Getting to Know Dave's Body: Part 1 of an Ongoing Series

I woke up this morning and stumbled into the bathroom to shower before going to the office. Seeing how I sleep through the night wherever I end up passing out, I'm occasionally welcomed to a new day by temporary but strange imprints on random places on my body. For example, falling asleep using corduroy pants as a makeshift pillow produces interesting results; one time I had an imprint of the Virgin Mary wearing a sombrero.

This particular morning I checked my elbow and found a curious new companion. Not a fair weather friend of an imprint that debuts with much fanfare but disappointingly fades away, but rather a growth of curious proportions. Amongst the vast wasteland of scar tissue that is my right elbow rises this rebellious upstart of a hair:

Verily, this growth has fuzzy neighbors of the same brethren, but its size and location are extraordinary. It's as if at conception, the hair's elders pointed a labor-worn finger into the vast wilderness of Elbow Scabion Majora, and said 'Go forth my child, into the undiscovered country and prosper for generations'.

Taking this edict as its manifest destiny, this young pioneer ventured forth through the desolate plains of deceased hair follicles wiped out long ago by catastrophic skin abrasions, to arrive upon its Zion, a fertile oasis of prosperity the likes of which rival the mythical lands of Rogaine.

With no one to rely upon other than itself, this upstart has skyrocketed from obscurity to ultimately tower supreme over its lesser kinsmen that chose the safer and well-trodden realms of hairdom. As its keeper, how do I reward this hair's bold streak of independence and tenacious toil in such an inhospitable precipice as a weather-worn elbow?

As it is the natural instinct of any man-child, I reached for the bottle of lighter fluid resting next to the Pantene hair gel. Contorting my body so that the lit match in my teeth is within the line of squirt of the lighter fluid bottle in my left hand, I looked at the renegade hair's reflection in bathroom mirror. What did I see?

I saw my child. As a man I will never experience firsthand the hassle, I mean, the miracle of childbirth, therefore I must treasure such abnormal growths as my own grotesque parody of procreation. It pales in comparison to the feat accomplished by real mothers, but cherish the moment I will.

I wanted a monocle

After a 12 year hiatus, I've started wearing eyeglasses again.

In addition to other mundane hassles such as strapping on a bicycle helmet, heeding medication side effect warnings, and wearing pants, I've been known to be stubborn in properly maintaining my eye sight. I was prescribed very minor corrective eyeglasses in 1996 and used them for about two years. They were useful in making out fine details at long distances, but beyond that, I could see just fine. For reasons I fail to recollect, I stopped using them and carried on without incidence.

After 5 years, I noticed my overall vision was getting worse, particularly at night and at long distance. I tried using my sense of smell to balance out my visual deficiencies, but years of cocaine use put that plan to a quick end.

Author's note: If any of my nephews or nieces are read this, Uncle Dave is just kidding with the Big People. If you treasure my ability to build you awesome Lego airplanes, you should immediately go to your parents and tell them that they are an epic failure at monitoring your internet use.

I could still get by, but occasions where I would fail to recognize familiar people until they were within 10 feet were becoming far too numerous for my reclusive personality. Thus, for the sake of my reclusive lifestyle (and to avoid petting possums that vaguely resemble housecats), I ordered some contact lenses. But Dave being Dave, I didn't pick them up from the Optometrist office until 4 months later.

After five years of regular contact lenses use, I've purchased eyeglasses as a backup. Despite my Optometrist's best efforts to fit me a be-jeweled monocle, I settled for a pair of foo-foo Pradas:

Seeing how it's the first day, I'm rather self-conscious wearing glasses. Of the people that have seen them on me, they say I look smart in them. Hearing this only makes me suspicious, as it reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer finds Henry Kissinger's glasses in a toilet, puts them on and says 'The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side!', to which a man in the next bathroom stall yells 'That's a right triangle, you idiot!'. D'oh!

End of the Affair

Dave,

We need to talk.

I've been thinking about this for quite a while and I think we need to spend some time away from each other. The whole time we've been together I've felt like something wasn't right but just haven't been able to put a finger on it. I recently had a moment of clarity that allowed me to figure out what it was.

The truth is I wasn't meant for just one person. Don't get me wrong; the voracious appetite you've shown for me could fulfill my purpose in life a thousand times over. I love the attention you give; caringly opening me to the world so as to avoid ripping me in half and exploding my contents across the room. Your tender hands rolling me tight and secure, my inner soul feeling alive with crisp and zest.

But it must come to a stop; I'm hurting you and you won't realize it until it's too late. At first I took your gold-tinted fingernails as a sign of affection, but the permanent hazard orange stains have become worrying. To be brutally honest, you are getting fat too. It's something that normally happens in my relationships, but I can't let it happen this time. You are a good person that knows better but just got caught up in the passion of the moment.

Get yourself together. Wipe away my crustiness from your lips. Go out and meet someone special. Get married. Have kids. When it feels like you're a family, let me back in your life and share me with your loved ones.

With love and friendship,

Post Script

Initially this was conceived as a letter issued by a corporate Frito-Lay representative imploring one of its customers to stop buying family-sized packages for individual consumption, but I was inspired to revise it into a pseudo love letter between an over-sized bag of chips and its co-dependent husky lover. This idea came to me late one night as I was pouring myself a helping. Rolling the bag of chips closed, I noticed the big bold 'Family-Size' letters emblazoned on the crackly bag. Then it dawned upon me; it's 2am on a Saturday night, the house is dead quiet, and I am pouring myself a bowl of chips from a bag intended for families- Something is wrong.