Pancake Breakup

I don't like pancakes. I like waffles fine but pancakes are no-go. It might be a texture issue. Or too spongy maybe. Or there seems to be too many of them when piled high. Or they look like flat alien plop. I don't know what it is but at some point along the way pancakes and me went our separate ways. I've learned most people don't understand how it's possible for someone not to like pancakes.

When I was a kid I liked pancakes alot. Blueberry, chocolate chip, even plain. It was all fine. Butter and syrup. Yum. Right? Pancakes and me were on the same page for a long time. But not anymore. Not exactly sure what happened. What went wrong? What changed? What caused us to breakup? I always come back around to a minitrauma experience I had at an IHOP years and years ago.

I think I was probably 11 or 12 years old on a school trip or something. The memory is sort of hazy but I remember is sitting in the IHOP with a plate of pancakes. I was facing the kitchen doors and was about to take a bite when a waitress walked out of the kitchen. The swinging door was only open for a second but in that second I saw that there was a shirtless fat guy in the kitchen. I remember he had hairy armpits. Then the door swung shut. On the next swing open he was gone. I didn't seem real. But it was. I looked down at my pancakes and couldn't eat them.

Why!? Why did that guy have to have his shirt off in the kitchen!? What caused him to take it off? A spill? Change of uniform? A double dogdare of sorts? I never could land on a solid answer why he'd be shirtless in the middle of the kitchen. And that's the last time I remember ordering pancakes. Was that the breaking point for me and pancakes? The shirtless guy in the IHOP kitchen? Could that have scarred me so deep that pancakes were crossed off my menu forever?

Maybe. Who knows. I can live with it. 

I like waffles alot.

ok bye!

tOdd

*No offense to IHOP. I'm sure most do not have shirtless men in the kitchen.