The Exile vs. Lunch

I learned a valuable lesson last week: Never eat a foot-long meatball marinara sub while writing an article on tax reform. Just don't do it.

See, people in my chosen profession are, at the end of the day, more or less human.

We sleep, we laugh, we play, we love, we facebook, we hate and, on a few rare occasions, we eat.

At the office, lunch typically involves going out in our ones and twos to Timmy's or Subway. Occasionally, someone is foolish enough to say the regrettable words "I'm going to Timmy's, anyone want anything?" and eventually returns laden with goodies destined for others.

Last time, however, a rare group outing to Subway saw me return to the office with a foot-long meatball marinara sub, with a generous helping of cheese and mayo. I'd had that combination before, but only half that size.

The possible effects of such a massive portion increase should have given me pause, but no! I cared not! Hunger ruled my reason as I scoffed it all down, savouring each and every one of the bites that took me one inch closer to my eventual cholesterol overloaded-death. It was glorious. It was just what I needed on a rainy Friday afternoon in a windowless bunker.

And then, just after I'd wiped the last stain of marinara sauce from my satisfied, grinning lips, my brain died.

She just died. All higher activity ceased. My intelligence trotted off to the big mensa club in the sky, leaving behind a five-pound lump of grey matter more useful as a particularly messy paperweight than as a tool of cogitation. It was just too much meat and mayo and cheese for me. It's like when you have a slice of turkey and just fall asleep, only I didn't have a couch to crash on.

What I had was a three-hour recording of the previous night's all-party legislative forum on tax reform, along with detailed notes complete with time stamps. Any other day, this would be the work of a couple of hours but in my present state of mind, barely capable of counting to ten, the likes of HST cuts, tax breaks, heating rebates and vencap incentives were a trifle troubling.

Even the social aspect of the forum was rough. The nine-member all-party committee was hoping for opinions on all the tax proposals, but it really turned into them explaining the flat-tax option while person after person came up and told them what a bad idea it was. That's a lot of people, and a lot of names, and some of the speakers were in french, which I had a translating device for, but had to rely on my notes for actual quotes.

That and I only knew three of the nine MLAs who spoke, so I had to rely on a number system to mark who was speaking when. And, for context, I had to summarize all the tax proposals all these people were actually talking about, which meant translating into plain English the inscrutable gibberish those nerds at the Finance Department use in their discussion papers.

Either that, or government tax documents are handed down by god himself, who's still pissed that the human race can still communicate with each other after the whole tower of babel thing, and is now trying to finish the job.

I'm exaggerating, of course. It wasn't that hard, and I'm organized enough that that kind of story, while a chore, is not daunting. End of the day, though, the history major had to struggle through a complex financial story while his brain was out to lunch, as it were. I hammered out a first draft somehow, but resolved to tweak it over the weekend in time for Monday's paper.

So now in the office we refer to the whole thing as the Meatball Sub Incident. Of course, when it finally dawned on the sports guy and the editor who was on duty that I was dead to the world, the howling laughter started. The tip-off may have been my uncharacteristic silence and, when I was about to stagger home, my attempt to give my editor a story update that ended in me screwing my eyes up in concentration for, like, a minute while I tried to remember what other story I had been working on that day.

As has been common of late, I happened to get stories that spilled over into the weekend, so I went into the office at 7 am on Sunday (hey, the earlier I get in, the earlier I get to leave) after spending Saturday flitting in and out of a consultation session for French education reform (another crowd pleaser around here).

And when, of course, the subject of lunch came up, the editor's laughter started slow, sort of like a satisfied giggle. Then it gradually grew in intensity like an avalanche of mirth, until her belly laughs guffawed across the office, setting off the sports guy, the production department and myself. By the end of it, we were all in tears and I had resolved never, ever to go to Subway again.

Stupid meatballs.