An Unwelcome Guest 1/28/10

Here's a tip for those of you who are, like me, prone to "digestive events" while running: Even if you have been given clearance by your 70 year-old parents to enter their house whenever necessary, in order to avert a clustercrap of tragic dimensions, don't flippin' do it. I'm not saying you should take one in the pants for the team, but you should consider other options. Even if it means dangling your pale, puny patoot over a drainage canal behind an EPA Superfund clean-up site in the middle of Anytown, USA, do not use the access code to your parents' security system to gain entry to their placid retirement bungalow. Yeah, they gave you the code. But if you come in that way, through the garage, your father, deaf as a Republican Senator to logical health care reform arguments, won't hear you coming, no matter how loudly you yell upon entering the kitchen. He's not expecting you, so the thought that he might be accosted by his near-diarrheic son, at noon, while shuffling through his own hallway, isn't just not on his mind, it's not even on the list of things that could possibly occur. Finding out that health care reform passed with unanimous Republican support would seem reasonable by comparison. So, yelling that you are there would just seem like a stray thought he could not explain to himself, "Why am I here, anyway," he might wonder. "Oh, yeah, I'm going to butter the toast." And then he would continue into the kitchen, where you are stripping off your jacket and gloves, so you can be ready when you get to the damn bathroom, better use the one downstairs, this feels like it could be nasty. And then, he lifts up his head, sees you, recoils, just like he did when you came into the world, yells, "AAAAH!," likewise, and you are apologizing all the way down the stairs, and he is left groping for his inhaler. So, just don't drop in on your parents in order to drop a load. Own up to your decision to eat Fiber Flakes before going on your 17 mile run. Give the descendants of The Greatest Generation a break and crap somewhere else.

Thanks for humoring me.