The Noodle Incident

by tess

It was Super Bowl Sunday 1991. My living room, usually a meager, deserted hallway and a metaphor for my pathetic, aimless life, was bursting with the vitality, sounds, and scents of a small army. Dominic and his crew had convened there in advance of The Big Game. They munched on the bruschetta and calamari fritti that I’d fussed over for hours while I hid in the kitchen saucing the pasta and icing the cheesecake.

Although the television was blasting pre-game minutiae and everyone was talking at once, I heard the words that fell like pennies from his mouth, shiny and worthless, much like Dominic himself.

"Sure hope you guys ate before you came over. The Ice Queen’s spaghetti tastes more like week-old Spaghettios than your mama’s Bolognese."

In one moment of white-hot, unadulterated, seething rage and with the strength of ten Grinch’s, I hefted the enormous glass bowl of spaghetti and hurled it from the kitchen, across the hall, and onto the far wall of the dining room. Had I been a shot put thrower in the Olympics at that moment, they’d have awarded me the gold, silver, and bronze medals. Hell, they’d have created a special platinum medal and given me that, too.

The once chatter- and laughter-filled room was instantaneously morgue silent.

Plates filled with appetizers were abandoned and beer glasses were left to sweat on the cheap black wood laminate of my furniture. Coats, hats, and gloves were collected and carried rather than worn out the door. They left, each of them, without a single word, looking much like a procession of ill-dressed mourners departing an open-casket viewing. Even as I recovered my sanity I was pleased to be alone with my thoughts. And my mess.

I spent that evening picking the spaghetti out of the brass chandelier and the shag carpet, cleaning the sauce off the chenille upholstery and the white wall. It was one helluva job but it was worth it. I didn’t have to put up with Dom’s idiot friends and I didn’t have to watch the goddamn game.

Nothing really changed between Dominic and me. He was still an asshole and I still tolerated it. Dramatic, overstated, emotionally raw moments had been a part of his culture since birth. He was secretly pleased to watch as The Ice Queen had finally been reduced to lukewarm slush.

So the spaghetti spectacle. Mortifying? Absolutely. Immature? Sure. But worth it? Oh yeah, baby. I have never for a single moment regretted The Glorious Noodle Launch of ’91. It was deeply cathartic to finally release years of repressed animosity and concealed despair.

To this day I celebrate Super Bowl Sunday with a big bowl of spaghetti. I don’t throw it, but then again, I don’t watch the stupid game either.