Beware the Ides of March, indeed.

March 15th has always made me think about the assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar, who was done in on the Roman Senate floor on that date in 44 B.C. No more. Now, that date will forever be emblazoned in my brain as the day I got food poisoning. And even though old Gaius was brutally stabbed by a group of his closest colleagues with the final death blow being delivered by a man he looked upon as a son, I still don’t think he suffered more than I did, at the hands of a tainted Red Robin gourmet cheeseburger minus the pickle relish. At least his pain was over in a matter of minutes, whereas I spent two days hunched over the toilet performing a spot-on Linda Blair impersonation. All this in addition to enduring the worst car ride since that girl accepted a lift from Ted Kennedy. My dear friend chauffeured me home from Harrisburg for two and a half hours as I lay in the back seat with my head in a plastic bag. And even though he really loves his car, he assured me that it was totally cool for me to barf in it. That is friendship.

I suspect that, in addition to feeling like Linda Blair in her most famous role, I may have also looked like her. As I stumbled to the ladies’ room in the Turnpike’s Midway rest stop, crowds parted before me like the Red Sea, children clung to their mothers in fear, and it’s possible that grown men may have wept. When I reached the ladies’ room mirror, I noticed that my lips were the same color as my skin which was the same color as the white American cheese that had graced my poisoned burger. It was not a pleasant sight.

Food poisoning. Avoid it if at all possible.