TAKE A BREAK AND MASTICATE!
When I lived in Gold Bar, I had an hour commute minimum each way to work. I drove through what used to be some fairly small towns that lined the two-lane highways from the base of the Cascades to downtown Bellevue. Many of them have grown significantly though (Duvall), as housing spilled out further and further to house all the Microsoft employees. I would often listen to the controversial Tom Leykis on my way home from work during my long drive. He drove me crazy most of the time, but sometimes it was true entertainment. I remember one time when Tom was talking about "masticating" and saying how he masticates all the time...that he was going to masticate with a banana as he talked right then. An irate dweller of Duvall, which I'd just driven through, called in and flipped out about him talking about masticating. I laughed and then cursed Duvall in the same moment. The caller continued to rant about mastication being a sin. Tom told the guy that he knows for a fact the caller masticates. The man became even more irate and swore he did not and continued to rant and rave about the bible and sinning and mastication, then hung up. Tom never even told him he was flipping out about chewing food.
This leads me to today's blog. I have a mastication deficiency...I apparently don't chew my food very well. I just went to the bathroom and went to flush and found a lone 1/4 of a sweet potato fry free-floating about as if it'd just been dropped on accident while eating over the toilet. I shook my head and reminded myself to take my time to chew rather than snarf down everything whole, and then I remembered the greatest example of why I need to chew my food...the grapefruit incident.
It was the second round living in Phoenix and I was working for a theatre company. Our General Manager was always bringing in lemons, oranges and grapefruit from her cocktail tree. We'd all eat lunch together at the back table and make fun of each other and tell stories and laugh...lunch was good times. One day when Linda, the General Manager, brought in her grapefruit, she peels it and starts taking it apart in wedges like an orange. I had never in my life seen this before. I was fascinated. I hadn't even considered you COULD eat a grapefruit like an orange. I commented that I never had thought about eating grapefruit like that and she informed me this is how she always ate it like this. And then she took it a step further and began peeling the skin that enveloped the grapefruit innards, threw the skin on her paper towel and ate the grapefruit guts...and knowing Linda she probably squirted grapefruit juice on her white shirt and loudly exclaimed, "OH FUCK!" and laughed.
"What in the hell are you doing, " I asked her.
She looked amused, "I hate the pulp on it and the flavor is better this way. Try it!" And I did and it was truly awesome.
When Linda brought in grapefruit, from there on lunch would consist of massacring our grapefruit until only a wedge of guts connected by the harder skin on the bottom would remain and we'd pop it into our mouth. I believe others started doing so besides just me. It became a lunchtime ritual. It was a healthy snack that was fun for me since I like to play with my food. It was glorious...until that one afternoon when the fun of the grapefruit died for me.
Back in the day before I was constipated all the time, I seemed to instead be sick to my stomach all the time. About an hour after eating lunch and a grapefruit this particular day, I felt the storm brewing in my tummy. I grabbed my stomach and half-walked/half-ran down the hallway to the bathroom we shared with the other tenants on our floor. There were only two stalls in this bathroom and luckily no one was in either of them. I sat down and did my business in a very violent way, wiped, stood up to flush, and that's when I saw it.
"Oh my god...what IS that?" I muttered as I leaned over the toilet bowl to investigate.
Something was swimming in the toilet, and it was not poo.
I was completely freaked and leaned in closer as it made its way across the bowl, then bounce off the side and circle around. Whatever it was, it was alive. Oh my god, I shat something alive! This is not good. This is in fact really bad. What could I have eaten that was alive and about 2-1/2 inches long? Seriously, it was HUGE in terms of foreign objects in the toilet. I was scared. I was shaking. I leaned in even closer to check it out more. It was kind of pinkish orange and white and after staring at it a while I realized it had tentacles! Oh god, I shat something that is swimming with tentacles! What could it be? There was only one answer in my mind, and it wasn't a squid...I had obviously been carrying around a parasite for quite some time and finally released it out of my body. How did I get this? Were there siblings inside me? Should I take it out of the toilet and go to the doctor?
Someone walked in to the bathroom, paused for a moment as they likely wondered why my feet were facing the wrong way, and walked into the stall. For a moment I felt compelled to ask if they would come and take a look at this little sea creature I had purged, but decided that could do no good whatsoever. So I just stared at it and contemplated what to do. That is when I noticed it only had tentacles on one side, and they looked familiar to me. And the color and shape kind of looked like.... It wasn't a parasite at all.
The toilet next to me flushed and aloud I whispered, "Oh my god, I crapped an entire grapefruit wedge."
This morning when I saw that lone fry in the bowl, I thought of the day when terror entered my heart and I thought I had a parasite, but I simply hadn't chewed my food well and in turn shat an undigested, skinned grapefruit wedge. I obviously haven't learned my lesson yet.
This leads me to today's blog. I have a mastication deficiency...I apparently don't chew my food very well. I just went to the bathroom and went to flush and found a lone 1/4 of a sweet potato fry free-floating about as if it'd just been dropped on accident while eating over the toilet. I shook my head and reminded myself to take my time to chew rather than snarf down everything whole, and then I remembered the greatest example of why I need to chew my food...the grapefruit incident.
It was the second round living in Phoenix and I was working for a theatre company. Our General Manager was always bringing in lemons, oranges and grapefruit from her cocktail tree. We'd all eat lunch together at the back table and make fun of each other and tell stories and laugh...lunch was good times. One day when Linda, the General Manager, brought in her grapefruit, she peels it and starts taking it apart in wedges like an orange. I had never in my life seen this before. I was fascinated. I hadn't even considered you COULD eat a grapefruit like an orange. I commented that I never had thought about eating grapefruit like that and she informed me this is how she always ate it like this. And then she took it a step further and began peeling the skin that enveloped the grapefruit innards, threw the skin on her paper towel and ate the grapefruit guts...and knowing Linda she probably squirted grapefruit juice on her white shirt and loudly exclaimed, "OH FUCK!" and laughed.
"What in the hell are you doing, " I asked her.
She looked amused, "I hate the pulp on it and the flavor is better this way. Try it!" And I did and it was truly awesome.
When Linda brought in grapefruit, from there on lunch would consist of massacring our grapefruit until only a wedge of guts connected by the harder skin on the bottom would remain and we'd pop it into our mouth. I believe others started doing so besides just me. It became a lunchtime ritual. It was a healthy snack that was fun for me since I like to play with my food. It was glorious...until that one afternoon when the fun of the grapefruit died for me.
Back in the day before I was constipated all the time, I seemed to instead be sick to my stomach all the time. About an hour after eating lunch and a grapefruit this particular day, I felt the storm brewing in my tummy. I grabbed my stomach and half-walked/half-ran down the hallway to the bathroom we shared with the other tenants on our floor. There were only two stalls in this bathroom and luckily no one was in either of them. I sat down and did my business in a very violent way, wiped, stood up to flush, and that's when I saw it.
"Oh my god...what IS that?" I muttered as I leaned over the toilet bowl to investigate.
Something was swimming in the toilet, and it was not poo.
I was completely freaked and leaned in closer as it made its way across the bowl, then bounce off the side and circle around. Whatever it was, it was alive. Oh my god, I shat something alive! This is not good. This is in fact really bad. What could I have eaten that was alive and about 2-1/2 inches long? Seriously, it was HUGE in terms of foreign objects in the toilet. I was scared. I was shaking. I leaned in even closer to check it out more. It was kind of pinkish orange and white and after staring at it a while I realized it had tentacles! Oh god, I shat something that is swimming with tentacles! What could it be? There was only one answer in my mind, and it wasn't a squid...I had obviously been carrying around a parasite for quite some time and finally released it out of my body. How did I get this? Were there siblings inside me? Should I take it out of the toilet and go to the doctor?
Someone walked in to the bathroom, paused for a moment as they likely wondered why my feet were facing the wrong way, and walked into the stall. For a moment I felt compelled to ask if they would come and take a look at this little sea creature I had purged, but decided that could do no good whatsoever. So I just stared at it and contemplated what to do. That is when I noticed it only had tentacles on one side, and they looked familiar to me. And the color and shape kind of looked like.... It wasn't a parasite at all.
The toilet next to me flushed and aloud I whispered, "Oh my god, I crapped an entire grapefruit wedge."
This morning when I saw that lone fry in the bowl, I thought of the day when terror entered my heart and I thought I had a parasite, but I simply hadn't chewed my food well and in turn shat an undigested, skinned grapefruit wedge. I obviously haven't learned my lesson yet.
