It’s worse than a poppy seed muffin.  It’s more dangerous than garlic.  IT’S THE MEATBALL SUB!

I used to wear a red shirt every second day of the week.  It was my stain saving technique back when Subway ran the “Sub of the Day” special featuring meatball marinara on Tuesdays.

It’s a beautiful sandwich – four plump meatballs lined up and blanketed with a warm, soothing sauce – completely worth matching an outfit to. 

But after yesterday, I might retire my red shirts for good. 

A former co-worker stopped by the office to catch up.  It was the lunch hour and what goes better with good company than good food?  And since he was an extra special friend, it had to be the meatball sub.

He had already eaten, putting me in the lunchlight… and the performance of “me and the meatball marinara” was rotten tomatoes. 

There he was, an aspiring lawyer heading to Harvard Law School in three weeks, telling me about an ultra-elite party he had gone to in Manhattan, going on and on about how classy the women he had met there were.  He termed them “Jackies.”

There I was, a meatball maniac holding a soggy sub roll sabotaged by sauce.  Each bite into one side popped a meatball out of the other side.  Fortunately, I had the wrapper on my lap so it caught the fallouts.  Unfortunately, my friend didn’t know this so it looked like I just picked the meatballs off my pants (and, umm, yeah, put them in my mouth).  The Jackie I resembled was Gleason…

From this day forth, meatball subs are only safe on Saturdays and Sundays.  But there’s more out there – tasty threats to our professionalism await us every lunch hour, five days a week.  Got any on your plate?