John Lee Super Taster

John Lee Super-Taster By Jimmy Jimereeno John Lee was born in a tiny cabin in the woods on a chilly spring morning. At the moment of his birth, it is said that people and animals and race car drivers arrived from all over with gifts for John and his parents. Not just ordinary gifts, though. All the gifts were food. A family from Tokyo brought sashimi. Children from Sicily brought pasta putanesca. Mutton from Egypt. Grapefruit from Florida. Tea from England. Curry from Mumbai. For hours and hours visitors arrived with their gifts. And John Lee did something very interesting. He ate it all. John Lee, you see, was no ordinary baby. He had an enormous appetite. He ate constantly. On the morning after his birth, John ate a hearty breakfast of eggs, sausage, turkey bacon, French toast, hash browns, grits (with butter, of course) and pancakes. By the time he was done eating, it was time for a mid-morning snack: a fruit pizza, half a quiche, three boxes of granola bars, smoked salmon, and a case of bratwurst. Lunch followed this and then a mid-afternoon snack and dinner and dessert and a midnight snack and so on. The only time he stopped eating was to watch his favorite channel, the Food Network. During commercials, of course, he would whip up some of the tasty treats he learned about in the show he happened to be watching. His parents were naturally stumped. They thought that newborn babies were supposed to do a lot of sleeping and a little eating. With some dirty diapers in between. Not John, though. He didn’t sleep for a month. All he did was eat. There was no explaining it. But the day he turned one month old, John’s parents finally figured it out. John Lee ate because he had an extraordinary sense of taste. Things didn’t taste like they did to you and me. Tastes were much more intense and powerful for John. Sweets tasted sweeter. Salty foods were much saltier. And the bitterness of bitter foods was almost overwhelming. If he ate the right things, it made eating more enjoyable and happy than anything you can imagine. Food tasted so good that he never wanted to stop. How did John’s parents figure this out? He told them, of course. “Wow that tastes good,” he said. John’s mom and dad, exhausted from cooking non-stop for the past month were barely surprised. “Taste this,” he said, handing them a cupcake. “It’s so sweet, I can hardly stand it. It tastes like it’s made of pure sugar.” John’s mom and dad gave it a try. It tasted normal to them. Their son obviously had a gift. They made sure he put it to good use.

At his first birthday party, John taste-tested all the different cakes his mom made, to make sure they were just right for the special day. His mom entered his favorite one in a baking competition and won second place! (The Pillbury Dough Boy won…again.) By the time he was four, he was reviewing restaurants for the local newspaper. The owners of the good restaurants made millions when John wrote an article recommending people eat there. He also, however, put over 34 restaurants out of business single-handedly by writing negative reviews. At age five, the Food Network gave him his own show. But it turns out no one was interested in watching him eat 100 pounds of different foods every week and talk about how amazing the flavors were. The show was cancelled, although John enjoyed it thoroughly. It wasn’t until three years later that John ran into a problem with his superhuman tasting abilities. And it was a big problem. A local businessman was causing quite a stir in town. His name was Slappy McSpendAlot and he was the meanest millionaire this side of Mile-High Junction. He was so mean that he once paid $3,500 for a puppy just so he had something cute to kick. He once spent millions building the most amazing and amusing amusement park in the world just so he could close it down 3 minutes before the gates opened. He once sent his dear little granny on a cruise to Jamaica for her birthday. What? That’s not mean? Well ol’ Slappy sent her on that cruise and then paid the ship’s captain $10 million to sail around the world over and over and over…and never come back to shore. Slappy McSpendAlot made every person around him miserable. Except one— John Lee. John was happy every day. As long as he had delicious food to eat, he was as happy as a hornet on holiday. Not even Slappy’s meanness could bring him down. And that drove Slappy nuts. But Slappy had a plan. He started buying every restaurant in town. Slappy knew if John had nowhere to go out to eat, he couldn’t possibly be happy. Without delectable Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers and ice cream sundaes and onion rings smothered in tomato ketchup, John Lee was sure to become depressed. “That’s okay,” said John. “I’ll just start eating in. I used to have my own cooking show. As long as the grocery stores are well stocked, I can cook my own meals. There are lots of recipes I want to try out anyway.” Slappy heard this and started to scream. He couldn’t believe that one supertasting man could ruin his life. And then he had an idea. An awful, terrible idea. “Buying the grocery stores would be too easy,” he said sinisterly. “I’ll buy all the farms and factories that send food to the grocery stores. And I’ll change all the

foods so that they taste nastier than the nastiest tastes you can imagine.” And that’s what he did. If he could pull this off, Slappy would bring a type of misery to John Lee that no one on earth could possibly fathom. Imagine picking up a tasty piece of pepperoni pizza only to take a bite and find out that it tastes like an onion that’s been rotting on your kitchen counter for the past three weeks. That’s what it would taste like to John Lee…times one million. And as an added bonus (for Slappy), everyone else’s food would taste awful, too. What could possibly stop Slappy from terrorizing the tastebuds of the entire town? When John got wind of this, he knew he had to do something. He put down his lunch of homemade vichyssoise and quiche Lorraine and set to work on a plan of his own. The next day, John Lee arrived at the home of Slappy McSpendAlot where he issued a challenge…if Slappy could cook a recipe that John Lee wouldn’t eat, John would leave town. Forever. If it didn’t make John hurl, then Slappy would relinquish control of the town’s restaurants and stores AND buy everyone in the town dinner for a year! The only rules were that it could only be one dish. And it had to be served at exactly 6:00. When Slappy heard this, they say you could see the gleam in his eyes from the rings of Saturn. If there was one thing Slappy liked even more than making people miserable, it was a challenge. This little game was a perfect combination of the two. Since John had only given him until sundown, Slappy had to work and he had to work fast. Even the cheetahs and race car drivers in town were amazed at how quickly Slappy was moving—gathering ingredients, setting water to boil, stirring, mixing and so on and so on. Within minutes some of the vilest, most disgusting ingredients were being combined in Slappy’s kitchen. Smoke billowed. A foul aroma mixed and wafted over the town. The townspeople couldn’t put their finger on it, but they believed it smelled like two parts dirty socks and one part radicchio lettuce. They were worried for John. The intensity of the grossness just might be too much for him to handle. The town grew more quiet as the 6:00 p.m. deadline approached. They all gathered in the town square. John sat a table. Slappy, wearing a grease-stained (at least they hoped it was grease) apron, stood at the microphone. He had a triumphant look about it. Slappy stepped to the microphone. “And now I present the meal that will destroy the super-tasting John Lee. I call it Filet of Sole.” Now normally, Filet of sole involves a tasty piece of fish baked in a combination of butter, garlic and lemon. Slappy’s dish involved the other kind of sole…the bottom of a shoe. And it was

covered with a greenish-brown, bubbling and stinky sauce that appeared to have chunks of a gray, clay-like material in it. John Lee turned his head away in disgust. The audience gasped. Then John Lee did something incredible. He took a bite. His face twisted up like a pretzel. Steam started coming out of his ears. All of the birds and animals and race car drivers that had come to watch started to cry over the pain that this was causing him. To you and me this filet of sole would have been repulsive and disgusting. But John’s super-tasting abilities made this taste like a burnt piece of toast covered in motor oil, drizzled with moldy nacho cheese deep fried in sulfuric acid. Every caring person in the entire world felt a little sick to their stomachs at that very moment, even if they had never heard of John Lee. But then John did something incredible. He looked out at the crowd and saw their sadness and pain. He knew they felt so badly for him but were helpless to do anything about it. And so, his face untwisted. His nausea passed. And he continued to chew. And he swallowed that bite down and took another and another. Soon the entire disgusting entrée was gone. The crowd went wild. The birds sang. The animals danced. The race car drivers high-fived each other. And Slappy scowled. Slappy snapped his fingers and instantaneously (some would say magically) tables appeared in the town square. And on each table was a feast fit for kings and queens. Pile upon pile of delicious foods. The entire town sat down to eat the most delicious meal they’d ever eaten. Except for John. For the first time in his life, he passed up a super supertasting experience. He sat back in his chair and smiled. The light of his smile was so bright that no one even noticed him slip away. The next year was the best year in the history of the town. Every night they sat down to a delicious dinner together and enjoyed each other’s company. Even Slappy became a little less mean. He finally opened that amusement park and left it open for all to enjoy. As for John Lee, he was never heard from again. But if you ever taste something that’s really, really good, be sure to thank him. Because with out John Lee Super-Taster, your food probably would taste like a shoe.

THE END