Hey, who's up for a relatively low-stakes tale of pain, humiliation, vandalism, and retail theft involving me that is absolutely 99% my wife Nikki's fault and if she tells you any differently she is a LIAR? It's story time! Mute if you hate long stories!

So, Nikki and some of her friends in her office are trying to eat a little healthier at work, and in said effort they alternate preparing and bringing in breakfast and lunches for each other. It is a good thing, and I support it.

Today was supposed to be one of Nikki's days, and we meant to food prep for it yesterday. Got all the stuff at the beginning of the weekend. Sunday came and we didn't do it. The reasons may be erotic in nature. It's unimportant to the story.

Nikki said she'd just buy them all lunch today with apologies and no big deal. Fine. Except I couldn't sleep last night. And around 4:00 a.m. I was wide awake in bed and decided, screw it, I'm a nice guy, I'll get up and make all the food for them. Yay me, right?

So I prepare all the makings for Big Mac Salad, one of my specialties. It's a salad that tastes like a Big Mac. As should be evident in the name. We use sugar-free Thousand Island dressing. It's a good time. Breakfast is supposed to be egg white muffins. The plot twist is coming.

Egg white "muffins" involve mixing up egg whites with various ingredients, pouring those ingredients into a muffin tin, and baking them. Simple. I dice up jalapeño, cilantro, onion. It's all going smoothly.

Time to mix everything together and pour it in the muffin tin! Only...where is our muffin tin? We must have one, yes? This was Nikki's plan. Nikki is a baker. What is a baker without MUFFIN TINS I ASK YOU. But I cannot, for the life of me, locate one in our kitchen or garage.

I call my MIL. It is now like 5:30 in the morning. But she's awake. "Do you have a muffin tin I can borrow?" "You already borrowed it." "Oh. We didn't bring it back?" Approx nine million years of listening to her searching her kitchen later and apparently no, no we did not.

What happened, dear reader, is every year after we do our taxes something in the house breaks. It's more than a tradition, it's an inescapable curse. We angered or slighted some warlock and can never make amends. This year, immediately after taxes, our stove sh*t itself.

So we purchased a new one. Had it delivered, installed, the old stove carted away. Neither Nikki, FOR WHOM BAKING IN THIS HOUSEHOLD IS ALMOST SOLE PROVINCE AND WHO PUT THE GODDAMN THING THERE, nor I remembered to check the old stove storage. Where the elusive muffin tin was.

Goodbye, Nikki's mom's muffin tin. Maybe you were salvaged by someone at the stove recycling. Maybe you're gestating muffins to their delicious, cake-y fruition at this very moment in a new household. A more attentive household. I hope so.

ANYWAY. So I have all this stuff prepped, but no muffin tin. I decide no big deal. NO BIG DEAL. I'll run to Ralph's and buy a new one. They're open. They're just around the way. There won't be anyone there this time of morning. Take me five minutes.

It was meant to be a simple errand. Mask up, run inside the store, grab a muffin tin, back before the cilantro starts to lose its vibrancy. I didn't even pop the cutting board in the fridge. I was going to be that quick about it.

Quick quiz, folks: What do you do after you dice up hot peppers? WHAT DO YOU DO? What is the one very important personal grooming step you should always take after handling the innards and seeds of very hot peppers? ESPECIALLY before LEAVING THE HOUSE?

So yeah, as I'm turning into the Ralph's parking lot, I rub my right eye. Just a little. I admit it. I violated the holy pandemic tenet of touching one's face. And I did it at the worst possible moment. I rubbed ALL the fiery essence of several peppers right into my eyeball.

It wasn't the bad at first, folks. And it wasn't my first rodeo with a capsicum ocular mishap. It certainly couldn't be any worse than the time Nikki did the same thing with her hands and my penis, right? (True story for another time). I figured hey, I'll POWER THROUGH IT.

The confidence with which I strode inside that Ralph's, my friends. The sheer, unadulterated hubris. "I'll blink it out," I thought, because I am the opposite of smart. "I barely touched it. The peppers weren't even that hot. I'll be fine."

I didn't even go to the cookware aisle. I BEGAN TO BROWSE. "Oh hey we also need cucumbers, let me check those out. How do you tell if a cucumber is ripe? Do you squeeze it? Lemme squeez it. It feels sorta like one of those rubber balls in the bin at Target. What does that mean?"

As I am having this dialogue with myself concerning the lifecycle of the English cucumber, I begin to sweat. Just a little. Into my right eye. And as the sweat hit my eye, the air hit the sweat hitting my eye. AND MY BRAIN BEGAN TO SCREAM A BANSHEE WAIL OF PAIN HITHERTO UNKNOWN

It was EXCRUCIATING. I could not open my eye at all lest the very air we breathe stab my pain centers with a thousand tiny swords. And keeping my eye shut was like trying to restrain an angry toddler punching the inside of my eyelid with spiked knuckles.

I start to panic. I can feel my eye swelling as it continues to throb in agony. I am now pouring sweat. My monkey brain assures me that eye will have to come out now, as surely there is no recovering from trauma such as this. I am standing in the middle of Ralph's doubled over.

At that moment a voice much smarter than mine that somehow existed in my own head mentioned a very interesting fact. "Hey, you know what supermarkets usually have in general abundance? Milk. That may be relevant to your current interests."

MILK. YES. I hobble-sprint to the dairy freezer, attempting with one eye to locate the smallest container of milk available. WHY ARE THERE SO MANY DAIRY PRODUCTS AND WHY DO THEY ALL HAVE WHITE LABELS??? Will half-and-half work? Is skim too weak? Does sour cream count as milk???

I settle on a pint bottle of whole milk and literally crawl along the adjacent wall to the nearest restroom sign. Honestly my whole head is numb by this point. I lock myself inside one of the single's restrooms I think was the men's but f*ck your binaries especially atm y'know?

CURVE BALL: I try with trembling hands and limited vision to open the milk. People have been opening milk for as long as milk has been bottled. How f*cking hard can this be, right? This is a caveman task. Brute strength. I'm GREAT at those.

Only, my friends, only THIS MILK BOTTLE SEE this milk bottle was uncircumcised. There was plastic foreskin COMPLETELY COVERING the cap. WHY. And I could not pry this plastic away to save my life or my eye.

It is worth noting at this point and as several of you including @UrsulaV have already pointed out, this is all happening while I am standing next to a sink UTTERLY FILLED WITH RUNNING WATER and listen I don't claim to be a master strategist okay

My reptile brain hissed MILK and was the only solution it would accept in that moment. So I attempted to solve the worst Nickelodeon's Legends of the Hidden Temple challenge EVER the way I usually solve most of my problems: by using a knife, which I generally carry with me.

Now, many of you will say Matt you should've used your knife to cut away the obstructing plastic and yes you are correct. I had formulated an alternate plan however. And ho-boy did I think I was MacGyver in that panicked moment, lemme tell you.

My plan was thus: Puncture the CENTER of the plastic milk bottle with my knife, very very delicately, just enough to allow me to in a highly controlled and professional manner, squirt small amounts of milk from the bottle into my injured eye as needed. Simple. Elegant. Effective.

I wish to reiterate several key factors before pressing on: 1) I was still in an immense amount of pain. 2) Everything I am describing occurred in a matter of seconds. 3) This plan made perfect sense to me at the time.

Here is the good news: The puncturing of the milk bottle part went well. I am a fair hand with a blade, I am. The hole was small, the leakage was controlled and contained. The surgery was a smashing success.

Here is the not awesome news: To successfully complete the second phase of my plan, I was required to manually and DELICATELY squeeze the milk out of the bottle through the surgical hole I had made in said bottle.

Here are the instructions my brain gave my hand: "Please apply MINIMUM pressure to the bottle you are holding, just enough to engage a thin stream of its liquid contents."

Here is what my hand heard: "HULK SMASH HULK SMASH HULK SMASH CRUSH BOTTLE LIKE SKULL OF ENEMY SMAAAAASHHH"

OH. Semi-important information: By this point in the restroom I had removed my shirt. Because it seemed like a good idea before dousing my face with milk.

So there is me, naked to the waist, eye pulsing and swollen to the size/color of sun-ripened tomato, craning backwards over the sink of a Ralph's bathroom, head tilted like Jennifer Beals on the poster for Flashdance, as I turn the bottle held above my face into a MILK GRENADE.

It f*ckin' exploded. Everywhere. All over me. All over the bathroom. And listen I could make any number of colorful ejaculatory jokes/metaphors here but I am not going to because this is a story of human error and suffering and it is SERIOUS LITERATURE

You have to understand in that moment I DID NOT EVEN CARE about the wreckage I had just caused. My singular mission was still MILK IN HURTY EYE ONLY that was it that was my everything.

There was still milk in the bottle. At the bottom. I could feel it. I COULD SENSE IT. I only had to pry the already half-destroyed bottle open from the middle. Which I did. Which made no sense because I could've just poured it out normally. I will not be taking questions.

So I pour several tablespoons of milk directly into my eyeball and then toss the shredded bottle away like an empty artillery shell and did I feel the relief I had sought through pain and adversity? Not really. I mean kinda? Maybe? It was sorta better? I guess?

At this point, inevitably I'm sure you will agree, there came a gentle knocking at the bathroom door.

A voice beyond the door, no doubt the source of the knocking, did not wait for a reply to said knocking. It spoke to me thusly: "Sir, you're not allowed to take things from the store into the bathroom."

And indeed I HAD noticed a sign upon entry, out of my single functioning eye, informing potential bathroom users products WERE NOT ALLOWED IN THE BATHROOM. I assumed some policy would make allowances for emergencies. Perhaps I had chosen to ask forgiveness rather than permission.

At this point I was finally able to take a step back from things and assess my situation. Here's what I came up with: I was a 6'4", 380-pound half-naked man in gym shorts covered in milk with a swollen red eye who'd just destroyed a bathroom I did not own.

Now, how to REMEDY this situation? Again, my reptile seized upon the simplest and most actionable answer: Lie to this person who cannot see you. Clean yourself up and clean the bathroom up and leave the store as briskly as possible. No one will ever know.

PERFECT PLAN. BATHROOMS ARE MADE FOR CLEANING. I just need...yes there it is. An automatic paper towel dispenser. It operates on sensors. LIKE IN THE FUTURE. It is like paper towels IN SPACE. I feel like Buck Rogers every time i use one and...wait...why aren't they coming out?

No paper towels, friends. None. I wanted to scream, "AM I TRAPPED IN A GODDAMN SITCOM???????" FINE. Toiler paper. Not ideal, but workable. It's encased in some kind of heavy duty faraday cage bolted to the wall, but surely an end is poking out...somewhere...surely...NOOOOOOOOOOO

All the while I had not answered the individual on the other side of the door. A fact that had not gone unnoticed by them.

"Sir?"

Gentle. Probing. Unassuming. Maybe a little suspicious, but aren't we all in this world of malice and cruelty and inscrutable human nature?

"I had..." I began, more unsure of myself than I'd been since I was a very small child understanding of the world only that I possessed no power over it or myself, "...an emergency."

"Are you okay?" they asked, very genuine concern there, naked and unveiled in their voice. Touching, that. For a stranger, a potential impediment to their professional life.

And how could I answer, friends, except honestly?

"No," I said.

"Do you need help?" More urgency in their voice now, an urgency that spoke of a readiness to act, to do whatever was necessary to intervene on behalf of an unseen stranger in distress. I had so much respect for this disembodied individual, their professionalism, their humanity.

But their question was much more complicated than the first. Because intrinsic in it was "what MANNER of help do you require?" And oh such levels there seemed to me to be to THAT sub-question. It seemed to me I needed so many unrelated varieties of help with so many issues.

I didn't know how to answer them. There was no lie I could tell them that I could maintain outside the context of a locked door that was sure to be opened at some near point in the future. There was no truth I could tell that would fully encapsulate how I felt in that moment.

So, without any other recourse and without even a tenuous grasp on a possible verbal explanation that would come within a million miles of anything even vaguely resembling coherence, I chose to answer them in the only way that would illuminate the truth they sought...

Without another word, I opened the bathroom door.

Friends, to describe the look on the face of the beholder i found outside the bathroom as they only began to absorb what they were witnessing in the Thing I had become over the last minutes...how can I? Have you ever truly realized the AWESOMENESS, the ENORMITY of the universe?

It was that. It was a look of un-comprehension even as you KNOW, not think and not believe and not suspect or theorize or ponder, but KNOW what you are perceiving is bigger and realer and more fundamental than anything you have yet encountered in your time upon this Earth.

Anyway his name was Albert and he was very nice. He once squirted Picamas in his eye at a birthday party. So he got it. He got me a towel and said they'd clean up the bathroom. I had to pay for the milk tho. A small price, really.

EPILOGUE: My eye had begun to shrink and clear and the pain was much less. I dried myself off and dressed. I slouched to the cookware aisle with my destroyed milk bottle and retrieved a 12-slot muffin tin, which I purchased. HOWEVER.

Upon returning home, to my kitchen, to the diced jalapeno that had done me wrong, I realized in my post-trauma haste and malaise I had in fact grabbed TWO muffin tins stuck together. And only paid for one. After all of that, after Albert's grace, I had stolen from Ralph's.

I have decided not to return the excess muffin tin. I will pay for it. Perhaps leave the money in a thank you card addressed to Albert. But I'll give the muffin tin to Nikki's mom, to replace the one we allowed to be spirited away in our stove. Thus closing the muffin tin loop.

Now, in closing, you may ask what I learned from all of this. Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. If the same thing happens tomorrow morning there is a 99.9% likelihood I will repeat precisely every step I have just painstakingly outlined. Because I can only be what I am.

Thank you for your time. Thank you for your attention. Here is a pic of me and my eye in the aftermath of this story in the same Ralph’s bathroom just to prove this a real thing that happened.

OH and the egg white “muffins” came out immaculately. God bless.

THE END