The Rambo Spoon

Rambo Spoon: First Blood

The other night I went out with some friends to see a musical, and on the way there we decided to stop at Burger King because my friend Conny wanted to get a burger. I saw that they had shakes for 99 pence, and sidled up to counter and ordered a Strawberry Cheesecake shake. The guy who took my order promptly went back and put in the vanilla ice cream, but when it came time to mix in the flavor, he just sort of stood there and fiddled around with some stuff for a few moments.

Now, before going too far with this story, I should not that I was not at all surprised to see some odd behaviour at this particular location. It is in the middle of Leicester Square, which is enormously busy with people at all hours of the day and night. Furthermore, London fast food chains don't what we in the USA like to refer to as "menus" on display. They just have really big pictures of a few sandwhiches on big plastic signs, and very few have any sort of pricing attached. That is it. There are no price listings for fries, drinks, or sides. Most of the burgers aren't listed at all anywhere. I have no idea how much a cheeseburger and fries would cost without asking one of the pimple-faced teenagers at the counter. So yeah, the London burger joints are a bit kooky to begin with.

Anyway, the last time I was at this particular Burger King we saw the master of mops in action. If there is a Burger King out there somewhere, this guy is certainly the Mop Prince. A guy dropped his small soda, so about ten ounces of pop and a few ice cubes hit the floor. Without hesitation, the Mop Prince sprung into action. He started out by mopping the immediate vicinity, which made sense. But here is the thing: he never stopped. He decided to mop down the entire damn place. This guy was like the Terminator with that mop. I swear he was sent back from the future just to show spilled sodas who is in charge. This guy had ambition man...I bet by next week he'll be in charge of cleaning out the grease traps in the fryers. God speed to you, you Mop Magician.

Back to my shake. After futzing around for a few seconds, he turns to me and says that they ran out of Strawberry Cheesecake flavoring, and wondered if I would settle for Cookies and Cream. I quickly agreed to his proposal. Satisfied with my purchase, I left and happily ate my ice cream as I walked down the street. But something was wrong, and I didn't realize it at this time. The spoon they give you has a very deep indentation on it, which means that when you purse your lips to try and get all the ice cream off the spoon, the sides of the spoon are really pressed up against you mouth. At one point I glanced down and saw a red streak in my ice cream, and initially thought it was some rogue Strawberry flavoring that the guy put in before it ran out. Quickly though, I realized that the sharp side of the spoon had managed to slice open the inside of my lip and I was bleeding into my ice cream.

First Blood: Part II

I was cut. I was cut and bleeding into my 99 pence shake. It was a surprise attack, the Pearl Harbor of the ice cream world, and my Burger King value item had drawn first blood. I was reeling, and needed a cutman, a good cutman. Too bad Angelo Dundee wasn't around. Things threatened to get a little blurry due to loss of blood, but I knew that if I didn't finish this shake, he was going to finish me. It was a duel to the death, and the only wise thing was to eat the shit out of that sneaky bastard of a shake. Round 1 went to the shake for splitting my lip. Round 2 went to me by coming back strong and digging into the shake with renewed fervor. Round 3 was going to decide the winner.

Rambo Spoon Part III

The clock was running, and the round was almost over. We were getting closer and closer to the theatre, so I knew I had to go for the knockout blow on this backstabbing Burger King Dessert. I reeled the shake by ripping off the see-thru plastic dome to get better access to his creamy innards. Mouthful after mouthful went down, despite my lip pain, and I finished the shake off just before getting to the theatre. I was vindicated. My next order of business was to go back to Burger King and warn them that this fight was over, and they had better not have vengeance on their mind. To drive the point home, I used this classic quote from Rambo himself:

I could have killed 'em all, I could kill you. In town you're the law, out here
it's me. Don't push it. Don't push it or I'll give you a war you won't believe.
Let it go. Let it go.

To their credit, they have let it go. But ever since that night, I've been sleeping with one eye open.