Taste Test

“Hello, Madame. Please be seated right here,” my best friend Sara said in her best Maitre d' accent as she pulled out one of the elegant folding chairs of our backyard fine dining establishment.

Beneath the back deck of my house and hidden from the sweltering summer heat was a restaurant that also transformed into a house, a school, a store, and several other make-believe places. Today it was complete with folding chairs, several large coolers for benches, as well as elegant broken dishes arrayed with rich mud pies and crisp grass salads.

Interrupting the delightful afternoon was the sound of the screen door sliding open and two little feet pattering down the stairs. Peering through the space between the steps were the two curious eyes of my perpetually annoying little sister.

“What are you doing?” She asked excitedly.

I jumped from the table and stood directly in front of the stairs, hoping to conceal some of the inviting restaurant from her blinking eyes.

“Chelsie!” I yelled loud enough so my mom could hear. “Leave us alone! Me and Sara are playing under the deck. Go back in the house!”

My mother’s footsteps pounded overhead as she leaned over the railing, “There is no reason why your sister can’t play down there for a little while with you two.”

Stomping to the nearest chair, I crossed my arms and scrunched down, wrinkling my sky blue Cinderella Halloween costume as the refined atmosphere of the restaurant began to fade. I scowled at the new customer improperly dressed in a pink tank top and blue shorts.

Sensing my distress, the Maitre d' appeared and smiled positively. “I didn’t know that you were expecting a guest! How lovely! Let me pull up a chair!”

The pebbles that made up our finely woven Persian rugs crackled as she drug a cooler to the TV tray.

Chelsie giggled as Sara led her to the seat across from me.

“Just try and play along dork,” I said still fuming.

“I will. And don’t call me a dork, or I’ll tell mom,” she frowned while trying to hide her excitement.

Sara handed me a faded Wal-Mart receipt and my sister an advertisement taken from the middle of the Sunday paper.

“Here are your menus. I will be right back with your drinks,” she turned crunching across the stones awkwardly in my mother’s old high-heels. She stopped at the hose to fill our glasses with fresh, mountain spring water.

Sara returned with the fine crystal Tupperware glasses, “Alright ladies, are you ready to order?”

“I think that we would like to start with some after-tizers,” I said, trying to hide a mischievous grin and pointing to a tray of shining individually wrapped bullion cubes we had stolen from the my mother's pantry.

Catching my glance, Sara smiled and quickly retrieved the little silver packages.

“Ooh!” Chelsie squealed, her blond ponytail bouncing, and Sara presented us each with one little square.

“Can we really eat these?” Her voice so loud that I waited cautiously for my mother’s footsteps overhead before answering.

“Yes!” I said, my eyes wide, but my voice quiet. The thrill of tricking my sister became overwhelming. My response caused Chelsie to eye me suspiciously.

“Yea, I mean they’re way good Chels,” I said casually as if I ate the salty little gems every single day.

“Really, really good,” Sara chimed in, taking one from the tray and peeling away the crisp, foil wrapper.

“What do they taste like?” Chelsie asked as she stalled before her five-year-old curiousity would tempt her into tasting one of those little morsels.

“Like . . . candy!” Sara and I chimed in unison.

However, we knew those little packages contained a blast of pungent and horrible spices only grown-ups could handle and had long since ended our fascination with the horrible little squares.

At the mere mention of candy, my sister’s eyes glazed over. Without even smelling it first, she bravely popped the entire cube into her mouth.

“That was too easy,” I thought to myself, and suddenly I gaped at the scene unfolding across the table from me.

Angry tears formed at the corner of her eyes as she opened her mouth widely to reveal mustard colored foam bubbling from the cube on her tongue.

I lunged across the table and cupped a sweating palm over her mouth, which by this time was erupting like Mount Saint Helens, just in time to muffle an earth-shattering wail. I dragged her across the dining room and carelessly shoved the end of the hose between her reluctant lips.

“O.k., turn it on!” I shouted to Sara who was already poised and ready.

With the turn of Sara’s wrist, water went searing through the hose. I watched as the seam swelled getting close and closer to Chelsie's foaming mouth.

My sister had two choices: She could keep her mouth closed and endure the volcano of beef stew brewing inside her mouth, or she could open her lips and face the blast of the hose. Either way, she was going to get soaked. In less than three seconds, her cheeks filled up so full that they looked like two water balloons. Suddenly, the balloons deflated and a blast of water along with a high-pitched scream spewed out of my sister’s mouth.

Booming into the thick summer air came the one and only sound that any mischievous ten-year-old dreads, “Girls!”

My mom stomped across the deck above us, “What is going on down there?”

“Mom!” Chelsie frantically yelped as she broke free of my grasp and ran up the stairs, soaking wet, coughing, her shoes squeaking with water.

I cringed. Sara vanished.

“Nikki!” My name careened of the deck, spilling over the backyard, causing children close by to cringe, dogs to move a little farther back into the shade of their doghouses, and birds to stop singing.

Needless to say, from that day forward, our fine dining establishment was closed for business and my sister will always have a strange fear of beef stew.