So the other day, Colette and I were hanging out with friends at an outdoor blues festival in Columbia, Mo. (home of the undefeated Mizzou Tigers, yeah!), and we’d sat down for a bite to eat. The few available picnic tables were all occupied, so our best option for a place to do our chowing was a street curb. Colette had bought some ribs and offered me one. Never a person to turn down offered food (provided it is not made of tuna or vegetables), I grabbed a piece of meaty goodness.

And of course I immediately dropped it. The rib landed in the street, right by the curb. I cursed my poor fortune and the gods who bestowed it upon me, then picked the rib up and gave it a quick glance. The rib was a little dry; from what I could see, it didn’t have a bunch of nonsense stuck to it. Huzzah to Columbia for having clean streets, I suppose. Whatever. I gnawed away.

The rib’s dryness had been an asset a moment before; during the gnawing, it was a liability. Not all that flavorful. But it was food, so I chewed away contentedly.

“You’re eating that?” I heard Colette say.

“Mmrmph?” I said. It’s hard to talk with a mouth full of dead pig. I swallowed. “I mean, what?”

“Didn’t you just drop that in the street?” she asked.

Drat. I was hoping nobody had noticed. “It was only on the ground for a second or two.”

“Five-second rule,” our friend Jeff said. Really, nothing more needed to be said. Men understand these things.

Women, apparently, do not. “But it was in the street,” Colette said. “On the ground. People have been walking around here all morning. You don’t know what’s on that.”

“You ate that after it fell into the street?” our friend Ann said, pointing to the half-gnawed rib in my hand. Sure, ladies, gang up on me. “Are you nuts?”

“It was barely on the ground,” I said.

“Five-second rule,” Jeff repeated. Neither one of us seemed to understand why this conversation was continuing. He’d already mentioned the five-second rule once.

Nonetheless, I felt a need to further support my position. “I looked at it first,” I said. “It didn’t have schmutz on it.” I paused for a moment, trying to determine if I sensed anything unusually gritty or hairy in my mouth. Sometimes when you drop food and it seems clean, you find out later that it wasn’t as clean as you thought. But no, all I tasted was dry meat. “No big deal,” I said.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” Colette said, shaking her head. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, considering you once ate a biscuit out of the trash.”

“That biscuit was on top of the trash, not in it. And, I might add, it was delicious.” I don’t understand why I have to explain these things.

“Either way, it doesn’t matter. It’s disgusting. You’re going to get sick one of these times.”

As if the threat of illness ever stopped anyone who was highly motivated to enjoy a little flavor. I actually don’t think Colette wants me to get sick, but if I did, I suspect she’d quietly take a small measure of satisfaction out of telling me she told me so. Women appreciate the opportunity to enjoy some validation of their instincts. It’s why they enjoy true-crime shows; they’re proof of what can happen if you aren’t always wearing clean underwear.

Dudes, on the other hand, enjoy eating things. From our point of view, a thing is edible until proven otherwise. It’s just how we roll. I ate my rib.

Later that night, we were out with the same bunch of friends at a bar, listening to some more tasty blues, when I heard my name being called. It was Colette, trying to get my attention from the opposite end of the table. She was holding a lemon wedge in her hand, and she and Ann were both smiling conspiratorially at me. “I’m locked and loaded,” Colette said, moving the lemon back and forth as if she intended to chuck it at my noggin. Colette likes to throw lemon wedges. It’s sort of her thing.

“I dare you,” I said, then went ahead and covered my face with my hand, because daring Colette to throw a lemon wedge in a bar is like daring a shark to lick the blood off of your delicious thigh. But I felt no impact. I peeked over my hand. Colette no longer had the wedge in her hand. “I missed,” she said. “It landed on the floor next to you, I think.”

I looked down. Sure enough, there was the wedge, next to my bar stool. I picked it up, looked across the table at Colette and Ann, and then squeezed the lemon between my teeth just hard enough for it to squirt juice in my mouth and on the table. Then I tossed it into an empty glass on our table. As expected, Colette and Ann were thoroughly horrified.

“What is wrong with you?” Colette asked. “Wasn’t that on the floor?”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling like a kid who had just successfully stuck peanut butter to the roof of the dog’s mouth and was enjoying the ensuing hilarity.

“You’re eating things off the floor in a bar now?” she asked.

“At least I didn’t actually eat the lemon,” I said, although I did start to wonder if perhaps I’d just made a poor tactical decision. “I just bit it.”

“You have seen what the floor of a bar looks like when the lights are on, right?” Ann asked.

The rest of my smile faded. Yes, I had actually seen the floor of that bar with the lights up. It was nowhere near as clean as, say, the street out in front of the bar. Not even close, actually.

I looked at Jeff. “Five-second rule?” I asked.

“Sure, why not,” he said, in the way one of Custer’s assistants might have agreed to his latest brilliant attack plan. Not very reassuring.

“Still,” Colette said. “That’s gross.”

I looked at the lemon wedge sitting in the empty glass. But I didn’t look at it closely. I maybe thought it better that way. There are times in your life when you have to sit back, evaluate your actions, and wonder if maybe you need to reconsider your personal definition of the word “edible.”

I decided that now was not one of those times. Nothing kills a good time more than thinking. That’s what next week is for, right? Right. And, in my case, that’s also what toothbrushes are for.

Bob Rybarczyk (brybarczyk@sbcglobal.net) writes stuff. He is the devourer of worlds, but only in his spare time. Look for his novel, “Acoustic Kitty,” at area Borders stores and on Amazon. Coming soon: a collection of the best Suburban Fringe columns.