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31-Day Challenge

Day Nine: The Worst Meal You’ve Ever Eaten

If only I hadn’t wanted a puppy.

Karen Schwartz
3 min readJan 9, 2023

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Photo by Joseph Biscocho on Unsplash

Once again, the worst meal I’ve ever eaten comes down to interpretation. I’ve had poor restaurant meals that I deemed unacceptable because of their cost and others that were unsatisfactory because the greasy food made me feel queasy. Still, no meal has ever stood out so drastically as when an eatery served me lima beans. Lima beans, of all things? That was a portion of food they served in their restaurant, and because of that emotionally charged meal, I still can’t look at the pesky bean today.

With animals, particularly dogs, I was the anomaly of the family. My parents and brother were a take-it-or-leave-it bunch about owning a pet. But, for me, it was my life’s mission. Never did a chance go by when I wasn’t coaxing my parents to buy me a puppy. Usually, it was a quick no, and the discussion was over. Until that day when we all went for dinner — the day hope turned to possibility. At the restaurant, a conversation about getting a dog was on the table, but first, my parents wanted me to finish my supper.

Well, this posed a problem. The main course caused me no issue, but to get to the discussion, I’d need to swallow a generous helping of the nasty bean. I didn’t like the taste or the texture. But we were talking…

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Karen Schwartz
Karen Schwartz

Written by Karen Schwartz

Children's picture book author, fiction writer, personal essayist, kindness specialist, and lover of chocolate.

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