SOMEBODY DOESN’T LIKE SARA LEE

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Well, the side effects should be kicking in any minute now.

Nausea, fever, and a bunch of other pleasant stuff are possibly in my future, as I have won a most unfortunate lottery. I call it the Wiener Lottery.

As many of you may know, Sara Lee recently recalled many of their products because of the possibility that they may contain listeria bacteria, which has more vomit-inducing ability than Celine Dion. One of those products that Sara Lee whips up in what must be a very large kitchen is Ball Park hot dogs. (She also makes Hanes underwear, which I hope she produces in a room other than her kitchen.) As luck would have it, my refrigerator was temporary housing for some potentially lethal Ball Parks. The bad part, for me at least, is that I had already eaten six of the eight Death Dogs.

I did a little bit of research and found that the bacteria is most dangerous to pregnant women, the elderly, and people with weakened immune systems. While I am not, to the best of my knowledge, pregnant, elderly, or weakened, I was still a little concerned. I read that in healthy people, the listeria causes "flu-like symptoms." I don’t know about you, but when I get the flu, I go all out -- the burning eyes, the wrenching stomach, the body aches that feel like a minivan has been dropped on you. If I get the flu, I go all out for the total body death flu. I do not see "flu-like symptoms" as something to downplay.

After realizing that I had unwittingly joined a game of Russian Hot Dog Roulette, I called the Sara Lee Vomitline, or toll-free number as some people call it. A woman answered the phone. I told her that I had heard of the recall, and that I had eaten six of the hot dogs.

"Did you eat them after you heard about the recall?" she asked. Yeah, that’s usually what I do when I found out there is potentially lethal bacteria in my food -- go for extra helpings!

The woman said she was going to give me another number. "OK, here’s the number you need to call -- 911." No, kidding, she gave me another toll free number, a special hotline of sorts set up specifically to handle callers who may be making their last phone call. I called the next number, and a guy who sounded a lot like Desi Arnaz answered the phone. I explained to him my problem, and asked what I should do. Here’s the brilliant dialogue that occurred:

DESI: You should go to a doctor.

ME: But I don’t feel sick.

DESI: You should still go to a doctor.

ME: Will Sara Lee pay for it?

DESI: I don’t have that on my screen.

ME: Huh?

DESI: I said that’s not on my screen. But it does say you should go to a doctor.

Sensing Desi had the medical savvy of a screwdriver, I hung up the phone. I sat there for a minute and then decided that I would call back and see if anyone else was working there. A nice woman answered the phone. She sounded nothing like Desi Arnaz. I explained to her what had happened on my previous call, and that Desi had been as helpful as a cantaloupe. "Well," she said, "that’s because we’re just the answering service. We’re just taking numbers and having professionals call you." I asked her if perhaps she might want to share that with her co-workers. She didn’t say anything, leading me to think she was not that far away from Desi on the intelligence scale.

I asked the woman if she knew when someone would be calling me, and she said, you guessed it, it wasn’t on her screen. I told her that she should note that, should someone call and not receive an answer, it may be because I am lying on the kitchen floor, twitching my final poison hot dog-induced twitch. Again, I was met with silence.

Eventually, I gave up on the Sara Lee hotline idea, and did the sensible thing -- I called the grocery store where I bought the hot dogs. I asked the person who answered the phone if I was going to die a horrible death. "No," she said, "at least not from the hot dogs." This made me feel a little better, even if my medical advice was coming from a 16-year-old high school student who was probably much more concerned with whether Billy Thomas liked her than if I developed some horrible affliction as a result of lunch.

So that’s where we are. I’ll just sit here, waiting to see if I will be taken down by the dreaded listeria virus. Also, I will wonder who came up with that slogan: "Nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee." Do you think they had this kind of thing in mind when they came up with that? I doubt it. Personally, I can think of one person who is not too fond of Ms. Lee as we speak. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m feeling a little queasy.