Poop Mints

My family would go to Pizza Hut a lot. Mainly, because it was one of the top three "fancy" restaurants in town, the other two being steak houses. (Which we saved for really special occasions.) I loved a lot of things about "The Hut" (as I affectionately called it after their commercials told me to)- the "Book-It" program, the "Land Before Time" hand puppets, and their short-lived mascot "Pizza Face". But most of all, I loved the basket of free mints by the cash register. It was nice to feel like someone trusted me to take just one. (Or maybe two if you were a good customer. And I was always a REALLY good customer.) Sometimes I would take a couple on my way back from the bathroom, just because I could. Free! And never an empty basket! The stuff dreams about mints are made of.

But after my mom watched a 20/20 special, she knew that those mints came with a hidden price. (Curse you, John Stossel!) Apparently, I wasn't the only one grabbing mints after using the bathroom. Turns out that A LOT of people get mints after a trip to the loo and a lot of those people don't wash their hands. And a lot of the time, those people have POOPED. Then somehow, through the black magic of John Stossel, the poop that didn't get washed off of the pooper bounces off of their hands and onto the mints, creating the E-Coli-inducing POOP MINTS.

After mom told us what John Stossel had burned into her brain, we continued to get the poop mints anyway. But now we pop them off the wrapper right into our mouths, not risking contact with the hand that touched the poop wrapper. Because we CALL them poop mints, but it's really just the wrapper you have to watch out for. Poop-safety first.