Our bathroom fan still shrieks like a wounded tree shredder since the day we moved in. Theoretically, I guess I could install a new one, but the sheer idea fouls up my digestive tract. So my temporary fix: I never flip it on, not on purpose anyway. And I always make it a point to warn guests about it upon arrival, out of common courtesy and in case they don’t prefer being startled to death while carrying a full bladder. 

It’s not that I’m apathetic about this handicap. I admit that sometimes I feel like half a man. Plus, a certain romantic aura surrounds the thought of having the ability to replace your own gutters. I daydream all the time about living in pastoral settings, where I repair fences, wield a grease gun, and curse the groundhogs for tearing up the foundation. But whenever a real call of duty emerges, such as confronting the running toilet in the guest bathroom, I fall apart. I grow anxious and listless all at once, for which the only real remedy is a nap.    

Occasionally, on those rare days I wake up packed with blind confidence, I look for ways to beat my phobia of the hammer and nail. I searched the Web once for conferences that  teach grown men how to be capable. I’m not sure what I was envisioning – a sort of Boy Scouts for an older crowd, maybe? So I Googled ”man camp.” This directed me to a website that scarred me for life. These men clearly had different goals than I did. Afterward, I was disturbed so roundly, I showered twice and vowed to never again stray farther than Homedepot.com.    

I can’t even work a mousetrap. I mean I can physically. I have hands that work and stuff. But I’m scared to death to set it. I’m always afraid of losing a finger. So once, when we had a mouse in the garage, I sent Jess to the store to find a friendlier mousetrap, one that made setting it feel less like I were diffusing a bomb with unmarked wires.

So Jess brought home a modern-day plastic mousetrap that was like a spring-loaded clamp with tiny teeth on the outer rim but hollow inside minus the trigger, where the bait went. To set it, you simply pinched the back, which locked the jaws in place. Wonderful! All threats of amputating myself had been eliminated.

However, I started seriously questioning the productivity of the trap. It didn’t look like it carried much force. I even tested it with a butter knife. It snapped shut swiftly but more gently than I like for a death device. At first I wondered whether the trap was supposed to kill the mouse or just hold it captive, like a sort of PETA trap. But the directions mentioned nothing about taking survivors. So I figured it for the real thing. The mousetrap people must know what they’re doing. Why sell one that was useless? So I used peanut butter for bait and put it in the garage.        

One morning, a few days later, I checked to see if I’d caught anything. The trap was nowhere in sight. It wasn’t along the wall, not under the cars. Perplexed, I walked the perimeter and found it at the far end, beside a microscopic gap between the floor and the garage door. The trap had been sprung and appeared to have been in a terrible crash. A quarter of it had been chewed away. At first, one might have thought that the caught mouse had become live bait for a yet larger more ferocious creature, particularly one that feasts regularly on livestock. If so, where was it? And was I next?

I used a broomstick to open the trap. It coughed up a tiny tree bud. It was as if the mouse, after chewing its body out to freedom, had left me a tiny present, thanking me for using such a stupid trap. But a closer examination showed the tree bud was actually a paw. 

I felt slightly sick. I wanted to kill the rodent, not torture it. But no matter how much I wanted it not to be so, all evidence pointed to the fact that I was a major accomplice in this mouse being forced to gnaw off its hand. The brunt of the blame I lay on the brain-damaged mousetrap people. Sure, I kept my fingers, but a poor mouse out there somewhere had just earned the new nickname Lefty.

I may never be handy. And I must accept this and move on. It could be worse; I could pretend I was handy, like the mousetrap people who make useless traps. It’s obvious these people are in denial. And as a result of their reckless neglect, there is probably a whole generation of mice that can’t stand up straight. And that is messed up.

Unproductive labor is what they call it when the labor winds to a halt without a baby to show for it. And Jess had stayed stuck at 9 and a half centimeters, shy of the 10 needed, for the last six hours of an agonizing 24-hour labor marathon. To Jess’ credit, she had fought well, had endured two shoddy epidurals that took only partway, as well as a number of medieval-like procedures to help the baby along. But we could no longer sidestep the fact that the baby just wasn’t coming out. 

The ink of our approval signatures on the liability waiver form had barely dried, when one out of a swarm of scrambling nurses chest-passed me a ball of scrubs for me to wear in the operating room and hurried my wife out the door. I trotted alongside Jess’ hospital bed in route to the operating room, where they would spring the baby free, so that we could finally meet our daughter, Ellie.

When the nurse finally waved me into the operating room to see my wife, they had her laid out flat on a stainless steel table, awake and prepped for surgery. She wore a tissue-paper blue cap like mine, and a series of tubes ran out from her to the humming, beeping machines in back. A makeshift curtain blocked Jess’ view of the surgeon’s work. But from my seat beside Jess, I could see as much as I could stomach, if I craned my neck. Exhilarated by a mash-up of fear and excitement, I held Jess’ hand and alternately consoled her and stole glances over the curtain. Jess didn’t hurt.

The procedure itself probably only took ten minutes, but to me it lasted longer than the 40 weeks of pregnancy it took to get here. It especially felt forever when it came time to extract the baby from its cramped little home. The doctor and nurses braced themselves. Their brows furrowed above their surgeon masks, as they put some muscle into it. Behind the curtain, Jess’ upper half jarred sickeningly in sync with the doctor’s digging and wrenching. Dislodging the baby wasn’t as easy as I’d expected. She was in there real good, still holding on as she did before in the delivery room. Jess was still okay, though.

Finally, a nurse appeared with a suction-cup device. It fished beneath the surface of my sight and caught a head, thick with jet black hair. Then followed the attached body, the color of a powdered doughnut. The doctor thrust it onto the operating table. I listened — there was the cry!

I left Jess for just a minute to find out about the baby. Across the room, at the nurse’s station, Ellie lay on her back all sprawled out as if she’d just swum the English Channel. She had her color now and was perfectly healthy. And I confirmed that she was, in fact, a girl, as the ultrasound had said. I would have been happy regardless, as long as the baby was healthy. Nonetheless, I did experience a pinch of relief that Ellie wasn’t an Eddie, because all our baby clothes at home were pink.

When I returned to report on Ellie’s excellent condition, I found Jess crying silently as the doctor sewed her back up. “Are you in pain?” I asked, ”or just emotional?”

She nodded.

“Emotional?” I asked. 

She nodded.

Two weeks have passed since my decision to cut coffee from my daily diet, and it has been anything but pleasant. Since then, I’ve discovered that I am NOT the morning person I once prided myself on being. In fact, it’s best if no one talks to me before 9 a.m. I’m not a night person now, either. I’m just this sort of weird middle-of-the-day person. And who cares to be wide awake then?

 Honestly, I can’t see how anyone has the natural energy to do life without coffee? Man, my hours of daily required sleep have soared from six hours to nine, and I spend just about any waking hours daydreaming about taking naps.

But deep down, I know I did the right thing. Since nixing coffee, my heart rate has returned to almost normal, and those mysterious reoccurring back pains and involuntary twitches seem to have subsided.          

I first got hooked on coffee a few years out of college. It’s shocking that its high-octane ingredients had been kept secret from me for so long. One cup gives me something like superpowers. Among other miraculous feats, I can run a mile, place a complaint with the cable company, and complete an entire Tolstoy novel — all in in the span of five minutes!

Coffee makes me feel as energetic as I believe I’ll feel one day in heaven. It’s like injecting a happy dose of lightening into your heart. With coffee, my blood just circulates better. My eyes don’t burn with sleep as much. My IQ increases tenfold.(Later I learned that I was equally as dense on caffeine, only, without blinking, I could let fly unrehearsed thoughts while maintaining a hazardous, warm, caffeine-induced false reassurance that everything leaving my mouth or pen was gold. This of course was rarely the case. In fact, after coming down off an all-morning coffee binge, I often found myself wanting to apologize to anyone I may have emailed or spoken with under the influence. But, despite these minor cons, drinking coffee promised to make life better.)

Had I known about coffee in college, I’d have knocked out a grade-point average at least ten points higher. Heck, I might even have graduated summa cum laude, whatever that is. Instead, I tried lesser alternatives to perk me up, such as soda and piles of sugar. I failed at pulling an all-nighter during finals week once by downing a two-liter of Mountain Dew. I barely got through my first page of notes before it sent me to bed in a heap with a stomach ache so violent I thought I saw Elvis. By God’s grace, I believe I ended up pulling off a C- on that exam.

What’s funny, I used to hate coffee. It tasted to me like a potted plant or dirty fingers. Back then, I was young and fancy free, untainted by the black caffeinated sludge that would later appear in my system as regularly as blood or bile. Then, one day, my old roommate got a job as a coffee horse at the nearby Starbucks. And everything changed.

I’d stop in to say hi from time to time, first only sporadically, then daily, then hourly. On days business was slow, my roommate would experiment with various coffee concoctions for me to try. The first one he handed me came topped with a ball of whip cream and tasted like chocolate mousse. I nearly spit it out all over my roommate’s green Starbucks smock when I learned there were three shots of espresso in there. This is coffee! You gotta be kidding. Can I have another? 

After that, I drank coffee every day. At first, it posed as a harmless habit. In time, I couldn’t seem to function without it. Whenever I knew I’d have to be somewhere for more than two hours, I’d panic over whether coffee would be served there. And if the hazelnut creamer in my fridge was to run out before I had the chance to buy a backup, then I’d verge on near-hysteria.

This is why I had to quit drinking it: it was slowly turning me insane. Plus, I’m kind of curious to see what I am like off coffee. It’s been so long I’ve forgotten. 

So, I guess you could say that this is a mission to rescue a piece of my true self, which, in this case, is the caffeine-free self. And so far, what I’ve discovered is that I am a very sleepy individual.

Our initial little-kid-Christmas-morning jitters from not having to work last about an hour. It is a Utopian period of unmatched courtesy and deference toward one another. “What would you like to do?” I’ll say.

“I dunno. What do you want to do?” she’ll say. “We have so much time!”

After this, the first hints of insanity start seeping in to our otherwise peaceful home.

This year, I took my wife’s spring break off. (Jess is a preschool teacher.) It was just three days but was enough time to transform us into complete psychotic maniacs. Little things like the sound of my teeth grazing a metal fork during dinner, things that typically go by unnoticed, dropped the argument equivalent of an atomic bomb on our marriage. Jess should be happy I even have teeth.

New weird habits cropped up too. For example, halfway in to our vacation, Jess developed this chronic fake laugh. I’d say something funny, and Jess would cock her head back and let out a laugh so insane my first instincts were to Google straitjacket sales. It rivaled Willem Defoe’s Green Goblin laugh in Spiderman. After she’d finish, her eyes would roll back into position and look me dead in the face. Her own face would hold a mysterious, challenging calm.

The first time she fake laughed I was caught off guard. I felt slightly embarrassed that she had mocked my jokes. Nonetheless, I just kind of rolled with it.  But by the hundredth time, it became obvious the fake laugh had no OFF switch. WEB MD offered zero diagnosis. I wondered if I should rush her to the doctor, the ER.  Maybe if I scared her it would go away like hiccups. But this was no hiccup…

You couldn’t reason with the fake laugh. Jess didn’t like it either. It had taken complete control of her. Her body was simply a host for it. It grew and swelled as our vacation went on, and the more you begged it to stop the stronger and more persistent it became, like a cable company telemarketer. 

Near the end, Jess started fake laughing at everything in sight, even herself. One time she was brushing her hair, getting ready to go somewhere, when I heard her crazy cackle from the other room. It startled me. Our dog trembled, got up and stood at the door.

“Jess, what are you doing?” I asked.

“Oh, just laughing.” 

Then one day, poof, it was gone. The fake laugh had disappeared as abruptly and suddenly as it had arrived. Yes, our vacation was over. Strangely, I was glad to go back to work. 

Now, we both act as if the fake laugh never happened, for fear that the mere mention of it might bring it back. It is a fear we live with every day.

As recently as Thanksgiving, I was telling everyone, including myself, that I was 31. I’d be 32 in February. Not until I worked the math in my head and then re-confirmed it twice on the calculator did I realize–no, wait…carry the two–I’d be 33.

Initially, I felt robbed. A year of my life had been smuggled, and now I had to kick my list of life’s ambitions into overdrive. Why, I was supposed to have appeared on Jeopardy by now. I was supposed to be holding down a successful job, a job that meant something, one that I was thoroughly passionate about, like drawing cartoons for Mad Magazine. But these were the least of my worries.

I still felt early-20s inside, but when I looked in the mirror the other day, my mug resembled a well-worn catcher’s mitt. I saw harder angles, a more rigid brow. And in some areas, mainly around the jaw line, my skin had adopted the qualities of Silly Putty. There was more extra skin than I’d remembered. It was as though my skull had slightly shrunk; not enough to cause people to stop and stare, but just enough for me to notice and feel self-conscience the rest of the workday.

Furthermore, my heart nearly seized two weeks ago when my wife, Jess, riding passenger en route to our birthday party (Jess has a February birthday too), started plucking at what she said was a straight white hair jousting from my curly head.  When she finally presented the rogue hair to me, it had the exact stubborn spring of a toothbrush bristle. You couldn’t bend it without it snapping right back into place. 

I’ve spotted random gray hairs before, but never ones with all the pigment wrung out. I thought this kind of thing only happens after one witnesses a traumatic event, runs into a ghost, or gets struck by lightening. I was very distressed about it. 

 But then I warmed up to the idea. Anyone who has ever looked at me probably has guessed correctly, either subconsciously or otherwise, that I wished my hair was straight. So, if the sample white hair was a sneak preview of my whole hair’s final outcome, I predicted, by 50, the curl in my hair would be no more. In fact, it would be straight. A slow, pleasant takeover was at hand, a straight-haired revolution. How fantastic!   

I knew it wouldn’t be the cool, straight variety with the long flowing locks. I’d have a bristle head, like an albino porcupine. But still! I couldn’t get over the thought of my dream of owning straight hair actually coming true.

Once this dream comes to past, I have good reason to believe that the rest of my dreams will soon be fulfilled, because, no matter what people say, this is a straight-haired world. Whereas Mad Magazine may be reluctant to add a curly-headed me to their staff, a straight-haired me would no doubt land the job no problem. I doubt I’d even need to show them clips or a resume. Yes, I was well on-track with my future goals.

So, 33 isn’t a bad age, I guess. But 50? Now that’s a good age. If you need me, I’ll be in the mirror searching for white, STRAIGHT hairs.

From K through 5, my bus route to school was fairly uneventful. Oh, there was the usual rambunctiousness found among a bus-load of healthy elementary-school kids, packed with wild monkey energy. But there were never any harmful intentions toward anyone onboard. I always rode along, head against the window, watching the world roll peacefully by, feeling generally safe in my surroundings. 

On occasion, the chocolate milk we had for lunch would surge through our veins, turning us half-mad, and we had little choice but to act up. Otherwise, our little-kid bodies would burst. Sometimes the excitement we couldn’t contain en route to a field trip would get the best of us, and someone would mess up and spit out the window or wet his pants. (Not me, of course.)

But during these turbulent times, when the bus driver peered at us through that movie-screen-size rearview mirror of hers and yelled at us to straighten up or she’d march us right into the principal’s office, we’d snap to immediate attention. Deep down we longed to be subordinate. We felt bad when reprimanded. In fact, let it be known, we wanted our bus driver to like us.

Not so in middle school. The middle school building stood on the opposite side of town. Therefore, my bus route changed. Instead of the once happy neighborhoods, it now crept through those of kids who despised their bus driver. I’d expect better manners on prison buses. They’d yell obscenities at the bus driver and laugh at her empty threats. You mean she won’t really turn this bus around and take us back to school?  Even more appalling, they lived to destroy the lives of their classmates.

The worst thing about it was that several of the mean kids on my bus were legally old enough to join the Army. I was terrified of them, defenseless. I watched in stark horror at their antics as I tried to make myself invisible. I’d take a backseat, white-knuckling my Trapper Keeper, so no one could bully me from behind. Most the time this worked. The mean kids took little notice of me. They’d turn their wrath on each other or on a kid who stunk or looked funny. But sometimes the backseats were taken, and I’d find myself in the shark-infested middle of them. 

Over the years, I have mostly tried to black out my sixth-grade bus route. But once in a while, when watching a beautiful sunset or something, I’ll get whacked over the head with a sudden violent vision of the past.

There I am, in sixth grade, on the bus, with an acne cluster on my forehead, just trying to make it to school. Then snap! I hear the nauseous sound of a thick rubber band cutting the air. It came from behind. This is quickly followed by a burning sensation on my nape, which spreads like lightening to my toes. I can feel my pulse in the welt that is forming. On instinct, I turn to confront the source. When I meet the eyes of the 18-year-old hoodlum in the seat behind me, I immediately know I made a mistake. But it’s too late. I already turned around. 

“What are you looking at?” barks the kid. He looks crazy, like he’s itching to hurt me. ”You gotta problem?”

“Umm…” I say. “Well, umm, I thought you might have accidentally flipped me with a rubberband.”

“Nope.”

“OK. Sorry.”

Sometimes they wouldn’t even use rubber bands. Instead, they’d simply flatten their hands like paddles, lick the length of their flag-pole-length fingers, and smack the Dickens out of some poor, unsuspecting sap’s neck. I guess the wetness allowed for greater sting. I quickly learned to pop my shirt-collars to absorb some of the blow.

Then, one day, out of the blue, my bus route changed, just like that. I don’t know why. I didn’t even question it. I just figured God had heard my prayers. At first, suffering flashbacks, I’d scurry to the corner of my seat and tremble whenever anyone getting on or off the bus would accidentally brush against me. But in time, this all passed. I started wearing my shirt-collars down again. I even befriended some older kids–who were nice.

Nowadays, I sort of feel like I did when I was on the bad bus route. But substitute the bus route for the present-day bad economy. One day you’re just riding happily along, feeling safe, and then suddenly a major, century-old financial institution goes up in smoke. Car companies run out of gas. And, instead of your neck, it’s your 401K that’s getting smacked around. Or your job gets a wet-willy. (For those who don’t know, a wet willy is when someone jams a wet finger in your ear.)

Yes, throw in some Joe Biden gaffes, and you got some pretty scary times. But for the sake of Optimism, I reassure myself that things will one day bounce back. I have hope that my bus route will once again stretch through the peaceful neighborhoods of the bull market. In the meantime, however, I don’t think it’s such a bad idea to wear my collar up.

I hadn’t planned it this way. Jess and I started out with dinner and a movie, prepping ourselves for the proper ringing in of the new year. By ten o’clock we were back home, as planned, watching Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2009. (Is it me, or does this title get longer every year?) By 10:15, I wasn’t ready for the surprising discovery I’d made. To my astonishment, I realized I had Dick Clark on more out of duty than enjoyment. 

I knew not wanting to spend New Year’s Eve with Dick Clark was wrong, un-American and, perhaps in some households, immoral. I felt strong with guilt. On TV, dedicated New Year’s Eve enthusiasts shivered in Times Square streets, like homeless revelers, sacrificing their comfort so I could be entertained from the warmth of my own home. Alternative Rock Bands straight off the cover of Teen Magazine plucked guitar strings with frozen fingers for my New Year’s Eve benefit. And here I’d rather watch Seinfeld re-runs.

How ungrateful was I? I tried to fix things. I resolved to get into a chilly so-so performance by a sleeveless Taylor Swift. Next, the Jonas Brothers, and their Tom Hanks haircuts, brought all they had, too. I swayed to their garage-band sound.

It was no use. My soul was simply unfazed, no, worse, it was bored. Not even Ryan Seacrest with his puffy coat and ear muffs could cheer me up. What was wrong with me? What did 2008 do to me to make me so calloused? Was it the government bailouts? Too much Hillary Clinton? Brad Pitt’s new trash-stache? I didn’t even know myself anymore.

Before Will.I.Am could finish his bit, I had flipped to a station showing the movie Elf. Jess, who was half-asleep by now, hardly put up a fight. Now I had seen Elf probably a hundred times already this Christmas season, but I loved it exactly the same every time. As Buddy the Elf (Will Ferrell) was singing his Christmas gram to his estranged dad, I promised myself that I’d flip back to Dick Clark before midnight.

Sadly, this never happened. Jess and the dog were snoring on the couch by 11:30, and secretly (I’m just now admitting this to myself) I was happy to call it quits for the night. In bed by 11:45, I decided to ring in the new year by reading a book. Beside me, Jess and the dog were unconsciously paying their last respects to the dwindling 2008.

At exactly midnight, I heard fireworks outside, which according to next day’s news reports some were actually gunshots fired at the sky. Evidently, some locals had celebrated themselves into believing they were figures of the Old West. Though not much for public safety, these urban cowboys were impressively punctual. The ringing of gunshots hit midnight right on the nose. I suspect they’ll show up perfectly on time for their court dates. 

It was 12:01 when a dull sadness caught me off guard. I tried to pinpoint the source. I guessed first it was simply nostalgia for the old year. That’s perfectly normal. Maybe it was because I’d missed the ball drop, and the count down, and all the magical feelings that come with welcoming in the new year with a formal fuss. People were blowing horns, wearing party hats, and kissing their spouses in the living rooms of the houses of my imagination. Not to be left out, I kissed Jess’ sleeping head. She didn’t budge.

Then I guessed it. My serotonin levels had experienced the equivalent of a train wreck after taking in the depressing Will Smith movie, Seven Pounds, earlier that evening. I won’t give away the ending, but let’s just say I hope I don’t accidentally see it again. I was sort of hoping to ride into the new year on a lighter note. But this dream, as were several other 2008 dreams I had, such as getting to hang out with the Burger King, were blatantly squelched.

Anyway, once I solved the mystery of my low mood, I was able to move on to the more serious question of the evening. Why couldn’t I care less about making a big to-do over New Year’s Eve?

By 12:15 I found the slippery solution: I was happily content with what I had at home. I wasn’t missing out on all the people and parties out there. They were missing out on me and all that was with me, i.e, my wife, dog, and Buddy the Elf. Comparatively, everything else, Dick Clark included, had lost its luster.

Whew…all this psychoanalyzing had made me sleepy. I killed the lights at 12:20a.m., January 1, 2009. From there I slipped into my first dreams of the new year. I can’t remember what I’d dreamed that night exactly, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it had something to do with paling around with the Jonas Brothers, firing guns into the frosty air, and looking-forward to getting home early.

This tactic is extremely necessary — and may or may not be approved by Oprah – in case our  surprise visitor decides to grab ahold and make off with one of us. It’s not like we live in a bad neighborhood or anything. We are just neurotically suspicious. Besides, it has just been hard for us to adjust to the throngs of Girl Scouts in the area pushing Thin Mints.

Therefore, I have decided that from now on I shall wear jeans to bed. You just never know when that next knock at the door will be. And that scares me.     

The stomach flu of the century struck my system sometime after lunch on Friday. At first it disguised itself as nothing more than perhaps an office thermostat malfunction (stuck at around 100 degrees) and a small upset stomach. 

“Are you hot?” I’d ask my co-workers.

“Yeah, it’s a little warm,” one would say, nonchalantly, tugging at the front of his shirt just to humor me.

A little warm? You mean it doesn’t feel to you like someone is holding a lit match to your neck? – I didn’t say this, but this is how it felt to me. 

Four hours later, I might as well have swallowed dynamite. I rocked back and forth on all fours moaning with cold sweats, cheek-to-cheek with the toilet seat, which I wished I’d cleaned last week like I was supposed to. My skull throbbed and somehow my senses mysteriously heightened to superhero proportions. All light, even invisible light, tore at my retinas. Even the gentlest brush against the skin felt like a million paper cuts. Everything hurt and smelled bad. Everything threw my stomach into a mess of pain. Crouched in the fetal position like a sick and useless Peter Parker, I tuned my newly acquired supersonic hearing to the conversation of the bugs outside: “Bzzz…bzzz…it’s cold out here.” “Yeah…bzzz…look a light!”  

I was convinced the end was near. And I welcomed it.

It’s interesting to note the quick progression of theology that drifts through the mind of someone who, believing God is good, thinks he’s dying. At first, attempting to gain a proper prospective regarding this violent illness, I accurately nailed down the right source for the hostile feelings I was having toward involuntary retching. No, man, you got it all wrong. It is not vomiting that you hate. No, no, it is the thing that makes you vomit that you hate. (A good part of the disillusionment of the sickness played out with me talking to myself.)

This new line of thinking helped set me straight. I held my head up with the cold, hard porcelain of the toilet seat and  marveled at another one of God’s little miracles, so often overlooked. NEW APPRECIATED FACT: God, in all His infinite wisdom, installed in the human genetic make-up a remarkable mechanism that tells the body when to expel bad Chinese food or any other poison from the body.

I considered this miracle for an extra minute before I thanked God in my own special way by cranking my mouth open wider than I had ever dreamed (or hoped). I watched firsthand as God’s perfect plan unfolded into action. The first round of flu escaped my body in a warm wondrous rush that sent my spine crashing to my sternum. Then again. Five more times for good measure. My heart miraculously did not explode. Praise, God…Bleh…

“Joe…do you need anything?” asked a meek voice. The words drifted in like a weird dream. To my half-coherent skull, it sounded distant and small, like how a speaking mouse might sound. Married a little less than two years, Jess had never seen this ugly side of me before. She didn’t quite know what to do with me. And neither did I.

Instead of answering the mouse voice, I did a sort of backwards half sumersault - a skill involving nothing more than letting go of the toilet - into the bedroom closet (which connects to the bathroom), where I lay in an icy sweat, mumbling the jabber of the seriously sick.

On my back, in the closet, among the nauseous light that burned like the Saharan sun, and the tossing shadows, I resumed my theological studies. During a brief session in between stomach cramps, I moved past considering God’s creations, namely the gag reflex, and on to the mysteries of pointless suffering.

Does this terrible pain inside my stomach count as pointless suffering? And, why would a good God allow it? After who knows how long, the answers to these questions failed to materialize. This of course was of no surprise, given the fact that brilliant philosophers and theologians have been wrestling with these very questions for centuries with no definite conclusions. Chances were, a man, lying in his closet, half mad with the flu was an unlikely candidate for stumbling upon any keys to discovery.

It didn’t matter anymore anyway, because the second wave of flu came on strong and mean. The pain buried itself deep inside my gut and the world spun around like the Gravitron at the Ohio State fair. No more questions, no more thoughts. Everything seemed to boil away. Suddenly, Reality became quite simple; there was me, the pain and God. 

In some circles, my prayer that night doubtfully qualifies as a prayer at all. But it counted to me, because I really, really meant it, and I really, really meant it to be heard: “God, help me!”   

When the sickness finally lifted, it goes without saying that I had not exactly joined the ranks of, say, St Augustine, Calvin or Kierkegaard. However, I was able to establish three certainties: (1) God knows how to win my full and undivided attention; (2) God is good, for He created Gatorade for such occasions; and (3) If it is possible, I always, always prefer less excruciating pain in my interactions with God – please?!

Yes, that’s right, no work for me today. But poor Jess had to still go in. Something about a potluck, a secret angel (same thing as a secret santa, I guess) gift for a co-worker, and one last Christmas shin-dig for her preschool class before handing the rowdy buggers over to their parents till next year, all wound up on sugar overdoses and ideas of presents.

This morning I slept in just a bit. Instead of my usual 5:45am early rise, I allowed myself an extra hour or so to make it a solid eight hour night. Jess, running late, barked instructions from the shower how to make the fruit smoothies. This, I knew, was serious business. In the past few months, She had grown highly disciplined in the art of morning smoothies. Being my first attempt at it, I could tell in her voice that she didn’t trust me all the way. Neither one of us did.

“One kiwi, one banana, one canned fruit, one cup of yogurt, six frozen strawberries, six ice cubes, and then press ‘mix’. Run it until the noise stops,” she said. “And make sure the lid is on tight or it will blow all over the place.”

I entertained the image of the purple smoothie dripping from the counter tops.

“Six ice cubes?” I asked

“Six ice cubes.”

In the kitchen I gathered all the necessary ingredients, as directed, and tossed them in one by one into the blender. One banana – check – that was easy. Six ice cubes and six frozen strawberries – check – easy. But when it came time to add the kiwi, unfamilar with the fuzzy walnut looking thing (are there kiwi trees?), I was forced to go back for further instruction.

“Do I just throw the kiwi in with its skin?” I asked.

“No, peel it first.”

My confidence shaky, I approached it as I would an orange: gouged out the navel, then tore at the opening in hopes the skin would detach as one easy sheet. But the kiwi’s skin is thin and frail and pulled off only in tiny bits and pieces. Five minutes later, I found myself still picking at the stupid thing, the same method I’d probably employ for plucking a very small chicken. Kiwi stuck under my fingernails and my hands were sticky and useless. But finally, after extreme persistance, the green, fleshy fruit stared back at me, naked and defeated. This was one fruit I’d be happy to blend. Later, I’d learn that a knife works better to slice the skin off, a little insider information sure to cut the terrible task down to thirty seconds.

The canned pineapples were last to go, but not without a fight. Is the fruit in rebellion? The tab broke off when I tried to open it, and Jess, with towel on head and rolled eyes, shoved the unruly can in the electric can opener, which I still can’t get to work.

“Haven’t you ever opened canned fruit before?” she asked.

“Yeah. Twenty years ago,” was my only line of defense.

Freed from their imprisonment, I dumped the pineapples into the blender and hit “mix”. Jess disappeared down the hall to what sounded like rocks in a garbage disposal.

In the end, it all turned out. And, I don’t mean to brag, but let’s just say I make a pretty darn good smoothie. Jess soon relieved me of my work and poured a glass for her and one for me, then outfitted both with straws. We prayed first, still unsure if smoothies count as food to be blessed. After two slurps, Jess shot up with her cup, indicating it was time to go.    

I waved good-bye as Jess smiled brightly back. Jess’s smile and her car shrunk into the gray distance. With her gone, all that was left to watch was the quiet sky, thick and lonely, like a colorless smoothie. Then, studying the rich purple contents of my glass, I realized Jess was my bright-colored smoothie in an otherwise gray morning. I took another sip from my straw. It tasted great. And the kiwi was definitely worth all the effort.