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An IHOP Kind of Guy Am I

A few years ago, I realized that I was an IHOP kind of guy. We were eating at IHOP (yes, International House of Pancakes) and it was one of those “aha” moments. I wish it had been a classy Italian restaurant with the white table cloth, the maitre de, the fine glasses. But no, I’m talking IHOP—kids eat free on Fridays IHOP. Lower-middle class IHOP. I relax when I’m there. I don’t feel stuffy, don’t feel like people are going to look at me funny if I forget to put my napkin on my lap or use my salad fork with the main entrée or my regular fork with the salad. I have no clue when it comes to those things. Just now, I realized I don’t even know what to call the main fork to distinguish it from a salad fork. Is there a different word? I don’t even know. That’s why I belong at IHOP. It doesn’t matter there.

On that night, I ordered fish n’ chips. I know, a guy my age shouldn’t be eating deep-fried food, but I don’t like Greek salads and olives and cucumbers or cold noodles or any of those uppity kinds of foods. I like batter-dipped and buttered. I like deep-fried anything, even chicken livers. When I was young we used to drive 70 miles to Lebanon, Illinois just for the fried chicken livers. I justify eating this way by saying I can still do quite a few chin ups. I’ll probably drop-dead doing chin ups, even though I can do quite a few of them, because of those fried foods. What will they say at my funeral?

Folks, Chris was a nice guy. He could even do twenty chin ups after he was 50 years old. But he loved fish n’ chips and batter-dipped shrimp. Now you’d never think that a plate of batter-dipped shrimp could kill a man, ladies and gentlemen, but it was that journey of a thousand miles that begins with a single step. Or in Chris’s case, that journey of a thousand Shrimp platters that began with a single dip--into the cocktail sauce, that is. Well, actually, he liked ketchup better than cocktail sauce. Extremely talented guy, but you can’t take on fried foods and ketchup stuff like that and expect to win. Let us contemplate on Chris’s life, and beware of deep-fried and batter-dipped things. And here today, his father-in-law, who won’t eat anything green, still lives on past seventy years old. You might look at these two and say, “Is life fair?” or “Is God fair?” Sometimes, life is a mystery. Food is a mystery. The human body is a mystery. . . . And oh yes, folks, that reminds me. Please join us for pie and ice cream in the fellowship hall after the service today. Amen.
Did I mention the fried chicken strip salad is pretty good, too?

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