jumped and turned to me and said, “What the hell man?”
I just said, “Sorry! The coffee machine started pouring by itself!”
“That’s impossible! You need to pull the lever for coffee to come out!”
And it was true. This is a really old machine with a really big handle. There’s no way it could have pulled itself. And even if it did, it would have locked in that position, not just switched itself back off. Plus, like I said, it’s a big lever, so I would have heard it making a big chnk sound as it switched on. But there was nothing. No sounds. I explained it all to that guy. And he got it, like, he totally got it. And then I got it. And then both of our mouths hung open at the same time. We were just staring at each other, and then we slowly turned, in unison, to the regular coffee nozzle. We both said, “G-G-Ghost!” It had to have been true. We were both making up ghost stories, and a real ghost must have overheard us and decided to teach us a lesson. And we both got spooked, big time.
I went home and wrote a letter to R.L. Stine, telling him all about the haunted coffee machine. I said, “Listen, here’s the perfect story that we can use to reboot the Goosebumps franchise. This will put you back on the map!” And I added, “If you’re too busy, I can ghost write it for you. Not ghost like haunted, but ghost like I’ll write it, and it can still say R.L. Stine. Because I’m trying to be a writer, and I feel like I’m a natural storyteller.”
I didn’t hear anything for a while, but then my mom got a letter at her house addressed to me. It was the same exact photocopied note from fifteen years ago, all about how he shared my letter with his wife and son.
Come on! Your son’s got to be all grown up now! There’s no way he’s still living at home. What did you do, call him up and tell him about my letter? And what, did you share my idea? Are you going to steal my story? I’m just letting everyone know that if you ever read a book about a haunted coffee machine, it was all my idea, and I was ripped off, because I came up with it first. And it really happened. It wasn’t a story, it’s true! I swear!
We all scream for all-you-can-eat ice cream
This friend of mine used to work at an ice cream store. The pay sucked, and there were no benefits, but he loved working there because he was allowed to eat as much ice cream as he wanted. New hires always thought this was a pretty cool rule at first. They would come into work and just keep eating ice cream, nonstop, no limits, right? I always thought it would make more sense from a corporate perspective to have maybe a “one cup per day” policy, but my friend told me that he thought management had an ulterior motive, that they highlighted the unlimited aspect of the ice cream policy to encourage new hires to overeat. By that logic, they’d keep it up for a day or two, maybe three, but no more than three, because the debilitating stomachache that came with too much ice cream was an inevitability, and most likely the new hire would get physically sick sometime during his or her first few days. After that, going by the “once you throw it up, you don’t like it any more” rule, nobody would have to worry about employees eating all of the merchandise.
“One cup per day” might not ever elicit such a physical reaction. This plan might even backfire. By restraining the employee’s natural ice cream consumption, it would force them to truly savor each cup. Maybe they would grow to love ice cream even more than they had before. After a while their ice cream immunity would grow, less likely to cause a stomachache, or even an ice cream headache. Eventually one cup wouldn’t satisfy the hunger, and they’d start sneaking little spoonsful here and there, right out of the container when management wouldn’t be looking. It would be really hard to catch employees in the act and, what if management did catch them? What are they going to do, fire somebody over a couple extra bites of ice cream? It would be an unfortunate situation, nobody really wanting to take any action, and all while profits slide, the store sinking into mismanagement and lost revenue.
So all-you-can-eat ice cream was the rule, and it mostly worked. But my friend wasn’t most people. This guy, given ideal circumstances, could probably eat ice cream, one bite after another, without pause, for the rest of his life. Obviously there would have to be some sort of a system involved for bathroom breaks, but I’m not trying to get into the logistics of a challenge. I’m really just trying to drive home the point that this guy can eat a lot of ice cream. People would stare at him with looks of disgust as he polished off his third or fourth banana split. They’d say stuff like, “What’s wrong with you?”
And he’d say, “What are you talking about?”
And they’d ask, “How can you eat so much ice cream? Doesn’t your stomach hurt? Don’t you have a terrible taste in the sides of your mouth? Aren’t you incredibly thirsty? How are you so thin?”
And he would just wipe his mouth and say something like, “It’s ice cream! All-you-can-eat ice cream!” And you could tell that he wasn’t just saying it. Everything about him, the tone of his voice, the earnest expression on his face - he really meant it. He really, truly loved eating ice cream.
But the years passed and finally there came a day when my friend took stock of his life and decided that he needed to be doing something else. He hadn’t lost his taste for ice cream, but he felt maybe it was holding him back, maybe he needed to get out there and see if there weren’t more to life than free ice cream. So he gave his two-week notice. Management was more than happy to see him go. He was a good enough worker, always showing up on time, rarely calling out sick, but he was clearly putting a dent into every monthly projection. After a couple of business cycles, financial had to actually start accounting for his regularly negative impact on inventory.
His coworkers told him that on his last day they should all go out to a bar and celebrate, have a couple of drinks, and then have a couple of shots. They planned on taking him out and getting everybody nice and wrecked. But they warned my friend, they said, “We know you think you have a pretty tough stomach, but seriously, don’t eat any ice cream before the bar. It’ll be a terrible mistake.”
My friend wasn’t a huge drinker, but he understood what they were talking about, and he figured he could go a day without ice cream. So on his last shift, for the first time in his career at the ice cream store, he didn’t eat so much as a bite of ice cream. It was torture. Somehow he made it through the day, but it was the worst of his life, he was conscious of every painful second.
After the last customer left, he wiped down the freezers and punched out. He walked across the street to the bar where everybody told him they’d be waiting. When he went inside, it was almost totally empty. He sat down and ordered a beer. He sent a text to one of the coworkers, asking where everybody was. The text back said, “Hey man, I’m actually pretty beat. Let’s reschedule.” And over the course of the next hour or so, every other coworker got in touch with him. Everybody was tired. Nobody felt like going out anymore.
My friend didn’t get upset. He wasn’t one to take stuff like that personally. But while he was waiting at the bar, he just kept drinking. He didn’t know what else to do. It was a bar, after all. And the bartender must have seen this guy all alone, texting a group of friends that wasn’t planning on showing up, so he started giving my friend some shots, on the house. Normally alcohol had a pretty minimal effect on my friend, but that’s because normally my friend had a belly at least seventy-five percent filled with ice cream. So my friend got drunk, like really drunk. And he stood up to go to the
bathroom, and when he stood up he realized he was even drunker than he thought. It all hit him at once, this wave of intoxication coursing upward through him like a current, like a lightning bolt, hitting him directly in the head, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep it all inside.
He was standing exactly between the bathroom and the exit, so precisely in the middle that he hesitated for a second while trying to calculate which path was the shortest. The delay was too much. He ran for the exit, and he almost made it. But just as he got close to the door, it opened, it was all of his coworkers.
They felt terrible when they texted each other, each coworker thinking that he or she would be the only no-show, and when they all realized nobody was going to my friend’s farewell, they all got up and brushed their teeth and put on their coats and headed over to the bar. Everyone arrived at the same time, they opened the door, and my friend was running, charging toward them. It was too late to do anything, eye contact was made for a second, my friend brought his hands to his mouth in a futile attempt to at least demonstrate that he didn’t want what was about to happen to happen, but all that it did was cause everything to spray, not in a straight line, but outward, radial, like a fan, like putting your thumb over a garden hose.
Medium-rare
I know it’s a personal preference, but it’s my opinion that steaks are at their absolute best when cooked medium-rare. It’s the perfect temperature for a nice piece of meat. The steaks should start at room temperature. I can always tell when somebody’s cooking a steak right out of the fridge. It never really cooks as evenly, the center taking just a little longer to get to that sweet-spot, the exterior drying out while the middle struggles to come down from the cold. I’ll still always say, “Wow, great steak,” but I’m just being polite.
Ideally, whoever is cooking is going to want to heat up their grill or frying pan or whatever, get it really, really hot, almost smoking. That way the outside will have that nice char, that crisp brown. And then when you cut into it, man, it’s great. Red to the center, warm interior.
I always order my steak medium-rare. Unless, of course, I’m sitting at a table in a steakhouse with a large group of people. In that case, it’s not so simple. Chances are somebody else is going to order their steak medium-rare. I’m telling you, it’s the best way to have a steak.
The waiter will come around to me, “And for you, sir? How would you like your steak prepared?” I can’t say medium-rare now. It might look like I have no idea what I’m doing, like I’m just copying everybody else.
This is why it’s great to order first at a steak place. Since everyone else is definitely going to get their steak medium-rare, when you order first, you look like you’re in charge, like everyone else is following your lead. When the second person also says medium-rare, “Very good, sir,” who knows, maybe that’s how he was going to order in the first place. It really depends on how fast he said it. If there was even a second’s hesitation, it might raise questions. Maybe he was going for medium but didn’t feel like being outdone by the first person. “I’ll take mine medium … rare. Medium-rare.” A classic rookie I’ve-never-eaten-in-a-steakhouse-with-a-large-group-of-people mistake.
And then it goes down the line: medium-rare, medium-rare, medium-rare. By now, everybody ordering, the fifth, sixth, seventh, even if they wanted medium, medium-well, it’s just not happening. Nobody’s going to stick their neck out like that. By the third or fourth person, the waiter is only even asking because he has to, because it’s part of his job description.
Every once in a while the waiter might start off with a person who clearly doesn’t know how to eat steak, and they’ll say medium or medium-well. And the next person will order theirs, extra loud, medium-rare, as if to say, “Please don’t confuse me with my idiot friend to my left, I’d like mine medium-rare. Please.”
And it’ll go down the line, medium-rare, medium-rare, and after two or three people, that first guy will realize his mistake, he’ll get really embarrassed, he’ll just shout out to the waiter, who’s already passed him, he’ll say, “Excuse me, you know what? I’m going to go for that medium-rare also, thanks.”
And the waiter will say, “Very good, sir,” and he’ll pretend to cross something out on his waiter’s pad and write something else, but it’s all an act, because he’s not writing anything at all. It’s always medium-rare. It’s a science.
But what if it gets to me, what if I’m like the eighth or ninth person ordering? I’m no follower, I’m no nameless face in the crowd. In this situation, I’ll say “rare, please.” And everyone will drop their forks and stare.
I learned this trick at my friend’s wedding in Iowa last summer. The rehearsal dinner was at a steak place, and of course I was going to say medium-rare, but the first person ordered rare. I was like, “What? Rare? Crazy.” But then the second person ordered. Rare. Third, fourth, fifth. Rare, rare, rare. There was definitely a pattern here and it became clear to me how I’d be eating my steak.
It was good. I liked it. It was a little chewier than I was used to. I had to cut the pieces really thin so as to be somewhat manageable in my mouth. But it was OK.
I really hope that someday I’ll be out to dinner with a bunch of guys and for some reason it’ll be my turn to order first. I’m definitely going to order rare. And that second person is going to have to order rare also. And it’ll be like dominoes, everyone falling in line, everyone getting a rare steak. I’m pretty sure that’s what happened in Iowa. I think.
Just do me a favor and never order a steak well-done. I have it on good authority that whenever a chef at a steak restaurant gets an order for well done, he walks to a nearby trashcan where, under all of the garbage, he keeps a stockpile of some of last week’s worst cuts of meat. After he pulls the nastiest one, he spits on it a few times before throwing it on the grill until all that’s left is a charred piece of coal. Then he adds a sprig of parsley and sends it out to be served. It’s true, I swear.
Finally, I hate it when people order “medium to medium-well.” That’s not a temperature. Pick medium or medium-well (or ideally, medium-rare.) There are five temperatures, that’s it. You can’t just go around making up your own weird, non-existent styles of preparing steak.
I’ll never go skydiving
I’ll never go skydiving. I know a lot of people who have, and they all say it was great, unbelievable, super exciting. “You should definitely go skydiving!” But I would never, ever go skydiving. I’ve pictured the whole thing in my mind – I have a very vivid imagination – played out exactly how it would go down, and I’m already pretty scarred just from the whole visualization process.
It’s not just skydiving. Maybe if it were simply jumping out of a plane, I might consider it. No, I take that back, I probably still wouldn’t do it. But what I mean is, the jumping out of the plane can’t be the hardest part. Because it all starts months in advance, when one or more of your friends decides to plan a skydiving outing. You don’t want to look like a weenie, and so you say, “Of course! Yes! Hell yes!” And that’s it. That’s when the terror begins.
So it might be a month, two months away until it’s time to go skydiving. And you’re just thinking about it constantly. You’re like, holy shit, in two months I’m going to have to jump out of an airplane. And you just sit there thinking about it, visualizing what it’s going to be like, waiting around for the plane to take off, getting up there in this tiny little box, nothing like anything you’ve ever been in before, this toy, this propeller-driven prop.
And as the weeks crawl by, you keep getting text messages from the group, stuff like, “Only five weeks left until the big day!” You’ve tried to put it out of your head but it’s the only thing that you can think about. Your work is suffering. Your home life is spiraling out of control. You can’t seem to connect with anything or anybody. Everywhere you look you’re reminded of skydiving.
And then skydiving is tomorrow. And you can’t go to sleep that night. You’re just lying in your
bed, shaking, figuring out if there is any realistic possibility of somehow getting out of it. But there’s no way. Your friend who organized the whole thing already put down a lot of money. Even though it’s really not about the money. Right now you’d pay double just to get out of it. But where would that get you, really? All of your friends would see right through your lame-ass excuse. Their perception of you would forever be altered. Maybe they wouldn’t show it right away, but it would be there, a chasm separating you from your relationships.
What would you talk about the next time you saw everybody? Would you just pretend like nobody went skydiving, like the trip never happened, that you never chickened out? It would be super awkward, everyone sitting around, talking about the weather or the Mets, and someone might say something like, “Man the Mets’ season is in free-fall.” Everyone in the group would look at each other, their eyes getting just a little wider, smiles creeping up on their faces. They’d all want to say, “Just like when we all went skydiving!” but they wouldn’t say it, because they’d be trying to not make you feel bad. But you’d be able to tell. You’d feel that energy, their shared experience. And they’d feel your discomfort, your awkward smile. It would make them feel bad about their accomplishment. So they’d have to start having separate get-togethers, separate from you, so they could talk about skydiving, about that giant leap into their communal conquering of such a base fear, the rapturous thrill of staring death in the face.
You definitely can’t back out. It’s the night before and, if you backed out now, what, the previous two months’ worth of fear and anxiety and sleepless nights were all for nothing? You back out now and it’s going to haunt you for the rest of your life, because you’ve found your limits with fear. You know exactly what your body and mind are incapable of doing. Your whole viewpoint on life has gone from “sky’s the limit” to “skydiving’s the limit.” It’s a real limit. And part of you will never get past it.