Pick Your Poison

Today’s report comes to you from the realm of complete and utter stupidity. Do I have a brain? Well, you can judge me after you read this post.

About a month ago, I was browsing my local supermarket and saw this:

I exclaimed, “Oh!!! Gundi! Ginger candy!” I bought it and brought it home.

Later that afternoon, I had a craving for a little bit of sugar, and remembering the gundi I opened the package and popped one into my mouth.

Hmmm. The ginger flavor is very weak. Okay, I’ll spit this one out and try another later.

Later, I did just that.

Hmmmm. Doesn’t taste any better than before. and it’s kind of soapy tasting. Yuck. Into the garbage again.

About a week later, I was in the supermarket and asked one of the attendants to describe what gundi was. He said it was to help with bad joints. I said, “like arthritis?” He said, “yes.” OK, I don’t have arthritis, so I won’t need to be eating anymore gundi.

Since then it sat on my kitchen countertop, perhaps awaiting another attempt to see if the taste improved.

A few days ago, my delightful cleaning lady, Pili, was working in the kitchen, and I pointed to the gundi. “Hiki ni chakula gani?” (What kind of food is that?).

She gave me a blank look. “Chakula? Sio chakula.” (Food? Not food,).

“Okay, then what is it?”

Pili doesn’t speak English, but I understood her Swahili well enough. She described the product as something that you put in fire to melt it a little and then use it to stick things together.

“OMG! This is glue???!!!” I grabbed a tube of superglue for comparison and confirmation.

“Eeeeeeee.” (Yes.)

I grabbed my Google translator, and I typed in the word “glue” under the English to Swahili translator. Sure enough, the result was “gundi.”

You’ve got to be kidding me. I ate glue. Twice!

Before you lecture me about eating the gundi before looking it up in the Swahili translator, my response is that I did. However, I didn’t get any results when I went from Swahili to English. And since I didn’t know it was glue, I couldn’t go backwards and determine that gundi was, in fact, glue.

And damnit, it looked exactly like ginger candy!

And damnit, even the store attendant thought it was edible!

In retrospect, I guess I’m really lucky that it wasn’t something seriously toxic, like rat poison. I’m sure it did no harm. But I sure feel silly knowing that I sat around my house chewing on glue pellets.

Moral of the story: when you’re not fer damned sure what it is you’re putting in your mouth, you’d better make fer damned sure that you know what it is first. Gosh!!!!

And stop bitching about the food labeling laws in the United States. That would’ve prevented this from ever occurring, because you know the package would’ve been prominently labeled, DO NOT EAT! THIS IS NOT A STEP.”

And don’t answer the question from the beginning of the post about whether I have a brain. I think we can safely conclude that I do not. Whatevs.

– Badger out