by Larry Peterson
I am one of those people who tries his best to stay informed about what is going around me. I admit, what I pick up is more or less in outline form and not "in depth" as there is just too much stuff. I have been reading and listening to the reports about Benghazi, the IRS, the DOJ targeting the AP, the trials of the Butcher of Philadelphia, Kermit Gosnell, and the modern day Lizzy Borden aka Jody Arias. But every once in a while you have to jam on the brakes, screech to a halt, stand up, look around, breathe in deeply and realize you are driving yourself to the edges of lunacy by staying 'over-informed'. Sometimes you get lucky, as I did, and something forces you to instinctively jam on those brakes. For me, my rescuer is Joey, my Guardian Angel. I know that once again he was there for me.
I had saved an insert from Saturday's newspaper and placed it on my desk. The title that intrigued me was "Don't Let The Ick Make You Sick". I thought I would read it later in the day and, as I do so many times, I put it down, placed some other papers over it and forgot it. You know, out of sight out of mind. So Wednesday morning, at 5:30 a.m. I sit at my computer, turn it on, and a bunch of papers somehow falls from the snack table to my left which I use as a small desk on my left. I reach down to pick the mess of papers up and the one on top is the one from Saturday, the one with the ICK story. I swear, I did not touch those papers. They just fell off that little table and I know it was Joey who did it in his quest to save me from myself.
I picked it up and began to read this incredible article about the germs that are lurking 'everywhere' waiting to get us. That is when the insane laughter started to build. It started with a "heh-heh". They actually had a count of the number of bacteria on each item per square inch and the count was to the single digit. Did you know that your dish sponge has 775,460,560 bacteria per square inch, that there are 228,854 bacteria on your kitchen faucet handle and 17, 000 bacteria on your TV remote. Just like that the laughter exploded because all I could do was visualize the poor slob who had to count all of those bacteria down to the very last one. Can you imagine doing that all day long. What if you were up to 546,657,324 and the phone rang and you lost count. Holy crap--you would have to start all over. If it was a government job you would get lots of overtime so that would be okay. A research lab in the private sector may not let you work more than 30 hours a week so that would be tough.
All I know is I owe Joey big time. Yes siree, Joey knows that no matter what is going on, somehow, someway, laughing keeps things in perspective. It snaps you back to reality. Thanks for the slap in the head Joey. Love you.
P.S. My wife thinks I am weird. I don't understand that. I did apologize to her for waking and scaring her at dawn.
No comments:
Post a Comment