The Crabs

I'm more crabby than usual lately. Some people try to tell me it's because I've just turned forty and I'm on the downhill slide. It's true everything seems to be sliding downhill, while I'm bumbling along behind the rest of my body, vainly trying to catch up with my bad knees and flabby upper arms.

Age and gravity could be to blame, I suppose, but I think the real source of my crabbiness is the scientific community that keeps discovering new and improved techniques designed to suck all the joy right out of my life, not to mention my mouth.

I used to think I wanted to live a long and healthy life but the term, "short and sweet" has started to look mighty appealing. Pancakes, for instance, are better in a short stack with sweet dark maple syrup topping. Little kids are usually short and sweet too, except when you want one of their Tootsie Rolls. The short and sweet set seems to get just as crabby as the over 40's when it comes to sharing chocolate.

Fat in the milk, salmonella in the eggs, nitrates in the bacon and preservatives in the juice have all gotten me out of cooking in the morning; a plus. But mad cows, chickens with colds, and glow in the dark fish were driving me to the edge of veganism and green never was my favorite color. Then I find out there's arsenic in the air, waste in the water and pesticides in the peaches. Was there anything left that wouldn't kill me?

I started to make a list of foods that were bad for me but I ran out of paper. The only things that are left are...well, this week, there don't seem to be any left. Maybe I can eat again next week. The paper started to look pretty appetizing at that point, but I was positive the ink had too many carbs. As soon as someone figures out a way to make paper taste good though, the food police will be snatching that right out of our mouths too.

Remember when food was fun? You celebrated a visit to the grandparents by going to the corner Dairy Queen for a chocolate soft serve. Your birthday was something that you looked forward to because you got to have your cake and lick the bowl too. Now you just hope nobody remembers your birthday by paying for a billboard with a bad 40-foot picture of you and a stupid rhyme on it. And you eat your ice cream by sneaking downstairs and standing in front of the freezer door clutching a spoon while peering over your shoulder, hoping the refrigerator motor won't start running and wake up the rest of the family.

How I long for the days when a Ring Ding or a Twinkie or a Devil Dog after school was a nutritious snack and Froot Loops and Apple Jacks with whole milk was considered a balanced, nutritious breakfast.

Unless you live on Mars, you can't escape the food police anymore. They stock your grocery store shelves, fill your pantry and infiltrate the bottom drawer of your desk where you used to hide your candy bars. Worst of all, they're chattering incessantly inside your head. Now that you know that no matter what you consume, you'll get fat, develop cancer, go blind or suffer the ill effects of constipation, bloating or gas, you will never again have another guilt free moment of mastication.

What I want to know is why can't they discover that liver cause stupidity, stress builds better abs and believing everything you hear makes you beautiful? That might be a reason to live longer.

The one good thing is that at the ripe old age of over 40, I finally feel well informed. I get it now. Work equals stress, sugar is unhealthy, sex is dangerous, laughter causes wrinkles, exercise is exhausting, smoking leads to disease, drinking causes accidents, and food causes death. Simple.

No wonder I'm crabby.