Something Hard in my Mouth

  Because I live in both excess and denial, I decided that my lunch was not enough and I should treat myself to a dessert. Since I rarely carry any cash ( or more specifically, have any money)  I had to count out the change in my Kermit the Frog wallet and figure out what ninety-something cents could get me. I walked around the mall's food court which closely resembled a third world country and offered me little more then free samples of mystery-meat on toothpicks along with a bout of free diarrhea to follow. When I noticed a woman pulling a tray of peanut butter cookies out of an oven , I did not hesitate to make my decision.
     I bought the cookie and typically, began to eat it before the cash register drawer closed.  Two bites in, I bit down into something hard. Maybe, I thought in my haste, I had eaten some of the wax paper that the cookie was wrapped in,otherwise surely it was just a crispy edge of the cookie or uncooked wad of flour. Unable to break it with my teeth, i reached in my mouth and pulled out what looked like a little bone. I was about as pleased with this discovery as I was with finding the Gloria Loring compact disc George once slipped into my collection, and in fact made the same proclamation with both ("What the fuck is this?!?") . 
    I immediately turned around and confronted the Indian family that both worked at and apparently lived at the restaurant that the cookie was purchased at. They each handled the small ( most likely rat ) bone in their gloved hands , studying it and commenting on it in their native language until passing it to the final family member , a man who decided the best way to test the foreign object was to put it in his mouth and try to break it with his own teeth. Leaving his mouth open as he clamped his teeth down on the apparently unbreakable object his face contorted into what looked like a character from a "Popeye" cartoon or even worse,  an actor from the " Popeye" movie . I personally could have done without this haunting image, but since I had to see it , i felt a strong need to describe it to everyone I  have encountered since the incident occurred . In my experience, there is only two kinds of people who put things in their mouths without question; babies and whores. Whatever the object actually was mattered much less to me then the fact that it was definitely a non-cookie ingredient.
     I told my coworker I was having lunch with at the time ( a girl of white - trash descent ) about the ordeal as we left the food court.  She offered me the sort of comfort, I could have only gotten from her .
     "Motherfucker! I ain't trying to get in your shit or nothin' but that shit was in yo' mouth first, then his! Wasn't that fucker afraid he might get AIDS or somethin' from you?" she squalled in the food court as I picked up my pace to leave.
      "First of all," i explained "I don't have AIDS! .  Second of all , you cannot get AIDS from, sharing a bone, well, actually, oh, never mind!" .
       She went on to ask "You at least got yo' money back  from them motherfuckers - right?" . 
       I stared at her split ends and said "Of course I did!".
       Actually I didn't . The Indians had picked this exact moment not to understand English, and instead of money only offered me another cookie, which I of course ate, because I live in both excess and denial.