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One of life's little ironies is that at the same time you are sharing a house with people who think they will live forever -- people (and I use the word loosely) otherwise known as teenagers -- Mother Nature begins to impress upon you the realization that you might not even make it into next week.
Ma Nature, being a crotchety old lady with creaking joints, decides that your middle-aged self no longer has any business thinking like a jaunty juvenile. So, using forces like gravity and assisted by your love of things like gravy, she smites you with self-doubt. You suddenly notice that even your knees have wrinkles, that your tummy seems terminally tubby and, if you're a woman, that your thighs seem to be swimming in cellulite. And as bad as your body looks on the outside, you begin to worry even more about what's going on among your rapidly aging innards.
Fortunately, you have plenty of reliable medical research to validate all your worries. Groups of white-smocked scientists get together regularly and publish studies that advise you to be afraid, very afraid. All that heavenly tasting junk that you've eaten for years - all those French fries and potato chips, all the marbleized meat and tasty Twinkies -- have now, according to noted medical researchers, coagulated into globs of deadly goop in your arteries. It's time, you realize, to pay the piper of the palate.
If you're like me, at this point you will morph into an overnight convert to the church of the changed diet. That's just what I did. I rebuilt my personal food pyramid, turning into a fan of fiber and fruit, and growing giddy over whole grains and vegetables. I also developed a friendship with flaxseed. Not that I like the taste of flaxseed, which combines the flavors of sawdust and straw with the piquant aftertaste of sand. But flaxseed is supposed to be good for you, at least according to those sadistic science types.
So I started preparing a flaxseed smoothie every morning. I blended it with some blueberries and yogurt until it looked like something my dog might regurgitate in the yard after chewing her way through the trash. You may not have realized it, but besides writing witty columns about canine regurgitation, I often put on business attire and go out into the world pretending to be a very busy, business-type person. And that's just what I did one recent morning not long after I'd begun drinking my nutritious and colorful blueberry-flaxseed smoothies. Because I was running late, I brought my smoothie in the car with me and drank it while I was driving to my very busy, business-type office.
Then I, a hard-charging and healthy professional fueled by flaxseed, went right into a meeting with other business types who had probably stuffed themselves that morning with death-inducing donuts. I should have had the upper hand. But for some reason, the others seemed to be snickering under their collective breath. One woman kept rubbing her finger across her upper lip while staring urgently at me. I was annoyed and wondered why she didn't put some ointment on that lip.
And then, somewhere in the recesses of my busy, business brain, a dim light began to burn. I excused myself and went to the restroom, where I gazed into the mirror. There, above my business-type mouth, lay a thick, blueberry-colored, flaxseed-speckled mustache. I looked like one of those celebrities in the Got Milk? ads, except that I looked like a complete idiot.
I wiped off my mustache and went back, red-faced, to my meeting. Then I went in search of some donuts.
© Jackie Papandrew, All Rights Reserved
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