The Juicer

Health Tip of the Week  - Never Buy a New “Juicer”, immediately go out and buy $93 of fruit and vegetables, test out most of it in one sitting, and take your dog for a long walk.

We're not talking about the old one-amp unit from commercials of years' past.  We're talking about today's technology, a Quad Core 6.7 GHz Engine that can produce enough power to light up half of Scotland.

So the unit arrives and we rush out and buy what I believe is the required $93 dollars worth of fruit and vegetables to power the unit.  People at the King's supermarket thought we were crazy.  We get home and now the problem is:  Where do you store $93 worth of fruit and vegetables?  This problem quickly liquefies. As we get caught up in the excitement of juice-amania, we decide to try it all.  We're mixing carrots and apples and pears; blueberries, strawberries and pineapples.  Then, why not all together.  Then papaya, mangos and celery.  Then again, why not all together.  We’re having a great time with our new toy.  Eventually we finish.  At this point my molars are swimming and my eyeballs are orange, we're on a Major Juice High.  My wife looks at me and says, "Ya know, I think the dog needs to go out, and I don't think he's had a walk all day."  I think to myself, “I’m so juiced up right now, I’m probably like two steps away from becoming the Incredible Hulk…and I don’t need the Gama rays.  I could probably walk half way around the globe with all this healthy stuff running through my veins.” 

I grab the leash, and naturally being the good neighbor that I am, I grab a small blue doggie cleanup bag, just in case.  Only because I have a digestive track that will someday be donated to the Smithsonian…you would think that at the very moment I touched the blue bag that something would have clicked in my head,…but unfortunately nothing did, and I walked out the door.

So I get about 3/4s of a mile from my house and start to feel some pressure, unmistakable pressure.  I take a couple more steps and it hits me.  I’m in real trouble.   

The feeling was kind of like the movie "Training Day," where towards the end, Denzel Washington leaves Ethan Hawke, the rookie, with the gang members whose job it is to kill him.  They manage trick him into giving them his gun and when he realizes he's done, it was one of those terrible hopeless sinking feelings.

There’s now an unholy war going on in my lower quadrant.  Even the dog’s senses are on overload, I’m sure I’m imagining it but I could swear he was giving me a look that said something like, “What were you thinking and what just happened to the atmosphere?”

But like Ethan, under a lot of pressure, I decide not to give up.  The downside is way too ugly.  And I don’t want to have to move out of the neighborhood.

I turn and head home.  I'm making decent time, but mentally beating myself up the whole way for being so sensible about drinking more than my fair share of $93 of juice.   You see the rest of my family had enough with just part of one cup of each brew.  I naturally didn’t want this life giving nectar to go to waste, so I'd finish theirs.  I did cut myself some slack because at one point during one of the juicing experiments I almost asked my wife, "What do you think would happen if we put an onion in it?"

I'm getting close to home and thinking, "Okay, I can do this.  Just hang tough... real tough."  Then disaster struck.  I look ahead and see a neighbor coming towards me and he’s walking his dog.  His dog is a dog that mine really likes... which happens to be just about every dog in the neighborhood.  Our dog is a Golden Retriever, and if he weren't a dog, he'd probably be mayor.  My neighbor is a nice enough guy but can be kind of chatty.  Trying not to be rude (in more ways than one), I engage in what I hope is a short conversation of un-pleasantries.  At one point he looks at me and can see that a trickle of sweat is streaming down both of my temples.  He asks me, "Steve, it's 37 degrees outside, and you're sweating - are you OK?"  I tell him I probably have something very contagious coming on, and better be on my way. 

Of course as we get back to our yard, my dog decides he needs to go.  I look at him as if he's stuck a knife in my back.   In desperation, I throw the blue bag at him and tell him to clean up after himself. It's every man or dog for himself at this point.  I race into the house….

I’ll only say this, I’ve brought new meaning to the technical term “Systems Purge.”