Lynn Ruth Miller

NO, THANK YOU

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life
Is “No thank you,” it will be enough.
Lynn Ruth and Meister Eckhart

No one likes to take responsibility for their own destiny and the American people are a prime example.  They have blamed the car manufacturers for our automobile fatalities, the cigarette manufacturers for lung cancer and now they are blaming dessert creators for our obesity.  It turns out that unsuspecting consumers are not at fault for increasing their circumference faster than the speed of light.  Nor is it their doing that they no longer fit in a revolving door.  The blame is now on those profit-mongering villains who make delectable biscuits, marvelous confections and delicious drinks to quench our thirst. Indeed, these greedy monsters are deliberately adding a ton of sugar to all the goods we adore for the sole purpose of making diabetes our national disease.

The latest scientific studies confirm their corruption.  Sugar is toxic and unscrupulous manufacturers like Sara Lee (yummy cheesecake) or Krispy Kreme Doughnuts have deliberately stuffed their products with this poisonous substance that has been proven to kill us even faster than fatty beef will clog our arteries.

In less informed times, these bakers were our heroes.  We longed for their recipes, gobbled up their products and reveled in the sugar high we got to finish our meal.  We reached blindly for them in the mid-afternoon to pep us up when the “threesies” hit.  Now, thanks to those experts who conduct scientific studies that destroy our confidence in our own preferences, we all know better.  We have been the innocent pushovers of a diabolical plot to put money in the pockets of the obscenely rich manufacturers of cookies, cakes and pies even as we collapse in droves from insulin failure.

The baking industry and the soft drink tycoons are scandalized at the accusations the scientific community has made to smudge their good name and destroy their public image. After all, they say, all they did was create a product that people enjoyed eating. “Don’t talk to me about nutrition,” one reportedly said. “Talk to me about taste, and if this stuff tastes better, don’t run around trying to sell stuff that doesn’t taste good.”

I cannot help but remember my sister who turned to hypnotism to help her when she topped 400 pounds.  “My right hand was hypnotized so it would not touch the refrigerator,” she said.  “So I learned to open it with my left.”

Now, I know perfectly well that it has become politically incorrect to blame the consumer for what he consumes but I cannot help but remember my dear old mother (who wasn’t dear ALL the time but sadly almost always right) when she said.  “If you don’t want it, just say, ‘no thank you.’”

I would love to see a scientific study that figures out why the obese among us are incapable of pushing away that second piece of pie, or turning their noses up and their fifth glass of soda pop.  I suspect that if we could create a no thank you serum to inject into ourselves before dinner, we would save a fortune in diabetic remedies, fat farms and gastric by-passes.  Isn’t funny, how simple solutions seem to escape us?

In the dark ages when I was a child, Gwendolyn Turner and I took my chubby sister to an ice cream parlor and, because we only had thirty-five cents between us, we ordered a chocolate soda with three straws.  My sister, who was the shortest, grabbed her straw and began drinking.  Gwendolyn and I kept bumping heads trying to get to our straws and before we managed to solve this spatial challenge my sister had finished the soda.  Moral: If you want something bad enough, there is always a way to avoid sharing it.

My mother’s family was very poor and ate potatoes almost every night.  Every once in a while, my grandma managed to bake a cake for her 4 daughters and her son, Charlie.  She would cut it into portions, put it on the table and as soon as all four little girls look rapturously at their dessert, my Uncle Charlie would point to the ceiling and shout “LOOK!!!”  When his sisters looked down again at their plates, their cake had disappeared.  Moral: Brothers cannot be trusted any more that the manufacturers of sugar-filled products; scheming monsters every one of them.

NAKED IS AS NAKED DOES

The male body is hairy and lumpy
And should not be seen by the light of day
Richard Roeper

Americans do not mind seeing people murdered on their television screen and they love watching heads flying and limbs severed at the movies.  They like the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire, bodies strewn across the pavement and little children crying for their lost mummies and daddies.   The more violence the better.  That is the American way.

The truth is that violence and tragedy make great entertainment.  So does pornography.  Americans actually prefer to watch lust happening even more than they like doing it. What a thrill to see a man and women tearing each other’s genitals to pieces or whipping and chaining each other for the sheer pleasure of hearing them scream.  Porn is almost as popular in America as violence.  We watch both every day and love it all.

But let some poor schnook walk outside to get the newspaper in the altogether and he ignites public outrage. “It offends me to see anyone that way,” said one insulted observer. “It is disgusting.”

That is why San Francisco decided to compromise its image of freedom of expression and tolerance of the odd-ball and ban public nudity from its streets.  No more can raunchy old men spread a towel on a stone bench and sun themselves in the Castro district.  No more, can its citizens strip to the flesh to bathe in the afternoon sun.  San Francisco now supports the theory that our bodies are so hideous they must be concealed in public.  No matter, that liberated women, forward thinking men and eating disorder specialists are trying to make us comfy with our diverse shapes and sizes.  In San Francisco, it is pc to be ashamed.

Now, it seems that the Japanese, too are offended by nudity, but they have taken it one step further.  They do not want to see representations of the human body, much less the real thing. Michelangelo’s David  was presented to the town of Okuizumo and the inhabitants ran for cover.  “It’s frightening the children and worrying the adults with its nakedness,” said one of the town’s bigwigs.

I can only assume that they have also stripped their museums of reproductions of Van Gogh’s NUDE WOMAN ON A BED or Renoir’s AFER BATHING not to mention Whistler’s shocking NUDE GIRL WITH A BOWL.

Obviously, the very sight of a naked body horrifies the more sensitive among us.   It is difficult to understand why we think the sight of a penis or a breast will frighten our children more than the sight of shattered limbs and battered heads. Will our innocent youth smash the bathroom mirror when one day they see those very banned organs protruding from their own bodies?

The truth is that in America our bodies are considered repulsive and offensive unless we film them and flaunt them on a screen.  The only answer to this dilemma is to cover every baby at birth with ornamental tattoos so that as they mature, no one will recognize the new growth.  And everyone will be amazed when it rises to an occasion.

I don’t even like to be naked
In front of myself!
Camryn Manheim

THE BORING GENERATION

Virtually everything people believe in
can be exposed as possessing laughable inconsistencies.
And so they laugh. And stand still
Scott Turow

It seems that people born after 1980 don’t like to party. Radio 4 has labeled them “Generation Right” because they are not interested in bar-hopping, binge-drinking and cocaine.   Instead, they prefer to stay at home and knit. I can hardly blame them.

I am from the Silent Generation. We endured The Depression, World War II, Korea, the atom bomb, the Cold War and held tight to our own values and comfortable life styles.  Generation Y has observed the things we thought were holy and asked, ”Really?  Is marriage that great?  Do we need to believe in God?  Is your work your whole life? Is it all about sex? What is really important?”

I think that is a very good thing.  The truth is that the outside world puzzled me, too.  It was knitting that gave me perspective. A ball of yarn and two needles was all it took to lower my blood pressure and absorb me in something besides what everyone thought of me and what we were having for dinner.

I was ten years old.

My Aunt Hazel and my mother were arguing about me.  “She sits in the closet reading a book a day,” said my mother.  “Her room is a mess and I cannot get her to set the table.”

My aunt who adored me because when she fed me dinner she never had leftovers, rushed to my defense.  “She needs a hobby,” she told my mother.

She opened the closet door and closed my book.  “You have a disgusting pallor from sitting in here all day reading about other people’s lives.    I am going to teach you how to live your own.  I am going to teach you to knit.”

“What does that have to do with life?” I asked.

“Everything,” said Aunt Hazel and took me to the yarn shop. My first project was a green scarf. Endless scarves, mittens, hats, argyle socks, suits, skirts, dresses and coats followed as the world bucked and bolted, climates changed, morals were destroyed, the definition of male and female blurred, test tubes created babies and modified vegetables, single was not a death sentence and marriage was not forever. I believe it was the click of the needles and the transformation of yarn into garments that kept me sane through all that chaos.

Generations that followed turned to medication to help them cope, but Generation Y got smart. It has seen the world fight for women’s rights, gay rights, diversity, environmental preservation, and abolition of war and thought ”What a waste of energy!”

And that’s why it stays home and knits.  Just like me.

MODESTY

Modest:  the art of enhancing your charm
By pretending not to be aware of it.
Oliver Herford

French women have decided they get a lot more mileage out of a loose filmy caftan than a bared breast.  More and more French women have refused to go topless and I know why.  They have learned the power of suggestion is far stronger than reality.  It is not what you see that will excite the object of your affections; it is what he HOPES he will see.

I learned this lesson years ago in the early fifties when girls covered up or else they were expelled from schools, barred from restaurants and hidden in the back seat of the convertible.  At that time, my female hormones whipped into a frenzy and erupted into wild desire at anything male including the dog.  My first impulse on seeing a man was to rip off my clothes and say “Here I am” in as sultry a tone as I could muster.

However Mother Nature had not been kind to me.  I was so skinny I resembled a sanded post and there were very few hints of curves or indentations on my form.  I knew all too well that nudity was not my strong suit.  That was when I discovered saggy blue jeans and my father’s shirts.

Other young ladies of the times wandered around in sweaters that told it all and jeans so tight they had to skip when they walked.  When you saw them, you saw it all.  There were no surprises in the bedroom or even when you were groped behind the oak tree in their front yard.  There it was:  just like that apple Adam could not resist.

In those days, I dressed to hide what I lacked and I draped myself in loose jeans that suggested the possibility of a plump bottom and my father’s over-sized shorts that hinted at a bosom that was not there.  The result was that I had hordes of men following me, trying to get into those jeans  and I do not want to discuss how many times I intercepted a hand about to plunge down my shirt to get a grip on a fantasy.

Indeed, I was a huge social success until the big reveal and the inevitable disappointment that followed,  But this was the fifties when that reveal didn’t happen until you got the ring, the china, silver and the pretty white dress.  By that time, it was too late.

Now I am well into my dotage.  My body has descended into my shoes.  My wrinkles, sags and bags resemble a discarded sponge and my legs are so splotched they look like tubular Kandinsky paintings.  Once again, I am faced with doing a bit of concealing if I want to tempt anyone into taking me out for dinner.  I wear filmy tops and flowing feathered gowns with glittery spangles to redirect the eyes of the beholders from my sagging chest and bony ankles to the colorful glitz that hides them. The result is that I have not paid for a glass of wine in ten years.  French women have caught on to my secret and I am sharing it with you.  Never ever give anything away until the money is in the bank…so to speak.

KNIT ONE, PURL TWO AND YOU’RE FREE

Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit,
and it doesn’t hurt the untroubled spirit either.
Elizabeth Zimmerman

I was a nervous child.  I was terrified of the horrible dangers that lurked around every corner.  If I talked to strangers because they would abduct me; I must never argue with my mother or she would give me back to the Indians.  I couldn’t cross a street without risking my life; if I dared to boil water, the steam would blind me.  Touching the pan would cost a finger. Boys with nasty leers jumped out behind bushes at little girls like me, and teachers got angry for no reason at all.

Reality was too much for me to absorb.  My nerves were jangled and my nails bitten to the quick.  I jumped at an unexpected sound; I screamed when a light flashed; I hid under the couch when someone slammed the door.

My mother was a redhead with an attitude.  She was afraid of nothing. Danger actually thrilled her and she met it head on with eyes flashing and acid repartee that quelled the bravest among us.

And it was she who made me quiver and shake at the thought of facing another day with all its pitfalls.  It was she who reminded me that I might trip if I ran too fast; I might break that dish I was wiping; or jam the brush into my eye when I brushed my hair.  She couldn’t stand the fidgeting, the nail biting, and the twitches.  “This kid is driving me crazy,” she told my Aunt Hazel.  “She is a nervous wreck.”

My Aunt Hazel was a pragmatist.  When she didn’t get enough meat for dinner, she left home.  When she couldn’t earn enough money to support herself she married a bootlegger.  She was one of the first in that generation to think outside the box.  “Teach her to knit,” she told my mother.

“Are you crazy?” said my mother.  “She jiggles so much she’ll poke her eyes out with a knitting needled. “

“Well that’s one way to calm her down,” said Aunt Hazel.

So it was that my aunt took me with her to the Stitch In Time Knitting shop filled with yarn in every color and an oval table piled high with pattern books. Several ladies sat around that table drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes (this was 1943) chatting about the war effort and knitting scarves, mittens and caps for our servicemen.  Their needles clicked and they smiled and laughed as they worked.  As I watched these women moving those needles at the speed of light, I saw to my amazement that they were creating all kinds of garments: sweaters with lace sleeves, block patterns and colors, plaids and stripes and polka dots.

“I want to do that,” I told my aunt.

“I thought you would,” she said.  “What would you like to make?”

My aunt took me home that afternoon and told my mother, ”She’s knitting a scarf.  That will keep her in line.”

That was back in 1943, but my aunt’s wisdom holds truth even today.  In fact, a maximum-security prison in Brazil came to the same conclusion.  They have decided that if their inmates knit something for three days, it is worth one day off their sentence.  They know what my aunt figured out so many years ago.  Knitters don’t have time to get in trouble.  They might drop a stitch.

JEALOUS DOGS

It turns out that Fido not only wants to be your best friend;  he wants to be your ONLY friend. A California study discovered that your little puppy is very possessive and is determined to own you exclusively.

This kind of affection can be adorable in a toy poodle, but can be not only alarming but dangerous in a larger pet.   I baby-sat a wolfhound named Jack some years ago who fell madly in love with me.  Jack weighed upwards of 200 pounds and was so tall he could gaze adoringly into my eyes without looking up.

When we strolled down the street. My paramour would raise his lip and expose his sharp canines to any passer-by who approached me.  This was actually quite charming and made my morning walks very efficient. I no longer had to indulge in idle chatter or polite repartee.  Jack and I got our morning constitutional done in record time.

However, severe problems arose because Jack became insanely jealous if I dared to devote my entire attention to the computer instead of him.  He went to surprising lengths to remind me that he was a lot more interesting than Document 1 or the starred messages in my in-box. His initial tactic was to race madly around my desk in ever widening circles crashing into bookcases, couches and chairs in careless abandon.  If I continued to ignore him amid the debris of fallen books and broken furniture, he would grab one of his toys and dangle it in front of my face as I typed industriously away.

The final tactic was to lay his enormous head on my lap and gaze adoringly into my eyes.  Fifty pounds of skull and fur is something no one can ignore  especially when Jack insisted on pounding his head against my knees in case I didn’t notice his presence.

Jack stayed with me for three lovely (if destructive) months.  While he was with me, I had to trash several books, a lounge chair and an antique dry sink inherited from my grandmother.  I was forced to tape up both my legs because of severe muscle strain and was the terror of the neighborhood when I walked down the street.  I had to buy a new keyboard, a screen and 3 memory sticks Jack had confused with his dog biscuits but I have to say I finally understood the real cost of true love.

My house insurance paid for the interior damage and my health plan covered the physical injury, but Jack never recovered from his sense of loss when his owners returned.  He ran away from home three times in an effort to find me and finally his owner begged me to visit Jack and reassure him that he was first in my heart.  However, when I arrived at his home, I had changed my perfume and my Romeo did not recognize me.

Which all goes to show that all dogs, be they human or canine, are victims of short term addictions and can easily be turned off with one unfamiliar whiff.

IN DEFENSE OF BIRQAS

A woman’s face is her work of fiction.

Oscar Wilde

I have reached the age when looking in the mirror has become a nightmare.  Either I see my mother or a woman who looks ready for a plot.  If the night before has been particularly grueling, I don’t see much at all.

I find that it takes a lot of work these days to get my face ready for public viewing.  I am not talking about going to a formal dance or meeting a dignitary.  I am saying that before I dare leave the house, I have a time consuming, discouraging and ego damaging routine I must follow before I dare greet the outside world.

As soon as I wake up, I drink 12 ounces of warm water to hydrate my skin.  I use a special facial sponge to wipe the sleep from my eyes and remove the rivulets of sand that have lodged in the wrinkles on my face and dripped down the folds of my neck.

I haul out a magnifying mirror and work on the white heads, uneven bumps and enlarged pores that spring up as if by magic during the night. Then I address the lush new growth of hair in my lip, my chin and hanging from my nostrils.

I apply a light moisturizing lotion to try to plump up the sagging pouches around my eyes and under my chin.  I pat the skin dry and hope those gaping pores close.

They don’t.

I apply a mild sun screen to the entire region of flesh above my collar bone.  It is impossible to separate my jawbone from my clavicle.  They have coagulated into a soft mass of unidentifiable epidermis. I have not seen my neck in fifteen years.   I slather on moisturizer and hope it sinks into all the right places.

It doesn’t.

My skin has developed so many colors that I cannot decide if it is a plaid or a print. Both peaches and cream are but a memory.  I apply a foundation that is the color of what it once was when it glowed with the blush of youth.  This was so many years ago that I am not sure I have chosen the right shade.  The one I am using is a tad darker than bleached cotton but not so dark that I look like an immigrant.

It is now time to do my eyes.  The first challenge is locating them.  They are wedged between the folds of my eyelids and the puffed gray pillows around what is left of my eyelashes.  I rub a bit of oil on the lids and then a tad of eye shadow to match my outfit.    I need to be careful because if I am wearing a vivid combination of color, my eyes will look like Bozo’s.

I am now ready for THE BIG CHALLENGE.  I must use a pencil and draw a line right above my eye lashes and directly under my eye.  This can take anywhere from twenty minutes to several hours depending on how many times I jam the pencil into my cornea or dislodge my contact lens.

Each morning my cheeks sag a few inches closer to my collar bone. I need to redefine them with rouge.  The trick is to add just enough tint so I don’t look dead.

I look in the mirror to see if there has been any improvement.

There hasn’t.

I so envy the women of the Middle East.  They wake, drape themselves in a burqa and go out on the town.  Oh, I know they are subservient and need to shut up and take it.  But the truth is that with a face like mine, no one is going to want to give it to me anyway unless I cover it up.  There is a huge advantage to draping yourself in a filmy bit of fabric and leaving your appearance to the imagination.  I could probably pass for a real looker unless it’s a windy day.

The average woman uses at least seven skin-care products each day. This number includes collagens, cleansers, moisturizers, sunscreen and cosmetics as well as hair products, perfume and nail polish and she still looks her age.

The largest organ of the body is the skin.  It is always hungry and requires vitamins, lubricants, massage, and TLC.  My husband told me that  was something else .

I tried exfoliating my skin but when I finished my face became so red that I could have rubbed it with glitter and decorated our Christmas tree.

Another advantage of the burqa is that no one can tell if you are pregnant.  I n my case, this is a definite advantage.  If anyone knew I was expecting I might lose my senior citizen discount.

While you’re saving your face;

You’re losing your ass.

Lyndon Johnson

I DON’T WANT TO BE A YOUNGSTER ANYMORE

We worry about what a child will become tomorrow,
yet we forget that he is someone today.
Stacia Tauscher

American children are parental badges of achievement.  Proud parents put bumper stickers on their cars saying MY KID IS AN HONOR STUDENT.  This doesn’t say much for the parent does it?  In my day, a kid was a goat.

American parents are intimidated by their children.  If mother says a harsh word, the child can report her to the police.  It seems a bit extreme to me to put mom in jail just to get an extra helping of chocolate cake.

Parents are learning to fight back.  If a child gets out of hand, they just open the gun cabinet and let him play.

American children never walk home from school.  They take the bus.  This explains why 97% of school bus drivers are psychopaths and none of them are paedophiles.  They know what children are really like.  They prefer prostitutes.  At least you get what you pay for.

If the bus driver wants to shut the children up he slams on his brakes.  That will throw them into the aisle.  Then he can just toss each one out at his stop.

The only catch is that American children are obese. That is why all school bus drivers are work out a t the gym.  Muzzling a 500 pound child is a job requirement.

If a bus driver wants to avoid trouble, he should give every child candy laced with Valium …and save some for himself.

Whenever I see a child on a leash, I always wonder if the mother remembered the plastic bag.

I hear there is a campaign in Britain to get the kids away from their computer games to play outdoors.  We have solved that in America.  We don’t have an outdoors.  We just have shopping malls.

Every American parent thinks his child is a potential movie star.  I think it is a devious way to get junior out of the house.  If he gets into a movie, the producer pays the baby sitter.

My friend Billy has a son he is grooming for stand-up comedy.  “He is an amazing talent,” he said.  “He can only say one word, but his timing is amazing.” He has auditioned the boy for American’s Got Talent and Billy insists his son stole the show.  “He bit Peers Morgan,” he said. “And he didn’t get indigestion.”

American children spend approximately 98% of their waking hours in front of a television screen and they think what they see on that screen is reality.  Several years ago, an eight year old grabbed the family gun (everyone who is anyone in America has one) and shot member of his third grade class.  He had a huge smile on his face.  He had no idea that bullets kill and he had no concept of what killing really means.   After all, the guy that gets shot on TV always reappears the next week, doesn’t he?

Protecting our children from harm has become a universal nightmare.  The real victims are the parents who spend 50% of their time chauffeuring their children from one supervised activity to another.  I wonder if that is the real meaning of “no child left behind.”

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND is an educational program in the states that fires teachers if their students don’t meet a national minimum score on a standardized test.

.  For my part, I wouldn’t mind being left behind.  It would give me time to actually learn something.

When I was a kid, children bullied each other but we didn’t kill them.  We didn’t know that was an option.

When I was young, mother knew best, daddy was in charge and the teacher was always right. These days, mother is overworked, daddy is an idiot and they both sue the teacher if their kid fails a test.

Parents always worry that they will do some terrible thing to warp their children for life.  I think it is time for parents to have a few rights.  If you can’t stand your kid, YOU  move out  Let him figure out how to cook dinner.  That is tough love.

Kids: they dance before they learm
there is anything that isn’t music.
William Stafford

FURY

Anger is never without a reason,
But seldom a good one.
Benjamin Franklin

Whenever I go back to the San Francisco Bay Area, I am immersed in non-stop road rage.  Drivers swerve around you, hit the accelerator to get ahead of you, blast their horns to tell you to get out of their way and spew hate all over the highway.  I find myself getting just as angry as the other drivers as I try to weave my way through 6 lanes of traffic to get to my destination.  I come home exhausted, despising humanity and hating myself for succumbing to the hysteria that clogs our roads.

It is a glorious relief to come to peaceful Brighton where I walk everywhere, smile at everyone and love treading the streets. Humanity charms me when I am here and I find myself enjoying the kindly hustle and bustle on North Street.

I have always thought that road rage was so foreign to those who use public transportation in Britain, that they would sooner stage a massacre than be rude to another person.  Besides, it is not in the British personality to be rude or overbearing.  The people in this country are obsessed with being politically correct.

Or so I thought.

I just spent two weeks in London living in Stockwell and taking the tube to Leicester Square. That was when I was exposed to Tube Rage.  If I dared to try to tap my oyster card on the entrance gate during rush hour, I risked black and blue marks, mangled hips and fractured elbows.  When I approached the escalator, I was so terrified I shut my eyes and prayed to the almighty that my foot wasn’t crushed and I was not hurled down the moving staircase because I forgot to stand on the left.

It turns out that all this pushing, shoving, jostling and crushing is not due to rudeness at all.  It is the result of poor ventilation.  In fact the director of the British association of Anger Management warns that lack of oxygen is sure to cause uncontrolled acts of aggression.

What a relief!! I thought all those people shoving me around were ageist brutes who didn’t care that I am elderly and frail.  How wrong I was! When the British push you out of their way, it is a silent cry for air.

Which brings us right back to Brighton where fresh air is always swirling about us, filling our lungs with new oxygen from France.  I boarded a train at London Victoria and two people hit me in the shin in their rush to get to the coach first. One lady smashed her suitcase into my hip and another yanked my shoulder into a vertical position to reach the aisle seat.  The minute we all got off the train in Brighton, everyone was smiling, inhaling the lovely oxygenated air and loving one another.  A gentleman carried my case to the station, a lady held my arm lest I trip and two lovely young men with grandmother complexes bought me a coffee.

The oxygen cure would not work in America however.  It isn’t the air that infuriates them; it is the government.

DRUG-ADDLED FISH

Tell me what you eat, and
I will tell you what you are.
Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

I am very careful about the food I eat because I know that what is in it goes into me.  I will not eat red meat because I was a huge fan of Elsie the Cow, Porky the Pig and Mary’s three little lambs.  However, since I never had an aquarium or cuddled something aquatic, I have been relying on fish as a staple to my diet.

I am amazed to learn that the reason I feel so relaxed and at peace with the world after a salmon dinner is that the fish on our planet are all becoming junkies. We are dumping our medications into the landfill helter-skelter and our Prozac, Vicodin and Demerol are being transmitted from the fish in the sea into my bloodstream.

I find this excellent news.  It has the potential to save me an immense amount of money when I am moved to escape my current reality. If I eat my perch and dine on cod I will be calm and collected, if a bit loopy, when disaster strikes.  I will not panic…I will be properly tranquilized by my dinner.

There is more good news to come.  Evidently, all that drug consumption has made our fishy friends sterile. The morning after pills we didn’t need and the birth control pills we discard are affecting the reproductive powers of our aquatic friends.   This is bad for the food supply I admit and terrible information for the pharmaceutical companies.  We no longer need rely on the pill or the morning-after remedies (some of which are disgustingly unpleasant) to take care of any repercussions from a night of pleasure.  All we need do is eat a generous helping of plaice for dinner.  (You can even deep-fry it and it will still fix you up). If you decide you would like to have a family, forget estrogen or in-vitrio fertilization.  Eat meat.

Ah, how times have changed.  Back in the uninformed early fifties, I had two exquisite Siamese Fighting Fish: Herbert and Tarrington.  They were lovely to watch, swimming from one side of their little bowl to the other, munching on algae and sparking in the sun.  But one day Herbert got into a snit and ate poor timid Tarrington. He digested him whole and didn’t even spit out the bones.  Had he lived in this knowledgeable century of ours, I would have scooped up some water for the nearest stream and cured his inappropriate behavior just like that.

Of course there are times when you do not want to dull your senses.  You long to heighten your awareness of life around you.  No need to waste hard-earned cash on speed, cocaine or ecstasy. Just run to the nearest fish grotto, pig out on sea bass and you are ready to party!

The only ones deprived of this safe avenue to contentment are vegetarians. They will have to rely on prescription medicines for their highs.  The poor among them will reproduce like bunnies if they don’t give up sex entirely.  It doesn’t seem fair does it?  They have already given up so much that makes life delicious.

Fish, to taste right, must swim three times –
in water, in butter and in wine.
Polish Proverb