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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
Apparently, I don’t get sick very often. I suppose that’s a good thing.
Except when I’m sick. Like now.
To be fair, I wouldn’t say I’m properly sick. I’ve got a cold, yes. I stayed home from work today. I’m coughing and sneezing and achy. I may have a fever. My post-nasals are dripping.
“I’m coughing and sneezing and achy. I may have a fever. My post-nasals are dripping.”
But as a kid, I used to get bronchitis. Like, almost every winter. That’s three weeks of phlegmy hacking, sometimes just in time for Christmas.
So being sick sucks. But it doesn’t suck quite as much as it once did, and it evidently doesn’t suck nearly as often.
I found this out around noontime, when I dragged my sniffly butt off the couch and into the kitchen for lunch. In our household — as in many others, I suspect — there are certain foods that we eat when we’re under the weather. Hearty foods. Comforting foods. Cliche “get well” foods. We seek them out when we’re sick — and at all other times, forget that they even exist.
Here’s an example: I emailed my boss this morning to report that I and my spittle-soaked germs would be absent from the office today, the better to prevent a company-wide typhoid outbreak by the weekend. The reply I got back was short, sweet and accomodating:
“No problem. Get some rest. Eat soup.”
Cliche it may be, but soup is good food (when you’re sick). Plus, it’s a direct order from my boss, and I don’t want to get dinged at personnel review time for not following dietary directives. So for lunch, I went searching for soup.
It was then I discovered that I’m not sick very often. How did I know?
Because I knew we had soup. We always have soup — we eat it when we’re sick. And when we’re not sick, we never eat soup.
I don’t know why that is. We sometimes eat soup at restaurants. But never at home. Maybe eating soup — from a can, in a plastic bowl, possibly under a shawl — reminds us of when we were sick. Or we have better things to eat. Something.
All I know is, I found the soup — the one solitary can, hiding in the back of the pantry behind the refried beans and a bag of bowtie pasta. Before I hit it with the can opener, I decided I should probably check the date.
My soup informed me it was “best by” March of 2010.
There was no further information on what it was “_____ by” in October of 2013. I suspect the answer may be “rancid”.
So much for eating soup to feel better. The “soup is good food” slogan doesn’t apply here, so much as “soup was once possibly good food, sometime in the prior decade”.
And so it went with my other “sick foods”. The half-bottle of 7-Up in the back of the fridge wasn’t so much “flat” as it was “reduced”, like a lemon-lime gravy. I found saltines. They had no expiration date, per se, but I’m pretty sure crackers aren’t supposed to have the consistency of Play-Doh. Or the smell. Or some of the colors.
All of this suggests to me that the missus and I are generally healthy people. So healthy, in fact, that our “comfort foods” stick around so long, they’re not really comforting any more. Or appetizing. Or food, really.
I’ll take comfort in this, as soon as this cold lifts. Maybe I’ll even buy fresh sick supplies, for the next time one of us catches a bug.
And hopefully, we won’t be doing this same thing again in 2018, when I’m sniffling at home complaining about that can of ruined-ass soup, which went funky and old in 2015. Only time — and a bunch of nasty germs — will tell.
Permalink | No CommentsIt’s late October, which means Halloween is nearly here, bearing down on us like a broom-riding green chick with a bad case of frogface.
As my metaphor might suggest, I have mixed feelings about the Halloween season.
On the one hand, fall is my favorite time of year. It’s not too hot, all the sports are either starting or ending, it doesn’t rain every four hours like springtime, and I don’t live in a house any more, so I’m not raking huge piles of leaves every weekend.
On the other hand, Halloween is a holiday revolving around candy, children and dressing in something other than blue jeans. None of that interests me in the slightest. Taken together, it’s a recipe for a pretty horrifying personal nightmare.
“Dump me in an ill-fitting costume and plop me beside a squealing six-year-old scarfing down Kit-Kats — that’s plenty enough horror for me, thanks.”
You can keep your Freddy Krueger and Chucky dolls. Dump me in an ill-fitting costume and plop me beside a squealing six-year-old scarfing down Kit-Kats — that’s plenty enough horror for me, thanks.
Still, no one’s going to cancel Halloween because of one guy’s October-Grinchy attitude. So says my wife, anyway. And the condo association. And city council. Twice.
And Halloween’s not all bad — mostly due to the adult costumes.
I don’t even mean the “adult” costumes — *nudge nudge wink wink* — though I’m not complaining about those. Or wouldn’t, if anyone I’d want to see in one actually wore one in my vicinity.
(One starts to wonder whether naughty nurse and skimpy Jane of the Jungle outfits are sort of like the things in Penthouse Letters. Maybe they actually happen, ever. Possibly. But not to me, or anyone I know. And certainly not to the parties I get invited to.
Which, to be fair, are the ones that allow jeans, so I suppose that’s fair. You don’t see a lot of leather dominatrix costumes that come with a pair of Levis. Everything’s a tradeoff, right?)
But even the regular Halloween costumes can serve a purpose. I was out last night and saw two people — a man and a woman, at separate tables — in Joker costumes. Not the old-timey Joker, either, or even the Jack Nicholson version. These were caked-on scrawly-faced wild-eyed Heath Ledger Jokers. Scary ones, with green hair and all. And that’s awesome. Why?
Think about it this way. Maybe those two were single. And maybe they each met someone at the bar, and maybe they went even went home with those respective someones for a nightcap. And then those someones woke up this morning, next to one of these Joker impersonators. At that point, one of two things will happen:
Either the partner has forgotten most of the previous night, and looks over to see a green-haired goblin lying on a makeup-smeared pillow that looks like something Jackson Pollock would barf up after a plate of bad oysters. At which point, that person would scream bloody murder, possibly running naked in panic through the streets, and everyone involved would have a good story to tell for years to come.
Or, the partner would remember that they came home with the Joker last night — not “some joker”, as usual, or just any joker, but the Joker — and turn over to see someone with less makeup on, the hideous red grin now fading, and a real live possibly-relatively-normal human showing through. And the partner would think, “Hey. That’s not so bad.”
What I’m saying is, scary costume hookups must be, like, the antithesis of “coyote ugly”. If you take the Joker or a scary clown or someone in a Stephen Baldwin mask home… well, you might have some issues. It’s possible you need a therapist — or at least an updated eyeglass prescription. But one thing’s for certain: they are not going to look worse in the morning. It’s true. Just a tip, for you single Halloween fans out there. Also, Stephen Baldwin.
And so, Halloween marches forward, with the pitter-patter of princess slippers and prosthetic rubber hobbit feet, and I don’t personally have the problem of finding a costume or picking out a nightmarish ghoul to wake up beside. My only Halloween task involves having a bowl of candy at the ready when the neighborhood tykes descend on the condo next week, demanding sugary goodies at rotten egg-point.
The question, as always, is: how big a bowl?
There’s no equation that I know of to optimize the amount of candy to have ready for Halloween. There should be, but there isn’t. I want some mathematician to get on it — factor in the number of small children per surrounding square mile, allowing for statistically realistic rates of repeat visits and “double dippers”. Calculate the average number of calories per treat, divide by the number of people in the household forced to eat the leftovers, and figure out how may ass pounds each would gain per undistributed mini-Snickers or Smarties roll. Add it all up, and tell me whether the small bag of candy is too little and will get my windows egged, or whether the big bag is way overkill, and I’ll be dumping Three Musketeers in my cereal bowl for the next six weeks.
Seriously. Somebody who can work a calculator, get on this. For one night, stop trawling bars trying to pick up dates in Scream masks, and give us our candy formula. All of us jeans-wearing Halloween humbuggers are counting on you.
Permalink | No CommentsThe human body is an amazing machine. It bends, it stretches, it adapts — capable of feats of raw strength and subtly delicate manipulations. Every body is different. Yours might run twenty miles an hour or be double-jointed or practiced in juggling Crisco-slathered chainsaws. But each of us has a body with a special trick or two up its sleeve.
Or colon, seeing as how most bodies don’t have sleeves sewn in. It’s not a perfect analogy, sadly.
Or maybe it is. Because over the course of the weekend, I’ve discovered my body’s special trick, the wondrous and awe-inspiring feat that maybe some day will end up on a segment in a bad show on TLC at three o’clock in the morning. And what is that trick, you ask?
Apparently, I can go three days without pooping.
I never knew this before. Frankly, I’d never really considered it. I’m not one of those people who keeps a schedule of bowel movements, or who tracks that sort of activity for health purposes. Or entertainment purposes. Or to disgust my wife.
“It’s the equivalent of holding your breath for two minutes, or going a full hour without thinking of Scarlett Johansson.”
But if I had to guess, I’d estimate the call of nature swings by once, sometimes twice a day. So three days is kind of a long time to go without. It’s the equivalent of holding your breath for two minutes, or going a full hour without thinking of Scarlett Johansson.
See what I mean? Amazing.
Now, evidently I can only pull this special “poopless coup” under very special conditions. Most important seems to be prolonged lack of access to a private bathroom. This could be accomplished, say, with long flights to and from a weekend away, a cabin shared with in-laws and a wedding / reception at a family member’s house.
Speaking hypothetically, of course. You know the drill.
Oddly enough, I didn’t even notice my amazing physical feat while it was happening. It wasn’t as though I was “holding back”, in any active or conscious or leg-crossedly squinchy sense. Instead, the very idea of pooping just… never came up.
Well. Maybe it came up, once or twice. At which point, I’d think to myself: Sure, you could use the bathroom now. And then someone who you’ll be spending the next several hours or days with may follow next, and it’s possible that you’ll never be able to look them in the eye again.
And then, the urge went away. For three days, give or take a squinch.
In fairness, I suppose this was less a physical feat, per se, and more an accomplishment of an overactive and neurotic mind. But the brain is part of the body, last time I checked an anatomy book, so I’m taking it.
Speaking of which, I’m home now. And we have a bathroom in the back that not even my wife has to use. So it’s high time I tried “taking” something else. After three days, maybe there’s another feat of sorts in store.
Yeah. Don’t wait up. Sorry.
Permalink | No CommentsPeople do some strange things, for all sorts of odd reasons. Appearances, commiseration, guilt, solidarity, empathy, peer pressure — often, folks don’t even know exactly what drives them into these bizarre behaviors.
I know I sure as hell don’t.
Take the case of one of my office coworkers. Every weekend (or nearly so), she travels to somewhere-or-other in New York, where her family lives.
(I’m sure she told us where, but I don’t remember. I don’t meticulously keep track of the minutiae of this lady’s life, down to the tiniest details of where she’s from, or where she goes every weekend, or what her name is. I just know it’s near Schenectady.
That’s her home, not her name. I’m pretty sure if I called her “Schenectady”, it would be a tipoff that I have no idea who she is. Or she’d take it as some sort of slur.
Which it probably is, in some language. It’s too much fun to say not to be.)
Anyway, every weekend — off to her old stomping grounds in New York. And every Monday, she shows up at the office with a big bag of bagels and cream cheese, Her family owns a deli — or knows someone who owns a deli, or once robbed a deli; again, I’m not so clear on the teeny little details involved — and she’s tickled and proud to share the bounty with the work crew.
Like clockwork. Every. Single Week.
And every Monday, we gather in the break room and ooh and aah over the flavors and the textures and the perfect little holes right in the middle, and we schmear on the cheese and scarf down our bagels and thank Schenectady Sue (or Kate, or Roberta or whatever) for the privilege of noshing on the best darn bagels north of 128th Street in Manhattan. Or something.
We’ve been doing this for at least a year now. And I’m sure some people really enjoy it. Me, I’m not a bagel guy. I’ve talked to a few others in the office, and they’re not bagels guys or gals, either. Not that I have anything against bagels, mind you — they’re just not my cup of dough. Too dense and chewy for me to enjoy. Taste be damned, I feel like I’m eating a bath towel. That’s just me.
“Grout on a bath towel. That’s what Bagel Monday means to me.”
The cream cheese doesn’t help me much, either. I have trouble reconciling it with other substances my mouth recognizes as “cheese”, like cheddar and muenster and gorgonzola. I like a variety of hard and soft and crumbly cheeses, but not the kind that’s been creamed. It reminds me of spackle, or maybe freshly-squeezed grout.
Grout on a bath towel. That’s what Bagel Monday means to me. Yaa-aay.
Still, I shut up and I eat my cream-chew nightmare, because… well, I don’t know why because. One of the reasons above, maybe? Peer pressure, since everyone else gathers in the kitchen for it? Empathy for someone so proud of what their family produces? Guilt because I don’t know her name? Other guilt, for that time I tried going through her purse to try to find out?
I don’t know. But something drags me in there every week, and I choke down my bagel and tell myself that it makes her feel good to know we’re enjoying her family’s deli breads and we’re all one big happy company and anyway, I could probably use a nice big dense poop around Wednesday afternoon, so why not play along? There’s no reason to rock the boat.
Or so I thought. Until this Monday, when we were huddled together for bagelfast once again, and some other woman — no, I don’t know the name; what am I, a social butterfly over here? — gushed over a salt-and-cinnamon-and-something-or-other number, thusly:
“This is so good! How on earth did your uncle even think of this one?”
The reply, a lightning shot to my bageled-up gut:
“Oh, that’s not one of his. He sold the bakery a couple of months ago, and they brought in a whole new crew.”
Bu-whaaa?
You mean I’ve been swallowing these schmeared-up sandbags through gritted teeth for as long as my colon can remember, in some sort of social obligation ritual that I don’t even fully grasp — and for the last two months, her family didn’t even own the bakery?
Oh, no. Oh, hell no.
When I’d finished violently choking — thanks, guy from accounting with the combover for the Heimlich, whatever your name might be — I gathered up my half-eaten styrofoam doughnut, packed it back to my desk and chucked it in the trash. I don’t like to waste food — but then again, this only qualified as “food” in my book by the merest of technicalities. Like vitamin pellets or dehydrated fruit or an appetizer from TGI Friday’s.
On the bright side, my Bagel Monday days are over. I’m still not positive exactly why I felt compelled to participate in the first place — but I’m damned sure that it was predicated on this lady having some personal connection to the foam-footballs-masquerading-as-bread that she was lugging into the office. If the family’s not baking, I ain’t taking.
And now I feel liberated, free from the baked holey shackles that previously bound me. I look forward to enjoying my Monday mornings — and, let’s be honest, Wednesday afternoons — much more now that the great bagel charade is, at least for me, kaput.
Now if we could only do something about Pickled Pigs’ Feet Thursdays. Dammit, now that lady’s got to be stopped!
Permalink | No CommentsI mentioned a while back that I’ve been doing some “extracurricular” writing of late.
Unless this site counts as “extracurricular”, which would make the other stuff “extraextracurricular”. Or “curricular”. Something. I don’t know words, so much.
“Lazy post, thy name is ‘stuff posted elsewhere’.”
Anyway, the site with those things has been slowly trickling content onto the interwebs for the past few weeks, and some of the pieces I’ve worked on are starting to emerge. You know what that means.
That’s right. I’m linking over there and taking the day off. Lazy post, thy name is “stuff posted elsewhere”.
So I’m proud to say I’ve been writing with a great group over at Distractify.com. It’s a great mix of stuff over there — you’ll learn, you’ll laugh, you might wet your pants a little.
Don’t wet your pants. It’s unbecoming. Just enjoy the articles.
If you’d like to see the wealth of interesting and humorous — and often both at once! — items on the site, simply follow the link to Distractify.com. Should you be interested in just the things I’ve contributed on, there’s also my author page. Pick and choose, or read ’em all. There’s plenty more where those came from.
NOTE: I’m noticing that the ‘author pages’ over at Distractify aren’t always listing the full set of articles. So, like my old ZuG Amazon and ZuG Facebook articles, I’ll keep a list here, too, noting the bits I worked on. For posterity. Or something. Cheers.
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