So I’m on my way to play European Boardgames at a friends house, and I pick up a blue Raspberry slurpee for the evening, disdaining the usual cola products. Now, I’m not sure how things are done in your corner of the world, but here when we get slurpees we tap the cup a few times on the counter after filling to disgorge some of the air pockets from filling and top ‘er off. I only mention this, not only because this little ritual baffled a Bostonite, but it also lends to the story. I noticed that the semi-solid beverage did not settle in any appreciable fashion and little room for topping off was procured. I shrugged it off as just one of those things, and proceeded to the checkout counter.
Now I diverge here to mention the patron in front of me was a beeeeutiful woman in a fairly snazzy red dress and was worth the second glance. Unfortunately, upon that second glance I noticed she was wearing one brightly colored knee-sock with the other leg bare. Upon further inspection the supposed hosiery turned out to be an ankle-to-knee tatoo of some beach scene, or acid-induced cloud flight, or something. Tatoos cause me to lose interest in the fairer sex fairly quickly when they distract from a good scanning. It’s like taking a refreshing drink of a beverage, only to be jolted by an astringent aftertaste.
Which brings me back to the matter at hand. As I sat contemplating that magnificent dress with a texture that looked like three inches of soft crimson butter, I took a pull on my slurpee. “That’s odd”, I thought. Tastes a bit funny. But things do from time to time, and I moved up to the counter as the tatoo sauntered off. I caught the eye of the ubiquitous middle-eastern clerk who seemed stunned, almost to the point of speechlessness by the woman in red. But this was understandable, as from his vantage point he was not hindered by the distracting ink. Seeing what I took for a bit of embarassment at the overt distraction present on his face, I smiled, rolled my eyes a bit, and nodded my appreciation.
As I drove out of the lot and took another cool draught of the slurpee I started to formulate a theory as to the odd aftertaste. It seemed to strike some chord back from my past. Through the haze of the years a memory floated back of sitting in an emergency room as a nurse scrubbed out the inside of my bottom lip with a toothbrush. It seems back in my Junior year of highschool I had slepwalked out of my mothers van on the way home from work at about 25 mph. I’d landed on my head and done a fair job of removing all the skin from one side of my face. In the emergency room the nurse cleaned the asphalt out my wounds, including the one in my mouth with a toothbrush and…
Soap!
There was soap in my slurpee, which was now about 3 inches from the top of the dome! Upon reflection I realized that the lack of compaction in my slurpee preparation ritual was probably due to surface tension in the soap in the slurpee. So here it is about 66 hours later and I’m still having problems, um… processing… solid food. Not that I’ve been that hungry. I did propose late tuesday that in the reversal of the Dawn ads from my youth that maybe a really greasy meal, say 4 strips of baccon and eggs, might help rid my system of the offending material. They said on the ad that the soap would, “..break up the grease, Actually surround it..” and finally I’d hoped the bacon grease would take the soap out of my way.
Such are the things I think when blood sugar gets low.