Reasons Why "I" Would Not Succeed as a Restaurant Chef

That not everyone can be a master chef like Gordon Ramsay, but there are levels of chef work that can come pretty close. I suppose if I were going to chase a dream like this, I would be content with just being a few notches below Ramsay.

Practical, reachable goals. That makes for a sensible life. The main reason being that Gordon Ramsay must have a lot of headaches and stress whereas a chef that is a cut below him does have headaches, but not that many.

I dream a lot. Now I guess that can be both a good and a bad thing. But I do not dream in terms of everything in my dreams going my way. I dream in realism. Just like real life. I think that's a fair arrangement so I won't let myself down at dream's end.

I had a dream many months ago about me, Kenneth Avery, from rural northwest Alabama, getting the opportunity to attend a top-notch culinary academy to learn how to be a regular restaurant chef, not a master chef like Gordon Ramsay.

My short-lived dream of being (just) a restaurant chef was over in a heartbeat. I mean "I crashed and burned" so quickly that I did not know it had happened for two days. That is fast, my friend.

Then when the "Dean of Dare-Devil Culinary Academy," picked me up from being face-down on a back-alley sidewalk and told me I was not going to be a regular restaurant chef, well, I just had to find a quiet place with some paper and pen and write . . .

Reasons Why "I" Would Not Succeed as a Restaurant Chef

• I guess, now that I think about it, throwing uncooked meatballs across the classroom at my pal, "Ted," during class was frowned upon by my instructor.

• Sampling (more than I should have0 the wine that was to be used for cooking demonstrations only got me on the bad side of that same instructor for I was forced to sleep it off in a quiet closet in the kitchen.
• Yelling things like, "gut it, instructor chef. Gut it real good," as my instructor was teaching us how to properly carve-up a ham was not one of my best ideas.
• Holding my throat and "acting" like the food sample another chef instructor gave us to eat was about to take my life must have garnered me a few bad marks.
• Taking a foolish dare from "Ted" for me to walk barefoot on the super-hot grill was not only dangerous, but sealed my fate at the "Dare-Devil Culinary Academy."
• When my meats professor asked me to take a bite of the bacon and turkey he had prepared and then tell the class what differences I found and I just crammed my mouth full of the tasty meat and replied, "not many differences in this bacon and gobbler," I noticed that he scowled at me and wrote something down in his grade book.
• A pretty girl chef student asked me one time before class to do my impression of Peyton Manning, so I threw a meatloaf at the instructor, but told him I was just kidding only made my dream of being a regular chef only farther away of being reached.
• One day in class after some serious thinking, I thought that humor was the answer to my dilemma of most of my instructors being upset at me, so the next day I stood up in class interrupting the instructor and asked, "Does anyone want me to do my sizzling impression of film legend, Robert Mitchum?" No. That was not a good idea. I was made to stand in the hall for the remainder of the class.
• We had a really unusual instructor who loved for us to act-out why we wanted to be a chef. But with me, I wanted to be just a regular chef. Everyone did their impression of a cut of steak. One student did his take on a gas range and then I did my controversial impression of a stomach that was upset due to having too much rich food stored in it and that was the last we saw of "that" unusual instructor.
• One day I thought it would be nice to bring, "Ralph," my tame mouse to class. I was lonely living in the dorm of the "Dare-devil Culinary Academy," so I managed to catch this nice mouse and named him "Ralph." My colleagues loved him. Not so with the instructor who almost took his life along with mine. Stuffy old man.
• My worst instructor said that I was too dumb to boil water so I showed him a thing or two. Before class the next day, I boiled myself three gallons of water and when the know-it-all instructor showed up, I asked him to shove his hand into the pan of water. He laughed. His way of making fun of me and then he shoved his hand into the pan all the way up to his elbow. Then he jerked it out quickly and yelled, "Idiot! That is hot!" I gave him a smug smile and replied, "Now who cannot boil water?"

I did have some interesting adventures at the "Dare-devil Culinary Academy," but with that dream gone, I then set my sights on being a nuclear physicist.