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| Me. |
Nor do I cite the brightly hued carriers ofbeta-carotene crowed about by Dr. Oz in his quest to get us to slim down andlive longer.
Why he cares, I’ll never understand.
Sadly, I am not speaking of positive habits so much as the lack ofhuman initiative (and by that, I mean any sort of movement) that took place inmy home immediately after the Thanksgiving holiday. The kids were home, no onehad any pressing engagements (and by that, I mean showering ) and there was aworking TV and comfy couch within staggering distance of the left-overs.
The boys, having recently been involved in the excitement ofa presidential campaign, wanted to keep the momentum flowing by watching thefabled television series from several years ago, “The West Wing.” And I justwanted to sit near the boys….so through the magic of the digital age we wereable to create a scenario that pleased us all: unlimited episodes of the showas well as cozy seating for Ma Barker and her boys.
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| The real Ma Barker. Wow, she was mean. |
We were immediately sucked into the snappy dialogue, goodcharacter development and tightly paced drama of fictional charactersrunning America. And, soon, we hazily observed that brightdaylight had a habit of slipping into shades of dusk, then night then – What? Isit that late? – three in the morning.
Exercising only our “clicker muscles” wecared neither about time nor place as our very own Black Friday referred not toretail but to the loss of brain cells and progressive dimming of our futures as we emulatedcooked vegetables in the flickering light of 60 inches of high def.
For the first several hours we sustained ourselves with halfempty bottles of water that were strewn about but within reach, sippingjudiciously so as not to disrupt our cocoons for the exertion of bathroom visits.
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| Secretly, I couldn't care less what you people eat. |
Haphazardly abandoned bags of chips and pretzels nourished us once stomachs startedto growl and Dr. Oz himself, would have been proud of how overjoyed we were todiscover a nearly full Tupperware of baby carrots wedged under the recliner. Weate only one or two every few hours since none among us had anyintention of leaving the couch, the reassuring banter and patriotic idealism ofthe cast nor the fact that every problem was wrapped up to our satisfaction every sixty minutes.
We also all agreed that Martin Sheen must beour next president.
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| Call me "Mr. President." |
As the food dwindled and the hours became what may actuallyhave been days, we dozed fitfully only to be awakened by gnawing hunger and wereforced to search between couch cushions for sustenance. Charlie found two funsize Snickers from Halloween and I, a few linty m&ms in the pocket of mysweat pants that we divided with the precision of prisoners in the gulag. Butlater, after another season or two of a benevolent president with a great headof hair, we were reduced to licking each others elbows for salt and swappingstories (between episodes) of memorable meals from our past.
There was a sleeveof Ritz crackers across the room but if it was beyond the reach of our fingers,it might as well have been on Mars.
We tried to get the cats to fetch things from the fridgeupstairs but they had problems of their own since no one had refilled theirdishes since this TV orgy had begun.
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| What? No rice ball?!? |
I have no idea where Seth was during all this but at somepoint, he entered the room surrounded by a pool of light and accompanied bywhat I believe to have been celestial music, yelling something mean andconfusing about both unfit parenting and elderabuse.
I have little memory of the confrontation and ensuing redemption but it involved calzone withsausage for all and Diet Coke administered to my withered lips through an eyedropper.
In conclusion, I would do it again in a heartbeat. Afterall, isn’t spending time with one’s family what holidays are for? Christmas isalmost here and we have always wanted to catch up on “Breaking Bad” in itsentirety…
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