Remember when blackberries were nothing more than a fruit?
I do. I remember bowlfuls of them with sugar sprinkled over the top. I'd mix the around to make sure some of the sweet stuff got on every berry. And blackberry cobbler will always be my favorite, warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream melting on top. It's like a smile in a bowl.
These days when I hear the word "blackberry" I wince rather than smile. A couple years ago I 'received' (read "was forced to use") one for work.
"You'll be surprised how much more efficient you'll be and how much more you can get done with one of these babies." Those were the words that led to the phenomenon I refer to as the loss of anything that resembles any real escape from work. Resistance at that point was futile. I needed the job. I still do. So, instead of drifting off to sleep with the taste of warm cobbler flowing through my gullet, I check this ridiculous silver device to make sure the little red light isn't flashing. Who knows, I could be triple-booked at 8am, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it because it's already midnight and the people who scheduled me don't care about the knots forming in the middle third of my intestinal tract.
Many years ago, when I was a man in my early thirties, I suffered from debilitating stomach aches. These things would double me over in pain, cause me to adjust my breathing, and sometimes keep me from eating (which is a fate worse than death itself to many of us- well me, at least.) I was referred to a GI doc who ran a series of tests on me. Now, I learned through the process that a GI doc has nothing to do with the army. I thought maybe my regular doc - who of course I trust with my life, as he's been to areas of my body that even I wouldn't venture - wanted me to go to an army doc. I'm a trusting suburbian. Sure. Why not. Just tell me what's wrong with my stomach.
I learned that, in fact, GI in this context has nothing to do with "GI Joe" or "GI Jane." It in fact stands for gastro-somethingorother, which must be Latin for "let's stick lots of tubes into your nether-regions and see what's shakin'." After much probing and prodding and drinking vile liquids so the intestinal superhighway is free of debris and rubble, I met with GI Rodriguez. I almost saluted, but he was wearing a white coat and sitting on a rolling chair looking at what must have been results of my innards'-pounding tests.
"Your intestines are perfectly clean. Very good, in fact."
"Wow. So no cancer or ulcers or anything?"
"Nope. Nothing at all."
"Hmmmm. Then what the hell's wrong with my stomach?"
"Well," he said, sort of like the man-behind-the-curtain in the Wizard of Oz. "What do you do for a living?"
"I work with severely emotionally disturbed kids in a treatment center."
He dropped his pen and laughed.
"HA! YOU HAVE IBS!" It was like he discovered a new element on the Periodic Table and was going to name it "Rodriguezium".
I was perplexed and befuddled. I was perfuddled.
"You know what IBS is?"
I shrugged perfuddledly.
"It stands for Irritable Bowel Syndrome."
He went on to explain in medical terms how IBS was in fact a medical condition in which thousands of tiny rodents invade your intestinal tract and perform military maneuvers around your insides. They do obstacle courses, firing ranges, grenade lobbing, claw-to-claw combat, and even mess hall dining all up-in-ya, which ends in your intestinal tract being tied up in knots. Or something like that. It's pretty similar, I suppose, to the birdnests of knots I have to untangle any time I want to use an extension cord at my house.
At any rate, he let me know it was stress-related. So all I needed to do was live a monk-like, stress-free (and probably low cholesterol) lifestyle, and I'd NEVER have to worry about a bout of IBS again. I began to picture myself snorkeling for conchs off Fiji, but when I realized the conch market isn't all it's cracked up to be, I went back to work, so I could pay my DirecTV bill. Watching reruns of "Little House on the Prairie" is about as stress-free as I get.
So with the addition of this wonderful Blackberry, I realize I have an additional diagnosis: IJS - Irritable Jowl Syndrome. It happens frequently at night after feasting on a late-night snack of metallic Blackberry. Those rodents storm into my head and work their ways down to my jawbone. There, they slide it back and forth, causing my teeth to grind without my knowledge of any of it. When they're done see-sawing my jaw, they pour concrete into the hinge so I can't move it when I wake up. Then they flee to parts unknown, probably back to my bowels where they'll start their five-mile hike during my 8am meeting.
I was losing hope quickly, when I realized the answer was there all along. When problems get overwhelming, when life's answers seem out of reach, when the rodents have taken over your body, when molehills have been mountains for months, there is only one solution.
Leave.
Get out of town.
Never mind the old Chinese proverb about 'how do you eat an elephant?.... one bite at a time' or 'a thousand mile journey begins with a single step.' Screw that. Who wants to eat an elephant or walk a thousand miles anyway? All I want is for my guts to stop hurting and my jaw to open so I can yell at the dog in the morning.
So, we rely on the genius of perhaps the greatest invention ever known to man. No, I'm not talking about electricity, the wheel or even fire. I'm talking about the sick day. Ah, yes, the sick day. That wonderful excuse to throw every seed of responsibility to the wind and sow your oats at a location to be determined later. If you didn't know, it's impossible to sow any oats if your intestines are knotted or your jaws are concreted shut. Trust me; it is. And even if the fields of your life seem barren, seeds still need to be sown, dammit. Seed-sowing is biblical, you know. Don't mess with that biblical stuff. Sow those seeds. Take that sick day and sow those seeds, preferably out of town somewhere where the rodents can't find you and your Blackberry loses its signal.
And one of the best ways to sow seeds out of town is to pretend like you're someone else, especially a foreigner. Foreigners sow some great seeds. Put on a funny shirt and make up a name and accent and introduce yourself to Fern the waitress as Ivan Bytchurcockov, Russian man-at-large.
"Oh my," Fern would marvel. "What's a man-at-large do, anyways?"
"Vell," you'd reply in your best faux-Communist dialect, "a bit more than a man-at-small but a lot less than a man-at-XL does."
With that you'd toss a ruble on the table and hit your four-wheeled seed sower and drive further out of Blackberry range.
And if you can make it to Fiji, try snorkeling for conchs for a day. I hear it's great for the bowels and jowls.
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