We’re well into the month of December and the holiday season, and it seems there’s always some homemade candy or cupcakes lying around on which to nibble. Not to mention biscochitos, empanadas, those little chile rellenos, and a Christmas burrito (with both red and green).

That being said, I’m going to have to put aside my customary diet. That’s “diet” as in what I normally eat from day to day, not dieting, as in Nutrisystem or Atkins or what have you. No, all I ask for is some wiggle room through the holidays, a period fraught with a multitude of gastronomic deliciousness.

It’s after the holidays are over; that’s when people want to jump on the quick weight-loss bandwagon. Some people go to desperate lengths with fad diets, and there are a ton of strange ones that have cropped up on the internet.

I’ve mentioned before about the one called the Werewolf Diet where you’re supposed to fast during the cycle of the full moon. Another one, the Feeding Tube Diet, is where you’re limited to 800 calories a day by walking around with a portable feeding tube stuck up your nose. How about the Sleeping Beauty Diet? You have to find a doctor that will sedate you for several hours (or days) at a time, so you can’t binge on chips and Oreos. For vegetarians, there’s the Zen Diet where meals must have a balance of yin and yang ingredients and be prepared by balancing all five flavors with all five colors and using all five ways of cooking. Are you taking notes?

And don’t forget the ever-popular Tapeworm Diet, where you swallow a capsule filled with tapeworm eggs and let the little buggers eat all the food you’ve eaten out of your intestines. Then, when you’ve lost all the weight you’ve wanted to, go to The Ark of Socorro for a dose of ivermectin.

Oh, here’s one more I just thought up; the Chinese Diet. Eat all the Chinese food you want, but use only one chopstick.

Of course, if you’re concerned with staying, you know, healthy, through it all I’ll put on my nutritionist hat and throw out these reminders. Eat more fruit and vegetables. Eat only when you feel hungry. Cut back on the carbs … I’m sorry. I can’t go on.

As I said, all I want is a little wiggle room.

When it comes to masticating, however, I sometimes feel that I am a rank beginner. Take for example the other day when I was talking with a friend of mine, jabbering on, trying to sound important and wise when, not unlike an ICBM exiting a missile silo, a tiny particle of the burrito I had for breakfast shot from my mouth. Where it landed I couldn’t say, but trying to be clever and astute, I think I said something like, “oops.”

I’ve been replaying that incident in my mind and hoping they hadn’t noticed, but whatever the case it can’t be unseen and it totally negates the suave demeanor I ineptly strived for. No Cary Grant here, for sure.

But really, it comes down to another one of those embarrassing public boo-boos that just happen. And ultimately make us more human.

Who can say none of these foibles haven’t happened to them?

  • Waving back at someone who wasn’t actually waving at you.
  • Pulling on a door that says push in big letters.
  • Gossiping about someone and finding out they’re standing right behind you.
  • Getting caught peeking into someone’s shopping basket.
  • Getting the hiccups during a serious meeting.
  • Pretending not to see someone at the store because you don’t have time to chat.
  • Calling your child by your other child’s name, or brother’s name, or sister’s name.
  • Talking to a household appliance as if it were a person.

And one more, having a conversation about something and wanting to relate it with a movie, but forgetting both the name of the movie and the star of the movie. You say, “You know. That guy,” you say. “He’s the one that was also in that other movie with that woman that I like. You know who I’m talking about…”

And then later when the topic of the conversation has changed you suddenly blurt out the name you blanked out on.

Sometimes I think, “Man, I am getting old…” or, “I’m having a senior moment.” Yes, that may be true, and if that’s the case I think I was having senior moments even when I was a little kid. I mean, back then I could remember everything, whether it actually happened or not.

Hey, I don’t mind growing older, it’s just that I never know at what point I will be “old.”

I just have to remember to swallow my food before I speak.

 

John Larson, El Defensor Chieftain