Thursday, September 10, 2009

Digestive System

I had a sour cream burp. It was very flavorful. It came up in a rush as I was laying on my stomach. I paused everything I was doing to allow it out. It sort of rolled out of my insides into the air. I could smell the soured cream combined with everything else I have eaten since my last shit.
It reminded me of a story my mom used to like to tell about a relative. At a family gathering in D.C. a bunch of women were sitting around moving their mouths to make sounds at one another. The sounds created messages. The messages created feelings and emotions. So on.
One of her cousins had a young son who is now a psychiatrist who feels like he has to tell me the same thing every time he sees me. That I should come visit him where he lives because no one respects him at bars in his neighborhood. They would love me, according to him, and by connection he would gain credibility.
Anyway, when still a young boy, well, in-between a baby and a young boy, he was walking around this family gathering in just a diaper. At some point an older woman finished soup she was preparing for him. She stopped his walking around and encouraged him to take a bite of the soup. He refused, complaining with only facial expressions and body language about the smell of the soup.
She used a technique well known within our family. As he stood in front of her trying to communicate his feelings about the soup she reached out to his nose and pinched it shut. When he opened his mouth to breath she shoved a spoonful of soup into his mouth. Then a second and a third until she decided he had eaten enough.
He continued his wandering around for about sixty seconds before approaching the gathering of women. Using his facial expressions and body language he again began trying to communicate distress. The ladies laughed at him and poked fun. He was cute and small and couldn't speak yet. He didn't know anything. As the communication gap became clear he reached into the back of his diaper for a moment, pulled out and held his open palm in the air to show the women. His hand was covered in split pea soup.

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