I wake up irritable, yet calm, in the darkness. My first response in Facebook is the irreverent dismantling of another’s argument (pointing out a false dichotomy and such.) However, as I plan ahead for their possible future response, my mind is consumed with a verbal onslaught, ripping into their flesh with words. “All you do is bitch, whine, and moan like the fucking toddler that you are,” I imagine myself ever so bluntly and coldly saying to my ‘opponent,’ not the faintest sign of emotion on my face. Cool, calm, and lethal.
I roll myself out of bed in one smooth motion and proceed up the stairs. Mom is making a chicken pizza on the Boboli pizza crust I had plans for. When she first brought it home, she said that I could make a pizza sometime, to which my mental musings had envisaged the idea of roasting a pizza over hot coals on the grill. I had the plans, but not the ingredients. I wanted mozzarella and provolone, not cheddar. I wanted a sweet and savory marinara and not just generic spaghetti sauce. I wanted to make this simple, pre-baked Boboli pizza crust into something special.
She was using the generic sauce, canned chicken cubes, and cheddar cheese. Blasphemy. I quickly crack my metaphorical whip, “You’re using my Boboli?” I stress the ‘my’ just enough to be noticed.
She gives me a bit of a look, but returns to her work explaining that she needed to find something that Grandpa would eat, and then asks why I wished she hadn’t used it.
Without a second in between, I respond with, “Because it looks stupid.”
“Well, alright, then,” she continued her work as I diverted to the bathroom. Why did I say ‘stupid’? Insults and otherwise abrasive words flood my mind, but the original word had vanished.
Upon returning to the kitchen, I say briskly and bluntly, “Frankly, I don’t know why the word ‘stupid’ sprang from my tongue. I had another word, at first, but it disappeared. I tried to recall it, but my mind was blank. It was as though my tongue pondered, What would really roll off me? 'Because it lookssss – stupid!' That’ll work."
“If that’s an apology, I accept.” Mom’s skin has been thickening. A real duck, she’s becoming.
I then monologue, muse, and elaborate, “My initial reaction was disgust, not so much about what you were making, but because you were using the Boboli I was planning to use. And I seem to have woken up irritable.” My body trembles. “And I’m getting shivers when I’m not cold. That happens when I’m overloaded.”
She made a remark about the season finale we had watched last night of Orange is the new Black having overloaded me, perhaps only half jokingly.
I open the fridge, finding there to mostly just be knock-off cans of Coke or water. I don’t like colas, but I grab one (which my mom reacts to with moderate surprise.) Shrugging, I respond with, “When I’m overloaded, I just need something fizzy to go down my throat. I don’t really care about flavor so much as the sensory input.” Then, popping open the can, I continue, “It has happened from time to time,” to which she admitted recalling.
I sit down, watch a British bread baking show, and find a bountiful logorrhœa of snarky (and honest) remarks being vomited out of my mouth. After 10 or 15 minutes, and a slightly larger audience than just my mom, I return to my dark cave of a bedroom.
What a wonderful first half-hour of my day…
