Et Tu, Haricot Vert?

Item: I made some very nice French green beans last night for dinner. I steamed them up in the steamer and was going to have them the way I did Sunday night (I had a lot of green beans): with a little oil and balsamic vinaigrette. Mmm, beans.

Item: I ran out of olive oil the other day. I rooted around in my cupboard and found some of the olive oil I took to Burning Man. It was in a clear plastic squeeze bottle labeled, helpfully, “Olive Oil For Eating” to differentiate it from the cheapo olive oil I used for the sugar scrub.

Item: My dish soap is in an unlabeled clear plastic squeeze bottle. I use a hippie biodegradable dish soap which is sort of a yellow color.

Item: OH MY GAAAAAAAAAAAH I ATE SOAP I ATE SOAP I ATE SOAP ON MY GREEN BEANS AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

I mean, I thought it looked a little viscous when I drizzled it on there, but the worst part was that I just kept eating the beans, trying to figure out what that awful taste was. “Hmm! This one tastes bad too! Could it be the balsamic I’m using? Man, this one is awful! What’s up?” I finally figured it out when I happened to look up at the open cupboard and saw the helpfully labeled “Olive Oil For Eating” up there on the shelf, and then noticed the bottle of stuff that was the EXACT SAME COLOR as the oil not on the shelf but right there on the counter, next to my poor beans. Ugh. Ugh! AAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHH!

I drank a gallon of water and rinsed my mouth out two hundred and eighty times and double-fisted some chocolate chips because I thought they would, somehow, sort of counteract the soapiness, like they’re sort of rich, right, so maybe that would deactivate the soap somehow and I ate my dinner as quickly as I could to try to get the taste out of my mouth and I brushed my teeth and drank some more water and then it was time for bellydance and the taste was still in my mouth.

It wasn’t until I was in the car (still screaming “I ATE SOOOOOOOAAAAAAAPPPPPPP,” by the way) that I started to burp these crazy burps, like burps that lifted me off the car seat, burps that kind of hurt my stomach and made me wonder if bubbles were going to jet out of my mouth. As I continued burping these awful, painful burps, I stopped wondering that and wondered instead if bubbles were going to start coming out of my ears and nose too, because the longer I burped my miserable, soapy belches, the more I began to feel that the soap was sort of spreading through my entire body, to the point where I am now fairly sure I have soap in my sinuses.

I reported my misadventures to the girls in my class, all of whom laughed heartily at my stupidity, and made it through the class all right, with only a little tummyache. I drank some hot chocolate when I got home as I still believed, somehow, that chocolate is the correct antidote to soap consumption. I went to bed feeling all right but this morning when I woke up my whole mouth was soap. My stomach is soap. Every part of me, every little crevice in my body, is soap. Soap in my nostrils, soap between my toes, soap in my elbows and armpits, soap behind my eyeballs, I ATE SOAP I ATE SOAP EEEEEEEEEEEGGGGGGGHHH, soap in between my teeth and under my tongue, soap in my gall bladder and appendix and my spleen. Soap everywhere. I just drank some more hot chocolate, and it isn’t working, because I can still taste soap. I fear I will taste it until I die.