Now Neither Wings Nor Boneless

Once upon a time, when I worked in retail, I — swear to God — invented the term “vegan leather.” I thought it was hilarious. I regularly told people, with a straight face, that the pleather bags* we sold were “vegan leather” just to see if they’d go along with me. And they did!

Years later, the term vegan leather is everywhere, said with a straight face by nearly every brand out there, to refer to their own pleather/PVC bags and shoes. I’m not saying they got it from me, but I am saying it’s hilarious.

A similar thing happened a few years back with chicken tenders. Suddenly they weren’t chicken nuggets or chicken tenders or chicken fingers anymore but “boneless wings.” I have largely assumed that the switch had something to do with making them seem more macho or at least less childish.

“There’s no such thing as boneless wings!” many of us cried into the night, our objections unheard by Big Chicken. “They’re made from breast meat! They’re not wings!”

Alas, I stand corrected. I think?

This week, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that boneless wings can, in fact, have bones in them and that a man who choked on a bone in a boneless wing should have expected it to be there and prepared accordingly.

Back in 2017 Michael Berkheimer went to a Hamilton, Ohio, restaurant called Wings on Brookwood with his wife and friends and got some boneless wings with parmesan garlic sauce. At some point, he felt like a small piece of meat went down the wrong tube. Three days later, Berkheimer fell ill, got a fever and and couldn’t keep a single thing down. He went to the ER, only to find that his esophagus was torn up and infected thanks to a 5-centimeter long bone he had accidentally swallowed that was now lodged in said esophagus.

This sounds like an actual nightmare and also a very good reason to chew your food well enough. Like, you should chew a piece of chicken 32 times before swallowing it and if that happens, it is unlikely that you will get a chicken bone in your esophagus.

That being said, I certainly do not think that Berkheimer should have expected a bone in his literally boneless wings. I think he had a reasonable expectation of bonelessness, as they were advertised, specifically, as having no bones.

But most of the court disagreed with me!

Writing for the majority, Justice Joseph T. Deters wrote:

Berkheimer protests that the court of appeals did not give due consideration to the fact that the food item was advertised as a “boneless wing” and that there was no warning given that a bone might be in the boneless wing. Regarding the latter argument, a supplier of food is not its insurer. And regarding the food item’s being called a “boneless wing,” it is common sense that that label was merely a description of the cooking style. A diner reading “boneless wings” on a menu would no more believe that the restaurant was warranting the absence of bones in the items than believe that the items were made from chicken wings, just as a person eating “chicken fingers” would know that he had not been served fingers. The food item’s label on the menu described a cooking style; it was not a guarantee.

I’m sorry, has this man never ordered food before in his life? Obviously one would expect boneless wings to be boneless, just as one would expect chicken nuggets, tenders, fingers, etc. to be boneless. It is nowhere near the same thing as expecting chicken fingers to be actual fingers because CHICKENS DO NOT HAVE FINGERS.

Sure, it’s a cooking style, but that cooking style is “without bones.” I just took a break, after writing that sentence, to eat a regular chicken wing, and guess what? There are no bones in my esophagus! Do you want to know why? Because I am well aware that there are bones in a chicken wing and therefore know to watch out for them. No one would reasonably assume the same about boneless chicken wings.

The dissent, I have to say, is comedy gold, with Justice Michael P. Donnelly referring, on multiple occasions, to the majority’s decision as “Jabberwocky.”

The absurdity of this result is accentuated by some of the majority’s explanation for it, which reads like a Lewis Carroll piece of fiction. The majority opinion states that “it is common sense that [the label ‘boneless wing’] was merely a description of the cooking style.” Jabberwocky. There is, of course, no authority for this assertion, because no sensible person has ever written such a thing.

Facts!

The majority opinion also states that “[a] diner reading ‘boneless wings’ on a menu would no more believe that the restaurant was warranting the absence of bones in the items than believe that the items were made from chicken wings, just as a person eating ‘chicken fingers’ would know that he had not been served fingers.” More utter jabberwocky. Still, you have to give the majority its due; it realizes that boneless wings are not actually wings and that chicken fingers are not actually fingers.

The majority’s burst of common sense was short-lived, however, because its opinion also says that no person would conclude that a restaurant’s use of the word “boneless” on a menu was the equivalent of the restaurant’s “warranting the absence of bones.”

Actually, that is exactly what people think. It is, not surprisingly, also what dictionaries say.

Justice Connolly, who is now my bestie, went on to list every dictionary definition of “boneless” — surprise! They all said some variation of “without bones.” Because, again, that is what boneless means.

Donate Just Once!

Boneless wings have always been an unnecessary addition to the chicken app family, their purpose already served by multiple other existing chicken-related concepts. But now that they are not even meant to be boneless, the entire point of them is defeated and one may as well just eat actual chicken wings on a bone that is supposed to be there rather than getting an esophageal infection from one that was not!

*If a boutique is selling generic pleather bags, they were almost definitely purchased wholesale for like five bucks. If you live in Chicago you can buy these same purses in Uptown on Clark. You are welcome.