This
is the Powdered Doughnut Story, written a couple of times before.
It
was October of 1992. Amanda was five and Sarah was eight years old.
We had gone to Pizza Hut to use some coupons and have a relaxing
dinner with no cooking on my part. I had picked the girls up from
Benefield Elementary right after school, and we went directly to the
public library – the one on Highway 29 almost to downtown
Lawrenceville. We spent an hour there, but being hungry, we headed
from there to the Lilburn Pizza Hut – the one with the clock in the
corner with a swiftly moving minute hand such that entire days go by
during a single meal!
Sarah
had her first Book It! coupon of the school year. This entitled
her to a free personal pan pizza with one extra topping and a star to
add to the Book It! pin she had on her backpack. Sarah asked
for extra cheese as her topping. I had a coupon for two large pizzas
– so I ordered a vegetarian to take home for us to graze on the
rest of the week, and a pepperoni lovers special for Amanda and me to
dine on at the restaurant. The waitress did not disguise her surprise
at such a huge order for just the three of us.
After
the pizzas arrived at the table, it soon became apparent that I was
guilty of poor judgement in my choice of restaurants for dinner
that evening. Sarah had two loose teeth, and biting into pizza was
not only difficult and uncomfortable, it was eventually undo able as
Sarah put down her piece and said she had lost her appetite. Offering
to cut the pizza into very small bits did not help, Goober just
wanted to stop eating altogether.
Amanda
and I felt bad. It was all we could do to finish one piece of pizza
each ourselves before we lost our appetites too. The waitress
approached the table and said, “Well, I knew you weren't going to
eat all that pizza, but I sure thought you would eat more than you
did!”
She
picked up the trays to carry the pizzas back to the kitchen to box up
for us to take home, and as she did, I commented, “Sarah has two
loose teeth, and she can't chew on the food.”
With
that, the waitress set the pizzas back on the table so she could use
her hands while telling us the following:
“A
friend of mine has a daughter, and one morning when her daughter was
about the same age as your daughter here, she came down to the
breakfast table and took a bite out of a powdered doughnut. With that
one bite, her tooth which had been loose came out, and her gum
started to bleed.
“She
went into the bathroom and dabbed at her mouth for a little bit to
get the bleeding to stop, and then her mother told her to go finish
her breakfast so she would not be late for school.
“The
daughter went back to the kitchen and took another bite out of that
powdered doughnut, and then suddenly she went into convulsions!
“As
you can imagine, the poor mother was beside herself with panic! They
got the daughter to the hospital where the convulsions stopped. After
two days of tests, no one could figure out what had happened to her
or why.
“Finally
the doctor asked the mother to tell him one more time the exact
sequence of events the morning the daughter went into convulsions.
The mother explained again about how the little girl had bitten into
a powdered doughnut after losing a tooth. The doctor came to the
conclusion that when the girl bit the doughnut, the sugar went into
the wound left by the missing tooth and immediately entered the
bloodstream and the blood took the sugar straight to the
brain, and that's what caused her to have an epileptic fit!
“So
mind that your little girl does not eat any powdered doughnuts when
her loose teeth come out!”
With
those words of caution, the waitress picked up our pizzas once again
and headed toward the kitchen. As the three of us closed our gaping
mouths, I said to the girls, “Well, you just never know what kind
of a story you are going to get when you make polite conversation
with a stranger!”
And
the take-home message for y'all is to mind those powdered doughnuts!
They can pack quite a punch!
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20151028 Powdered Doughnuts
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