TELLTALE CULINARY POLKA-DOTS

I feature myself a fashionable man. I own ten suits and two drawers full of sweaters. I have a huge collection of designer ties, all polka-dot.

No, none of them was intended to be that way. I am not obsessed with polka-dots. They simply tell the story of another of my obsessions: sloppy food eaten by a man who cannot eat it without slobbering it on his tie.

Red polka-dots, for example, are the remnant of blobs of ketchup from a juicy hamburger that I have just eaten. Suspicion falls on me when I am nowhere near a kosher eatery. The discerning critic might assume that I have indulged in a treife hamburger at McDonald’s, to which I can only roll my eyes heavenward and swear to klop an additional “Al Chet” next Yom Kippur.

Then there is the yellow polka-dot, a sure sign that I have recently returned from New York. There I have certainly indulged in a hot, thick corned beef sandwich slathered in bright yellow mustard. Thank God, it is not the chazzerei that pretends to be a corned beef sandwich in my rural South – a single slice of smoked beef on white bread slathered with mayonnaise and served beside a glass of chocolate milk.

What about my fashionable pink polka-dots? Ah, that was when a snooty congregant insisted that I try her specialty: gefilte fish congealed in raspberry Jello. A huge polka-dot of it plopped onto my tie as I tried surreptitiously to feed it to the dog.

Finally, there is the telltale green polka-dot, whenever I swear to Linda that I’ve had a healthy salad for lunch. She knows that the green is simply a cover up for the fat, juicy, carcinogenic steak that I had really eaten.

My brothers: If you enjoy the same eclectic cuisine that I do, make sure to purchase a multicolored polka-dot tie that confuses your messy eating with haute couture. Better yet, take a job that allows you to leave your tie at home. Become an artist and spatter your smock with today’s lunch. Only you will know the truth while everyone around you will think that you have become the next Rembrandt.