A.K., bless his heart, was sick with a cold a couple of weeks ago, a cold I should point out that he gave to everyone else. As a matter of fact, Amanda is currently sick with a cold that originated, I would imagine, in the nostrils of some other five-year-old in A.K.’s kindergarten class.

Thankfully, it’s a private school.

(I really ought to write for 30 Rock; that sounds just like something Jack would say).

At any rate, A.K., while sitting at the dinner table two Sundays back, turned to me and asked point-blank:  Where does snot come from?

Kids, huh. But, still, I bet you’ve wondered the same thing. Before passing it along to Amanda, I was the one hunkered down with mucus, and every time I sneezed I both scared the older cat into a hairball fit and saturated my brave little Kleenex completely.

And, yes, like everyone else on the planet, I looked at it, afterwards. And, yes, just like I’ve done since the dawn of time, I asked myself, Where on earth does all this snunk come from? (That’s a little word I made up for it: snot + junk).

It’s endless. I keep a runny nose for days and days after the cold has, for all intents and purposes, lifted.

And so, I looked at A.K. and said, “I just don’t know.”

Because, scientifically, I don’t.

But, since scare tactics and hearsay pandemics run rampant in my family, I am more than prepared to offer a completely made-up, barely tinted with truth, panic-riddled response to his question.

Oh, the places you'll go.

It comes from other people.

That’s right: only about 10% of the snunk you expel during your Time With Tissue is your own.

Think about it. If you’re passing around a cold, the flu, a stomach bug, what have you, you obviously have to be carrying around the germs of other people inside you. That’s what your body is trying to get rid of, the foreign ick.

Your own homemade ick, it’s more than happy to kick that around the bloodstream, but someone else’s. Forget about it.

Amanda, poor thing, is sneezing out a few of her own germs, but most of that—is mine. And most of what I had—was originally A.K.’s. And god only knows where he got his from. I’ve seen his kindergarten class, and trust me, private schools are no respecter of persons…anymore than a cold is.

We probably have on hand, I’d posit, anywhere between 3 and 257 different people’s germs running around our nasal cavities, at any given moment, and every germ their germ slept with, too. Now, according to my formula, you have to multiply that by 1,000,000 when you’re sick…and also, you have to assume that half those germs passed out at a frat party the weekend before, so…ahem.

This is kind of fun, making this all up. Because it’s difficult to completely disagree with me.

We are harbingers and overstuffed storage units of germs. That much we know.

Add to that, that when we’re not sick with a cold, or runny nose, where is that mucus, then?  San Destin? If I carried around with me, all the time, the amount of Grody-Jodies I leave in those mountains of Kleenex when I am sick, then heaven forbid, I’d never smell another thing as long I lived. I’d be a mouth-breeder until the day I died.

That’s because it’s simply not there until someone else gives it to you, the snot, I mean.

It’s a little unsettling to think that at this very moment, the sniffles I’m still trying to evict from my nose are only partly mine. It’s also fascinating, though, for me to sit here and think about whose they were.

I pray this is self-explanatory.

Let’s see…the people before me who had this cold, in order, were A.K., Wynn, GamVa, U.L., and Dodie. I got sick soon after Dodie, and so I could, theoretically daisy-chain this head cold in the following manner:  Dodie got it from U.L.; A.K. begot Wynn’s, who begot GamVa’s, who begot U.L.’s, and then, if we traced it all the way back to A.K., then I could argue that, depending on all those others who were exposed and/or contributed to their colds, I am sitting at my keyboard under crud from well over twenty different people. I’ve got germs in me that have spent the last couple of weeks prior to moving in my nose at a bridge game, a catfish buffet, a swanky church Christmas party, two birthday shin-digs, a kindergarten class, and the emergency room.

They do get around, don’t they.

And to think, I’ve got remnants of all that lining both sides of my nose…no wonder I’m tired.

Sure this is a little disgusting for subject matter, but it beats feeling bad and sorry for myself. Because I cannot stand a runny nose. And I’m deciding to make the most of it, instead of being mad about. What would that change anyway? Nothing.

At least, at some point, it will eventually run its course. Unlike fat.

I remember, awhile back, I was working on this production, a premier of a show about witches called Maleficia. A woman who had been cast in the play quite happily lifted her shirt in front of me, baring her stomach, one rehearsal. She grabbed a handful of loose skin and said this was the reason for her diet.

“I’ve had this fat on me for the past thirty years,” she admitted, “I’ve lived with this fat for thirty years. It’s horrible. I can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to live like that.”

I was at first shocked, amused, and then concerned.

My god, I thought, what about me. How many years have I lived with fat, of any kind, having grown accustomed to it. Like it was a natural part of me.

That. That was the real panic.

It makes snot pale a little in comparison, I think. Who wouldn’t love to pass a little fat onto to someone else. (Don’t look at me, please).

Fat, in this context, becomes a bit too intimate and personal for me. I’d almost welcome a thousandfold of germs in lieu of that box of sugar cookies I know is waiting for me at the house. But, the point is, nature knows what’s best. Colds come and go.

Fat, though, tends toward forever.

Skingrams: the future of weight management?

And the shame in that is this: We don’t intentionally make ourselves sick, but we don’t really stop from putting bad foods in our bodies, either. We find some way to deserve our fat.

That has to stop. For me.  And, I think I’m telling myself this more than anything else. This whole adjustment to a diabetic diet that I’m having to go through is making me sick, literally.

OK, no, just figuratively.

It’s merely ironic that I have a cold, I guess.

On the flip side, sneezing is still exercise.

And that’s good because it looks like I have a long workout ahead of me.

Sigh.

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I know because I’m very attuned to these things. Like any hypochondriac.

Won't someone help this pretend man?

It’s crack (machines). I speak from experience. (And I’m pretty sure it’s not an epidemic of One, but if it is, that’s ok, because the army is an Army of One, and I know for a fact that there’s more than one person in the army.  I’m stepping forward to speak today because I’m no longer afraid to confess that I’m addicted. Perhaps, I can speak as One for us All. Perhaps, my story will help others).

I could hardly write that last sentence without giggling…at least, a little.

Ahem, anyway.

It’s one thing to enjoy a “devil” beverage at a bar, much to U.L.’s chagrin, but it’s entirely another when you’re enjoying it plus sliding countless dollars into a medium-sized black box with lights flashing and a menu of over 100 different touch-screen challenges, ranging from puzzles to quizzes to action and strategy. 

There’s even a Triple Threat option for those who like to live on the edge.

With my hypochondria, though, I take too much medication to attempt the Triple Threat. I’m nervous just sitting here thinking about it.

Here’s how you recognize that you have a problem: You’re going out to bars, on a regular basis BUT you’re not drinking at all, which bartenders don’t like. You’re simply going to play the games. On top of that, you’re accosting innocent people at bars like that time I did at Dave’s because I thought the machines were broken, which, of course, I knew immediately meant that they were phasing them out, getting rid of them, possibly because of their addictive natures, or to discourage me from coming out to Dave’s in the first place.

(Hypochondria can be mental, as well).

It turns out they’d just turned them off. It’s good to be energy-conscious. That’s what they reminded me of, again, last night.

Last night where I bet I spent ten dollars on one single machine because I am a competitive individual, I can’t help it.

I wanted to see those words Winner! or New Grand Champion! roll across the screen because I knew right after it rolled across the screen would come my favorite part: I’d get to type in my name and stand back as it clicked in at the Number One spot.

Some have said to me, Well, Kris, I’m certainly glad you don’t gamble.

Ha. Please.

That’s not even remotely the same thing. And let me tell you why.

Gambling doesn’t have a Top Ten list, for one thing, and second – you wouldn’t know those people anyway, probably. But at a local watering hole, like Dave’s and OVP, or Barrister’s, chances are you know the people on the Top Ten list, and you know them well. And so, you have to beat them because you know them.

See how flashy and red it is...

You want them, more than life and breath itself, to stroll back into that bar one evening, grab a Coors Light or a Cape Cod, or Vodka Collins, whatever, and sit down at that machine and try their hand at Gone Fishin’, or Double Quiz, or Type-A-Phrase, all the while thinking they’re going to beat their own score (they naively consider themselves still in the Number One position, naturally) and when all is said and done: Oh, they beat their own score, all right, but not mine.

Then, they have that moment where their fists ball up and they murmur a soft curse, That Kris! And order another Seven & 7.

That’s why I play. Imagining the look on their faces when they fall to second place is the whole of my addiction.

And that’s, also, the hole in my wallet.

But, I mean, doesn’t money exist to be spent? Where else would I put it? The bank?

Please. I’m one of the last members of Generation X. We don’t “do” banks. Our entire reason for existing was to aggravate everyone else. Especially parents. And parents “do” banks, so, there goes that.

I admit it – we’re probably the reason for this current recession.

Of course, now that I’m in my 30s, I’m ok with a bank. I’m wishing now that I’d “done” banks, back then. Because my car needs a tune-up, two new back tires, there’s electricity – I like having it – so I’ll have to pay for it. Yes, just when I least expected it, Life came running back downhill and kicked me in the face for being a “rebel.”

God, I’m using a lot of quotation marks, today.

Probably because I recognize the futility of a youth mostly wasted. Not all, but mostly. And if it took me this long to figure that out, then I worry for my nieces and nephews. They’re already belligerent. And the oldest isn’t even 5, yet. Still, they’ve established a pecking order: who sits where at Sunday dinner, who gets the yellow truck, who gets the green and blue books, etc. So young, and yet, they “must have” certain things, if for no other reason than to keep someone else from getting it.

Is that what propels us to addictions, in the first place? A lack of control over anything larger than the Self? An inability to see beyond the temporal? I wonder…

Sure, you might argue that an addiction is the opposite of self-control, but is it? Really?  The more I think about it, the more I come to believe it isn’t, actually. It’s an abusive, unhealthy form of self-control, but all the same, it’s self-control…it becomes a luxury in its destructiveness, a habit that we eventually must enforce.

I suffered from an eating disorder for several years. Originally, it was harmless enough. I’d had a car accident, I’d hurt my left leg (nerve damage), and I wasn’t able to play tennis, officially, so I did what most do under the circumstances: I became depressed. (And I didn’t need much help in that department).

At first, it was easy enough to not eat. I wasn’t in the mood for it.

Some things just seem fat.

But, then, I actually began to enjoy the looming end result of not eating. I couldn’t do what I wanted to do (tennis, etc.), but rather than focus on that, I could do something else: re-make my body image. Denying food became a game…with no clear way to define a winner. I lost an ungodly amount of weight. My family eventually intervened, of course. But, it wasn’t an easy intervention, upfront.

However, when, I fell out in church, that was that.

We knew something was wrong then. Baptists don’t get the Holy Ghost. If you fall out in church, it’s most likely from a medical reason. Also, one time, Miss Ada Lee may have had a heart attack in church. Point is, we knew why people fell in church and it wasn’t because they found God. Per se.

My weight was sickeningly low. I was 22, 5’10″, and maybe 118? U.L. has burned all the pictures from that painful time, and painful it was, but I must tell the truth: I “felt” entirely in control of myself, my life. When I put on a pair of blue jeans that I’d not worn since the fifth grade, I was elated. Not for the sake of weight loss, anymore, but for the idea that I could fit in these pants, and the last time I’d worn them, I was a child…and that meant, I was someone else’s responsibility. That was the safety I think I was trying to secure by not eating.

I think that’s what addictions do for us.

They cover us, they shield us, they protect us, bad as they are. They distract us when we need it…the problem is they also distract us when we want it. The danger comes in marring the line that differentiates the two: want vs. need.

I know, I’ve kept my toe on that line for many a year.

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