An Open Letter to My FaceBook Friend-To-Be

Dear Friendless,

I see by my little pop up timer that you want to be my friend. That’s thoughtful of you and I’m sure you have a great personality; a people person that draws other folks to you like barbecue draws rednecks. But upon searching my memory banks, my old address books, and the pictures from my high school yearbook, I find I have no clue to your identity. I’m afraid to check the mug shots on the county jail website.

I asked my children if they had teachers that might be motivated to make my acquaintance on the sly. I wondered if my coworkers had friends with motives for revenge. Aside from folks touched by that episode with the chocolate diaper in the microwave, I can’t think of any work-related citizens who might bear ill will toward me.

I’d like to think you’re a fan, too shy to say anything out loud, but wanting to duplicate my every move so that you can be more like me every day.

Sort of like a stalker with poor life choices.

Sort of like the shy girl who sits in the corner by the cheese dip waiting for the chance to say “No problem” when someone drops a jalapeño in her shoe.

Sort of like the fellow that knew how to work the slide rule in math class back before everybody had calculators that could figure the change in your body fat ratio before you ate the chocolate chip cookie.

I married that guy.

I was going to ignore your friend request. I was going to go gleefully on my way accepting gifts for my virtual megafarm. I was going to go toss a pie at one of my less needy friends.

But then I looked closer. That’s not a stalker. It’s not even a fan. It’s a picture of me at a recent Christmas party.

I’m sitting by the cheese dip.

And eating out of the bowl.

And picking a jalapeno out of my shoe.

Talking Turkey

Two years ago, facing a diagnosis of “your internal organs are going to explode,” the Captain lost enough weight that he could send some to underdeveloped countries, such as Japan, where no one is ever overweight except Sumo wrestlers, the people who wear the least clothes.

Come to think of it, it’s that way at the beach, too. And, of course, Wal-Mart. Why is it that people with the most to show wear the least to cover it up? I’m certainly not the poster child for the “Feed the Runway Models” campaign, but I sure don’t want to have the seat behind the Sumo guy when he does his warm-up stretches.

Anyway, Cap also practically emptied his blood stream of triglycerides, a medical term that means “the fuse to the bomb that will make your internal organs explode.”

He did this all by himself. While he was very busy with the sort of advanced mathematics that deals with less than, greater than, and the sort of cholesterol level that voids whole sets of fat grams, I busied myself roasting turkeys, steaming vegetables, and skimming fat from by-products.

Eventually the Captain’s math resulted in the need for a belt to hold his pants up, and life returned to normal on the poop deck.

Until yesterday. One simple stretch and the button popped off his pants with enough force to put another hole in the ozone layer. Either his pancreas exploded or his body is rejecting artificial fasteners.

That little button also blew a hole in my holiday planning calendar for the next few months. I’m back to skimming, steaming, and roasting.

Luckily, my house is full of turkeys.

The No Brownie Birthday

Today is the Captain’s birthday and he’s not getting a brownie.

I blame it on Mrs. Williams. She was my third grade teacher. Up until third grade, I loved school. I was all about fat crayons and recess and seeing if Dougie Jenkins would really eat the prunes off of everybody’s plate during lunch.

Then in third grade we started learning things. Other things than what happens when you eat 26 prunes at a time, which would technically count as biology and not comprise a major part of my career path, which was Major League Baseball. Either that or ballet. Turns out I never took a dance lesson, but I could hit a line drive that would give Dougie Jenkins an extra navel if he didn’t hotfoot it off the pitcher’s mound in time. Dougie dropped out of school not long after that.

Anyway, I’m not sure if we ever had fractions in Mrs. Williams’s class, but it sounds like something she would get all “it’s a party” about. So, I’m pretty sure it’s her fault.

Anyway, yesterday at work a very nice man, who isn’t nice just because he can cook or because he tells me jokes that I understand, but because he's just an all-around good guy that likes chocolate, brought a brownie to me at work. It was fairly extensive as brownies go, and made from something called scratch. I’m not exactly sure what is in scratch, but it makes terrific brownies.

So, looking at the whole thing logically, I knew I should eat that brownie before someone else came along and I had to share. But I also knew it would be good to share the brownie with the Captain, because today is his birthday. (That's where the term brownie points comes from.)

I decided to eat half and take home half. Hopefully he wouldn’t want his half, so I should probably go ahead and eat part of his half and he wouldn’t mind, and it would keep the scratch that was in it from going bad.

So I took a bite.

And another bite.

And one more bite.

And a series of nibbles.

Eventually his half was a good deal smaller than my half (the technical term "smidgeon" might apply) except there wasn’t any of my half left to compare. So if there was only one half, there was really only one brownie and shouldn’t I get half? I tried to work out the mathematical equation on my napkin, but new math can get really complicated when you have to carry a one in the fudge column. So I ate the rest of the brownie.

Mrs. Williams, I hope you’re happy, wherever you are. Now I have to find out where to get some scratch to make brownies with before the Captain’s birthday is over.

I’m fairly sure you can't find it in third grade. Maybe I'll just get prunes.