Doggy Bag Please

Haiku My Heart
November 22, 2013

 Join the fun and fellowship. See more Haiku at Friday's regular feature at Rebecca's Blog, recuerda mi corazon.

Hospital dinner

Edible, contemptible

Dog food on a plate

Really, you can’t make this up. Uncanny might be the word, (Yes, pun intended), to describe the reality of this. Let me explain. I’m admitted to the Minneapolis VA hospital last month. I actually had two three day visits there. I was settled into my room and playing a waiting game.

Doctors were waiting for the outcome from blood tests and to see what my pulse rate was going to do as it had shot upward drastically and they were medicating like crazy to get it to go down to what they considered an acceptable level.

It was close to mealtime and Mrs. Spadoman was in the room waiting with me. We gave up on getting any further results of medical tests this particular day. We were content to just wait on dinner before we started another cribbage game.

Can you believe it?

You expect me to eat this?

Dog food looks better

Mrs. Spadoman was paging through a magazine that she had found in one of the waiting rooms. A Good-Housekeeping or Redbook I think it was. In her usual way, humor-wise, she showed me an advert for some new kind of dog food and quipped, “This is what you’ll be getting for dinner when it comes.”

I looked at the photo and it did indeed look like some kind of beef stew. I think the ad was actually touting the dog food as close to being like people  food as it possibly can be. We discussed the topic for a few minutes and made jokes about it.

Then, as if on cue, my tray arrived. I saw the small carton of milk, the ½ Cup serving of canned fruit and the salad, the napkin and silverware along with condiments scattered across the tray. In the center of the tray was the plastic insulated cover with the entre’ on a plate underneath. I lifted the lid and looked at the slice of bread, the vegetable medley of potatoes and carrots.

Then we looked at the dinner portion of what was being served that night.

Which one should I choose?

Flatulence personified?

Or plain horse meat stew?

We laughed until our eyes were watering. Mrs. Spadoman found the magazine ad and placed the dog food photo up close to the edge of the plate. The photograph immediately below this paragraph is what was on my plate.

The similarity of what was on my plate and that magazine photograph was unbelievable

I must tell you, care at the Minneapolis VA hospital has always been top notch. I’ve been going there since the mid 1990’s. The food hasn’t always been the best, but having experienced the food service in other VA and private hospitals over the past 25 years, none of them are what I would call excellent cuisine. But this experience was over the top and had us laughing well into the next month. 

In other news, today, November 22, 2013, marks the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. An event in American history that will always be remembered as one of the greatest tragedies in the history of the United States.

A modicum of Bon Appe’tit, with a large helping of Peace