Or shrink my testicles.

Or make my hair fall out. Admittedly the twin dark gods of Heredity and Anti-Dandruff Shampoo have already assured that the last is only a matter of time, but it’s the principle of the thing.

Let us pause there for a moment as my stomach informs me that this egg-like substrate has no godly purpose within my digestive tract. This isn’t helped by my ill-conceived request for onions to be added to said substrate. I mean, I like strong flavors—garlic, onions—there’s no secret about that. Sometimes I show up places smelling like I just invaded a pizza joint, bound and gagged the owners and patrons, and then rolled naked through their store of marinated white gold.

That case never went to trial, dammit, so stop bringing it up.

Anyway, as much as I like garlic, I like onions only to a slightly lesser degree. It’s very hard to do wrong with onions, as far as I’m concerned. Hell, it’s very hard to go wrong, period. I’m not precisely the pickiest of people, being the “you gonna eat that?” man of the family. Yet somehow, in this student feed-barn, where my tax dollars (assuming I had a job) and my exorbitant tuition and the fees charged for my meal plan were presumably paying for me to have a decent meal, a way was found for my meal to suck beyond comprehension. No matter what else, you can’t claim that they lack dedication.

What was wrong with it? Well, a lot of things. I like sweet, slow-cooked, caramelized onions. These were raw. In my omelet. My omelet which has just had heat applied for a ridiculously extensive interval. My omelet which has spots the color and consistency of road tar. Mysteries of physics aside, I can deal with that—a little crunch and tang will add a nice contrast to everything else, provided it’s fairly fresh.

They’re not.

These little root bulbs last saw a knife about a week ago. They have the firm, crisp texture of silly putty and the tang of lead-distilled moonshine. These onions have a history, you see. Before they did duty at the omelet bar, when they were young and fresh, newly savaged by the knife, or more likely, an automated shredder, they were first salad bar material. Their life as a staple of vegetarian junk food was not to be, however, as they sat out there, lonely and forlorn, for three and a half days until they were finally moved to the sandwich bar to grow in potency and strength. After it became apparent that few were brave enough or hungry enough to dare the mighty bulbs (and that those who regularly did needed intense psychological counseling), they were placed in a back room for a night and a day to complete their evolution. When they emerged from their chrysalis, only one function had any possibility of containing them.

The omelet bar.

The omelet bar is a strange place, and the mass-producing omelet bar a stranger one. Asking about their ‘quality ingredients’ is likely to get you beaten; the meats are expatriate cold-cuts from the neighboring sandwich bar, the cheeses come in unmarked five pound bags with dubious seals, and the eggs come in white cardboard boxes marked only with the obscure and terrifying legend: ‘liquid egg with acid’. The other vegetables are much like Neanderthal shamans—old, powerful in flavor and odor, wise in ways strange and mundane, and quite possibly developing rudimentary language.

None of this stops people from ordering and even eating them, though. In many ways, the people who eat omelet are the martini drinkers of the breakfast world—they order it just because they can. And to hell with the effect on their digestive tracts!

The omelet bar is the final stand of the benighted onion, as ingredients in the great machine for those daring enough to incur their wrath. By now they’re strong enough that they don’t actually have to be present to lend their flavor—they need only to be within a thirty-foot radius or so before something begins to take on their distinctive flavor. Eggs, bacon, hash browns, rubber, contact-lens solution—all of them begin to carry the distinctive fragrance of ancient tubers. You don’t even need to put it in your mouth to experience it—exposed skin is enough.

Old, raw onions, something that was once ham before Myghty Porc processors got ahold of it, and a topping of cheese redolent of plastic and rubber, all contained in an only-somewhat-charred wrapping of egg that might or might not have enough dangerous industrial additives to count on both hands. All served up by a surly minimum-wage employee. Yummy.

It almost makes you wish you had one right now, doesn’t it? Now I have to go venerate the porcelain altar, as I’m fairly sure that I have incurred the onions’ wrath.