Near the end of dinner with my mother tonight, she referenced a bag of Quaker Oats Ranch-Flavored Rice Cakes that she had eaten earlier today that contained something unpleasant (other than the ranch-flavored rice cakes).
“I was on the phone while I was eating them,” she explained, “and I reached into the bottom of the near-empty bag and saw something black laying on the shiny foil interior.”
I was fully expecting her to say it was some revolting insect, which serves her right for eating a snack that so fully offends my culinary sensibilities. However, when I asked her to describe the object, she was incredibly vague.
“It was black and sort of flat, and it had a few appendage thingys sticking out. It was probably about three-quarters of an inch long. I don’t have any idea of what it was. I tried hitting it with a ruler [?], and it didn’t break, so I guess it was rubbery. It was almost like a caterpillar, or a shaving of tread from a tire. It was disgusting.”
For some reason, she was completely uncertain as to whether or not this specimen had once been alive. By the time she was finished explaining its characteristics, I was so confused that I would not have been surprised to learn that she later identified the object as a live gerbil. I pressed her for more information.
“Did it look like a bug, like a roach or something? Did it have a face?” I asked, stifling the urge to vomit.
“Well, when I was washing it-“
“You WASHED it?” I immediately imagined my mother in the bathroom at work, gently scrubbing ranch-flavored rice cake dust off the carcass of a petrified roach.
She looked sheepish, and exclaimed, “I wanted to know what it was! I almost ate it!”
True to her nature, she then called customer service. The woman on the phone at Quaker Oats offered to immediately replace the product, to which my mother replied that she was quite fine, thank you, and would not be desiring another bag anytime soon. The representative then consulted her supervisor to determine how to advise my mother to proceed.
“And then they said they would be sending me a special kit so I can mail them my finding. Evidently they wish to retrieve their, um, item.”
The lesson to be learned from this is that ranch dressing is repulsive, and should be banned by the FDA.