Lucy Eats A Salad

There are plenty of ways in which I live up to the moniker of “The Messy Professor.”  All you have to do is glance at the interior of my car or either of my studios to realize how fitting the nickname is.   But once in a while, I manage to do something that takes my messiness into a truly stratospheric plane.

Such a thing happened last night as I was in the midst of multi-tasking …. in this case,  reading the newest issue of Entertainment Weekly while  eating a salad.  And because it had been a somewhat long, complicated and taxing day, I decided to reward myself by indulging in my favorite salad dressing- the Balsamic dressing from La Mia Famiglia (a fine restaurant in Milwaukee. I buy the stuff at our local farmer’s market. It’s amazing.)

I really have this salad routine down to a science.  I grab a bag of salad from the refrigerator- grab a large Fiesta bowl from the cupboard-  grab a scissors to cut open the bag- fill the bowl with lettuce (which is roughly half of the bag)-  grab a fork- grab the salad dressing… shake the jar, which is really important with this particular kind of dressing ….. mix and toss and eat!

Salad:Part One went exceedingly well.   But I seem to have gotten just a bit discombobulated as I filled my bowl with the remainder of the salad.  As I grabbed the salad dressing, I must have thought I was at the start of the process – and gave the jar a vigorous shake.

Unfortunately,  the lid was not screwed on.

You can maybe imagine what happened next.  Like a scene straight out of I Love Lucy,  the lid went flying off and Balsamic salad dressing exploded in all directions – drenching my face, my glasses,  my white dress shirt, my t-shirt underneath, my M & M’s tie (which I threw away),  my lap – and the magazine I was reading. The one way in which lady luck was with me is that I didn’t end up ruining my wife’s Vera Bradley bag that was sitting right there.  As near as I can tell,  not a single drop of salad dressing landed on her precious bag.  (A check of hers that was sitting on the table did not emerge unscathed, but at least it wasn’t ruined.)   Actually, the other lucky thing is that (for once)  I wasn’t on my laptop at the time, or I could have catastrophically damaged my computer.  By the way,  one way to know how much salad dressing was flying through the air is the fact that a five dollar bill tucked away in my shirt pocket was completely drenched.   And the fact that my t-shirt was almost as drenched as my shirt made it seem like I had been sprayed by one of those high-powered water guns, only loaded with salad dressing.  But no, it was just little ol’ me.

I’m not sure what’s sadder-  the fact that I had to throw my tie away …. or that this salad dressing costs $7 a jar.  (Judging by what was left over, I spilled over half of the jar’s contents in my little mishap.)

Fortunately,  I had the good sense to strip off my shirt right away and soak it in warm water (cold water sets a stain, right?) – and popped it right into the washing machine …. set on hot ….. and it emerged as though nothing had ever happened.

Carthage grad Kris Caputo will tell you that none of this should come as a surprise.  She was with me at the Lyric Opera of Chicago when – during intermission – I vigorously shook my bottle of Orangina without realizing that I had already unscrewed the cap.   I will say that if I must be drenched in something,  I prefer Orangina to Balsamic Salad Dressing.

Of course, my top preference is to not be drenched at all.

(I had already taken off my shirt and cleaned off my glasses before I realized that I needed to preserve this ignoble moment with a photograph or two.  Some people foolishly post photos of themselves cavorting at wild beer parties.  Me?  I foolishly post photos of myself with salad dressing all over my face.)

One more look at the scene of the crime.  The paisley bag to the left of the photo is one of my wife’s Vera Bradley bags. I still can’t get over how it escaped the carnage. It’s nothing less than a miracle.