Dynamic tension

I am not that small slice of time you think I am.

When I was a boy, my brother and I were tossing rocks into a small lake in the woods (Echo Lake??) - we skipped some rocks. Every once and a while one of the rocks hit on edge and sink with a gloop - Gerry called it 'cutting the devil's throat' (no idea??); the rock would not make a ripple. That is how I imagine my passing, slipping below the surface leaving no ripples.

I have always thought of myself as a zero, someone of no import with nothing to say of myself except that I lived this long - just a schlub. I talk with my friends, people who do good things who are in all aspects more than I - why don't they have better stories to tell? I spend 95% of my life alone in my room but I have better stories - what is wrong with them?

So, back in my youth I used to burp a lot; I mean Olympic quality burps - 3rd graders would be stunned with awe at my burps. Turns out I had an hiatal hernia (the sphincter muscle that closes off the esophagus passes through the diaphragm and the 2 muscles work together - my esophagus is displaced and does not have enough strength to close off from the stomach so the stomach acids can enter the esophagus) plus an esophageal ulcer; this created some problems that lead to the burps. I did not know all this and did not find out until about 20 years later. I thought that I was somehow swallowing air as I ate. I went to a clinic at Harborview Hospital  to get a painful warp removed from my hand and happened to mention that I swallowed a lot of air when I ate. The clinician told me that they had an expert on hand who could take care of the wart and he asked me to wait for a bit until the expert was free. After 45 minutes the guy stopped by to say the expert would be by at any moment. Finally, after another half hour wait the expert stopped in with the clinician and said "What's this about chewing on your hair and beard?"

I was confused "hunh? what are you talking about?" - the doctor asked "do you swallow a lot of hair when you eat?" "No, I swallow a lot of AIR when I eat" - the doctor gave the clinician a nasty look and started to leave so I asked "what about the wart?" - the doctor told the clinician to get me a bottle of compound W and pay attention to what people said. They were going to lock me up in the crazy ward because the stupid clinician misheard what I said.

I stopped by my favorite coffee shop (now a pizza place and coffee shop) like I usually do on Sundays to read and have my favorite sandwich an English muffin & sausage with cheddar cheese, tomato and basted egg - I have to teach the chefs what basted means!?!?!? served open-faced with no damned fork. Yes, I have to be that specific because I want to be the one who breaks the yoke so open-faced, no fork because it is a sandwich - and if the chef does not know what basted means, I will explain or do not make the sandwich. They once served me an over-hard egg - I told the server I would eat it this time but never again. So now I ask who the chef is before I order (I got the idea from the Japanese movie "Tampopo" - the scene with the gangster and his moll kissing and passing a raw egg back and forth from mouth to mouth - you had to be there).  Anyway, I was looking at their new beer menu and noticed that they included the IBUs for the ales; the owner asked what I wanted to drink but I said I was just admiring all the listed IBUs and she said "you should, it was mostly you that we were thinking of when we did it" - I would always ask what the International Bitterness Unit was for the beer I was drinking and no one knew, heh! She said they had a new IPA on tap but since I was not interested in a beer then I told her I would check it next time so she poured me a small shot to taste and it was marvelous; it had that sharp tang of hops bitterness but a real nice fruity mouth - I was going on, then stopped myself and said "but I should'nt sound all 'wine-talky' - it was good beer"
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On the way home from work, I stopped in to a game store that is on my route (I am trying to 10k steps every day, but damn my knees hurt). I looked around for an old game I used to love called Cosmic Encounters - it was an exciting game requiring a lot of thought and deviousness. I began to talk with the owners about gaming: table-top, D&D, card based games, that sort of stuff - they tried to convince me to go to a gamer-con the next day, my immediate response was "I am not agoraphobic but I do not go far from home". That is not anything I thought about but once it was out of my mouth, it sounded right.