The Girlfriends Petrified But Fully Cooked Chicken -

It is said that certain sounds or smells will always remind people of situations within their lifetime. The sound of a waterfall can remind someone of a trip to Niagara Falls, the crackling of a fire reminding of a memorable camping trip, or the smell of salt in the air reminding someone of a cruise they were once on. I can complete relate to this saying. Whenever I hear the sound of ceramic hitting ceramic a certain memory infuses into my mind. The memory that comes into my mind is one of the first times my girlfriend tried to grill chicken for me, chicken that turned out to be rock solid, crunchy, BUT fully cooked. Chicken that I ended up eating…

We were both in school at Northern Michigan University at the time and I was working at a local lumber yard. The days were long in the summer and the work was tough. I was surprised to see her at the lumber yard a couple hours before my shift ended and was even more surprised when she said that she would be making dinner for us that night. “I was thinking grilled chicken fajitas” were the words that came out of her mouth. As soon as those words came out of her mouth I already imagined myself biting into a juicy piece of grilled chicken surrounded by the fixings that make up a fajita.

I couldn’t stop thinking of the fajitas for the rest of my shift. I punched out around 9pm and scooted on to my house where she would be waiting with dinner ready to be enjoyed. I walked into the house and she led me out to the backyard. How nice! An enjoyable dinner out in the backyard while the sun set.

With eagerness she asked “Are you ready to eat? All I have to do is get the chicken off the grill.” Before she got up to get the chicken, a question came that I soon realized would be an indicator of things to come.

“Just out of curiosity, how long do you usually need to cook chicken for?” she asked.

“Not more than 6-10 minutes, depending on the size of the breast” was my reply.

“That’s it? I’ve had the chicken on for a good 45 minutes now, wanting to get it cooked all the way through” were the next words that came out of her mouth.

45 minutes! For this, I had to get up and look to see that the chicken could still be considered chicken. I walked over to the grill opened up the hood and looked down to see what was left. She handed me a plate with a paper towel on it, so the juices wouldn’t run all over. I grabbed the tongs and grabbed the first piece.

When one usually grabs a piece of chicken off the grill, there is some give in the chicken breast. Not this time. I closed the tongs around the chicken only to be met by a sudden stop. There was no squeezing the chicken; there was no give within the breast. I placed the chicken onto the paper towel padded plate hoping that the chicken could sop of any moisture that would be in the paper towel.

Sitting back down on the patio table, I made my first fajita. I took the tortilla and placed rice, veggies, cheese, salsa, and sour cream on. Then I picked up some pieces of petrified chicken and placed it within. I closed the tortilla around all the innards and carefully placed my fingers to cover the piece of chicken that punched through the tortilla.

Now here I am, sitting in front of my girlfriend with a fajita made up of petrified chicken in my hands. What was I to do? If I said I wasn’t hungry anymore, she would know it was a lie. If I said that I wasn’t eating the chicken, it would have been as I was making fun of her! She was too smart to fall for me faking a heart attack. So I was left with no other option than to eat the fajita.

As I took my first bite I could taste the tortilla, cheese, salsa, peppers, onions, and sour cream. I easily bit through the fixings and thought to myself “this might not be as bad as it looked”. That theory was abruptly made false when I got to the first piece of chicken. My mouth immediately stopped as it hit the chicken. As I muscled through the first bite I could only hear a crunching sound as I ate the chicken.

After swallowing the horrendous first bite I forced myself to take a second and then a third. By this time, my girlfriend had made her own fajita was ready to bite into it. As she took her first bite, the errors of her grilling were apparent to her. She bit down until she reached the chicken and then immediately stopped. Her eyes grew wide and immediately stopped eating the fajita. As I finished forcing the third bite down the gullet she told me that I could stop eating the chicken. After that statement I found myself drinking about a liter of water just so the chicken might be able to moisten up a bit before digestion.

For the rest of the night we enjoyed vegetarian fajitas and poked fun about the chicken. She felt very appreciative of the fact that I actually made myself eat the chicken. During the rest of the dinner, we found ourselves taking pieces of the chicken and hitting it together to make the clicking sound of ceramic hitting ceramic. When the dinner was over, we threw the chicken on the law for the woodland creatures to have.

A week later it was still there.