He Needs Yoga

Sarah: Heh, look at this picture of Kevin with John Kerry! He DOES look weird.

Angie: Wow, look how stiff he is! I think that's a cardboard cutout, Sarah.

Sarah: Ohhh...

Angie: Yeah, I know, he could totally pass for a cardboard cutout of himself.

That man is stiff.

Welcoming Death

Today, Sbarro's made me want to die. Food poisoning does that to you: welcome death with open arms, I mean. Did I get the shitz? Boy, did I. Did I spew cookies? You betcha. More than once, I contemplated asking Sarah to knock me unconscious with a swift punch in the head. But then, I thought, what if she doesn't hit me hard enough? Instead, I let her take care of me in her own way: making tea, changing my barf bag, etc. I guess it was better this way.

Jesster's Bed

I love Jess's bed. It is red and white with pretty designs on it, but that is not why I love Jess's bed. Today, I was lying on top of her covers, and I noticed that there are tufts of red yarn growing out of her them. Each tuft has a knot in the middle and grows equidistantly from its neighboring tufts of hair. Sometimes, I see fire. Sometimes I see Sideshow Bob's head. Then, I braided one of the tufts on either side of the central knot, and I saw Pippy Longstocking's crazy red pigtails growing out of her wonderful covers. Now you understand why I love Jess's bed.

The Taste of Childhood with a Twist

When we were kids, James, Sarah and I spent a lot of time at piano lessons. Sure, we played the piano. We played the piano as much as we played rummy, swatted at house flies with rags, salted slugs and watched them morph into orange ooze, and got fed. Sometimes, Piano Teacher (that was her name) would take out a whole jar of peanut butter and mix honey into it. It was peanut butter with a twist.

One sultry, summer evening in Philly, more than a decade later, Sarah and I were grocery shopping at Frogro, when we happened upon a jar of JIF peanut butter with a yellow lid instead of the characteristic red (creamy) or blue (crunchy). It was honey-flavored peanut butter, Piano Teacher's special creation, on the market. Well, I thought, it took a while, but they've finally caught on.

Despite all the rages of the present world, we can still go to the supermarket and purchase a jar of good ole JIF peanut butter for that homely, classic, creamy taste of a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. The availability of our "taste of childhood" is a decent measure of the state of our nation. If things are not so bad that we cannot enjoy a PBJ at the kitchen table, then we can be sure that problems will mend, scars will heal, despite all the rages of the present world.