By: Katie Walkley, Peak Associate
This is my long-awaited and highly requested ranking of the Maggie Benston Centre Food Court choices based on how likely I am to recite Robert Frost whilst taking a shit after consumption (in order from least to most). Yes, you read that right. This list includes constipation, which sometimes requires even more poetry to aid me in mourning the shit that could have been.
Ben Gong’s Tea: An unlikely appearance from Robert
The first experience that lightly grazed my mind was my time after Ben Gong’s Tea. Just before the flush, I had a chance to whisper, “She dared no more than ask him with her eyes / How was it with him for a second trial. / And with his eyes he asked her not to ask. / They had given him back to her, but not to keep.” On this day, I saw the tapioca pearls in two ways. They came back to me after enduring the trials of my stomach. Then, just as soon as they reappeared in my life, I had to say goodbye again.
Noodle Waffles: Bobby Frost is here to help you drop that deuce
While I appreciated Robert Frost’s timeless perspective on what it’s like when your shit looks the same as your food, I did not find his words as powerful as the time they coached me through the constipation experienced at Noodle Waffles.
A seemingly menial choice took hours for me to recover from. My lack of excretion led to a severe emotional depletion. I sat there, repeating like a prayer: “Where your face burns and tickles with cobwebs / broken across it, and one eye is weeping.” I heard others coming in and out of the washroom, but I was stuck there with tears streaming down my face, waiting for my turn to flee this hellscape. However, it wasn’t so bad since I had plenty of time to scroll the reels through my AirPods guiltlessly. The comfort this brought me also made me recite Robert Frost’s even more talented great granddaughter, Addison Rae: “Put your headphones on / guess I gotta accept the pain.”
Grill Master: So likely to recite that Robert Frost actually rests his spirit here
On the day I ordered from Grill Master, even the phenomenal songstress couldn’t save me. The weather was storming, but the true tempest took its toll in my bowels. My friend was driving me down Gaglardi and I had to force her to pull over. Without an explanation, I ran into the woods. Among the trees, I could smell her cheeto-flavoured vape from afar and thought aloud, “My little horse must think it queer / to stop without a farmhouse near / between the woods and frozen lake / the darkest evening of the year.”
When I got back to the car, I repeated the lines to her because they were so potently accurate. She didn’t like that she was a “little horse” in this scenario, but she agreed with the rest and rerouted her GPS to take me home instead of our original plans to go to Denny’s.
The final boss: Mad Chicken
My final battle took place at Mad Chicken, and to be honest, I can hardly even blame them. After a hard day’s work of wondering about the legitimacy of my degree, I had a ravenous appetite beyond compare.
I ate so fast that “two roads diverged in a wood and I — / I took the one less travelled by, / and that had made all the difference.” A simple shit was not enough to end my pain. It had to come out the other way.
