Well, the tea that I am drinking now does. It is a caffeine-free herbal blend. An exotic medley of rose, chamomile and peppermint. How fragrant. So exciting.
But it looks like pee. Like the kind of pee that comes out when you drink soda instead of water for a day and try to hold it in as long as possible. A darker shade of yellow.
It's an illusion, Michael
Is that gross?
Yes.
But, also, I think it is funny.
Tea looks like pee and chocolate looks like poop and, once, when my mom was changing Kayla's diaper, my dad said baby poop looks like dijon mustard.
Gross is gross. And funny is funny. But sometimes they can be one and the same.
I've been working on a story about the time I sliced my finger when I worked at Jersey Mike's. If you've known me for more than a month, you've probably heard me tell that story at least twice. Maybe thrice.
If you haven't heard it, here's an abridged version:
I used to work at Jersey Mike's. Jersey Mike's is a sandwich shop that slices their meat in front of you after you place your order. It gives the illusion of freshness. One day, I got cocky and careless. A most dangerous combination. I was slicing a piece of salami without looking when I sliced off the tip of my pointer finger. It wasn't much. Like half an inch, tops. But I freaked out, man, I freaked out hardcore and I started screaming and waving my hands around, but waving my hands around meant I was also waving my sliced finger around and my sliced finger was splurting blood like a squeezed ketchup bottle and when you shake a finger that's splurting blood, the blood gets everywhere.
We had to toss out fifteen loaves of bread that day.
ANYWAY, that's the story and I'm trying to turn it into a short essay, but it's not working. It's not so much a story as it is an anecdote. And I don't even know if it's that amusing. There's no point to it. I've tried rewriting from scratch five times already and each time I hit a dead end.
Sometimes I try to assign significance to the insignificant. I did it a lot when I was kid. The smallest things would all of a sudden take on this grand meaning.
A penny would become a talisman that would protect me from all evil because I fished it out of a church fountain.
A necklace I bought at a gift shop in Orlando would grant me courage because I wore it while riding a roller coaster.
Hannah Barron would be 'the one' because she gave me a Crunch bar she didn't want and Crunch bars are my favorite candy and it's destiny and she's the one and we're going to get married just you WAIT.
I did it a lot with ladies.
It's kind of pathetic, actually.
"Oh, hey, you're half-Salvadoran, half-Mexican AND our names both start with the letter 'A?' Wow. We're soul mates!"
Maybe that's the point of that whole finger slicing story. Some things don't have any relevance. The point is that there is no point.
It's an illusion, Michael.
Today, I asked a co-worker how her foot was feeling (it's not a random question, I promise. She broke her foot a few weeks ago). She said that, despite feeling perfectly fine the past few days, her foot started hurting today. It was the weirdest thing. Maybe it had to do with the rain. Change in atmospheric pressure and all that.
Or maybe it was a ghost pain.
Probably not because she still had her foot and ghost pain is associated with phantom limbs.
But still.
Phantom limbs interest me. How can you feel a pain in your arm if you DON'T HAVE AN ARM?!
Sometimes, when I press down on my pointer finger, it hurts.
Your body never forgets. You'll always feel a pain for what was lost. Even though the nerves aren't there anymore, the connections remain. All of the veins and arteries and tendons leading to what is gone are still there.
I like to think that the lost limbs are still out there, interacting with the world, and every phantom pain is a result of the limb getting stepped on or bitten by a rat.
Or maybe the limb is in the afterlife, waiting for you. That's a nice thought. A part of you is already in heaven or hell or purgatory and it's sending you messages from beyond.
Sometimes, my finger throbs for no apparent reason. Maybe my sliced tip is being licked by a puppy (all dogs go to heaven, duh). Or maybe it's being stabbed by a demon.
Or maybe I'm just assigning significance to the insignificant again.
I finished my tea that looks like pee and now I have to actually pee. When I do, the tea that looks like pee will actually be pee and the pee that looks like tea will look like pee.
Illusions, Michael. Illusions.
