Sustenance

What’s your favorite food? You think that I would be asked a more specific and constant question than that when faced to pay my cable bill. But no. In order for me to log in and pay my bill, I have to remember what my favorite food is from six months ago. And of course, while I have to think about what my favorite food is, that means I must also eat; It’s science.

So while munching on assorted chips, I tried to figure out what my favorite food is. Olives? I really like olives, but do I like them enough to use them as a security question? And so I started with olives. And then OLIVES. And then OLIV3S. But my favorite food wasn’t olives.

I blame the cable company for my late bill. I really do try to pay on time, but making me jump through hoops like this? Well, they are begging for a late payment. If I knew six months ago that I would be quizzed on the most random personal questions about myself, I probably would have written down the answers, or not created them while under the influence of a double shot of NyQuil. But that’s in the past now.

I started abusing NyQuil when I was at university. My roommates didn’t take the early bird approach to school like I did, and so midnight would come around, I would go to bed, and my roommates would blast Family Guy for an hour. After ear plugs, white noise, and anger didn’t work, I switched to the hard stuff. And then I got hooked on the hard stuff. I would keep a bottle hidden behind one of the cinder blocks that I used to boost my bed to a towering height, and every night, I would take a swig to send myself off to sleep.

That wasn’t the first time that I was addicted to a sleep aide, but I had been cold turkey from Tylenol PM from the time that I was ten or so. What’s a little nip here and there to take the edge off? I wasn’t striving for sobriety. I just wanted a little sleep. And so I night capped myself to sleep for half a year, and then my addiction started breaking the bank. Without poverty, I would probably be in a rehab somewhere, smelling of Vicks44 or off brand cold suppressants. But now I have learned control, and will only buy when I am sick. And if I don’t finish the bottle when I’m sick, I will finish the bottle out of longing.

Could it be grilled cheese? I really like grilled cheese. But mostly only the cheese. Cheese. CHEESE. CH33S3. Nope. Still not the password. But then I felt like I should nibble a bit off the block of cheddar that I had in the fridge. It’s just sitting there and I don’t have much purpose for it. And grabbed the block and just started gnawing at the corners.

At this point, I was locked out of making any more guesses at what my favorite food was, and so I turned on some old cooking videos of Julia Child on YouTube to pass the time. At one point of my loneliness, I would talk to myself whilst cooking, impersonating Julia Child. The moments weren’t ever my proudest, but I wasn’t so lonely afterward. And then I remembered how much butter I used during my “Cooking with Julia” sessions. I then tried signing on with my iPod. Butter. BUTTER. BUTT3R. Nothing.

Out came the frying pan and a slab of butter. And of course, if I am frying anything, it would be an egg. FriedEggs. FRIEDEGGS. FRI3D3GGS. Still nothing. And now I had dripped egg yolk on my computer. Not that I mind too much because my computer needs to die so I can replace her. So I’ve been known to drink my apple juice over her, slightly hoping that a stray drop will kill the thing. AppleJuice. APPLEJUICE. APPL3JUIC3. I went to bed with all of my bills paid but my cable bill.

Driving to work, I had completely forgotten my cable bill woes. Mostly because I was now distracted with trying to eat a Pop Tart on the way to work. Most days I love a Pop Tart, but this one was chalky and tasted like sin. “The only reason I am eating you is just for basic sustenance.” And then I knew what my favorite food was six months ago. I rolled down the window, “Sustenance! It’s sustenance!” Which now, I am certain I looked like an idiot to all of the morning joggers, but I didn’t care, because I love sustenance. And now I can pay my bill.

Drive

Something about flashing red and blue lights brings out all of my anxiety disorders in a flurry: I feel the need to vomit, I believe that I have cancer, I start to pull out my hair, I find myself ugly, and my neck begins to twitch. This makes it all the harder to get myself out of a ticket, especially because police officers have no pity for red, twitching men, who are pulling out their hair whilst amid a flop sweat. And that is what I am reduced to: an entire mess.

I have been driving for years (legally, five years and a week, but illegally, longer that that). And I have always been pretty okay at it besides when I first started driving and I mistook the brake for the gas and almost ran my father’s truck through a warehouse wall (first time he cursed at me) or when my lanyard wrapped my foot to my accelerator and so I wasn’t able to use the brake (second time my father cursed at me).

Out of my siblings, I would consider myself one of the better drivers of the bunch, not that my siblings are bad drivers, but I do have friends that have sworn they have had multiple near death experiences while my sister was behind the wheel—in the same car ride. My brother, of course, was also known to be an amateur street racer through high school, where he would race to and from the local pizza shop for lunch.

Living in Utah really did wonders for my driving, and that is where I learned how to drive in snow. Nobody taught me really, but I taught myself, whilst driving down the freeway to pick my roommate up from the airport. It wasn’t snowy in Provo, so I didn’t expect it to be treacherous in Salt Lake City, but of course I was wrong.

I started getting nervous around the time that I couldn’t see anything out of my windows besides a sea of white. Trying to be a cautious driver, I decided that reducing my speed would be a good decision, so I tapped on my brakes, which did nothing for my speed, but did make my brakes grind against the pedal. Determined, I tried again, keeping my foot on the brake with much gusto, which in the snow makes you fish tail wildly out of control.  I was never told what to do in that situation. I didn’t know you are supposed to turn into the curve. I was oblivious to the fact that after your car spins out, the engine dies. And I definitely didn’t know how to cope with the oncoming traffic that I could see coming at me. So what I did was roll down my window and throw up.

I am still the only sibling to have not hit any animals whilst driving, although that is not for lack of trying on the animals’ part. They seem attracted to my wheel wells, as if they are just too depressed with life and just want to end it under the tire of my dinky, little truck. Most times I swerve away, refusing to be the Kevorkian to a rabbit, a possum, a cat, a squirrel.

My first time seeing an owl was when I nearly hit one in the middle of the road, driving amidst the fog. After seeing a strange tumble weed in the road, I started to merge over, only to notice that the tumbleweed was not what it originally resembled, but was actually an owl, which I only missed by a few feet. What was an owl doing in the middle of the road; wings drooped at its side, head winding back and forth? Trying to kill itself, that’s what.

Now, I am no saint at driving, and received two speeding tickets within two weeks of each other when I first moved up to Utah. And while both speeding tickets, I still believe are unjust, I paid them anyway. I am also notorious for texting while driving, and the occasional road rage, but I have never been ticketed in any occasion that actually warranted a ticket. The first ticket, I was lost in the middle of nowhere after my exit was blocked off on the freeway. My second ticket occurred when I didn’t slow down quickly enough from a commercial to a residential zone (I had already made it through a roundabout and almost a second one before the cop turned on his lights). And my third occurred whilst hanging up my phone while driving.

I don’t enjoy speaking on the phone. I actually detest it to be honest. I sound like Snagglepuss, I get nervous, and I was scarred as a child because I was always mistaken as my mother when I answered the phone. But because I love my family, I call them almost daily, on my car ride from work. But I do so with my phone on speaker, tucked into my visor, which I consider to be hands free. I had a quick conversation with my mother, grabbed my phone to hang up, tucked my phone into my crotch, and that is when I saw the lights in my rearview mirror. And that is when I receive the flop sweat of woe.