SAYING A MOUTHFUL

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (03-27-25)

     During this month falls National Snack Day, when we honor those snacks that gave their lives for their country, the 13th most obese in the world. What is our National Snack, anyway? That's a good question. And I use the phrase "good question" here to mean, "dumb question."

     In picking the National ANYTHING, you have to really weigh the options. Whatever you choose has to represent your country in the most honorific way. Take the recent contentious vote to crown a Canadian National Bird, for example. Most were rooting against the Canada Goose, an annoying aircraft that honks its way over to your park and distributes messy evidence of its arrival into every usable corner of the place. Making THAT your national representative would be like voting the "personal injury lawyer" your National Occupation. The snowy owl got a lot of attention, but they had all melted by the time the vote was taken. The common loon was a traditional favorite, but is more a symbol of the mentally ill than a modern nation. So they settled on the gray jay, an ordinary, benign and dull-looking bird. In Canada, however, the color is spelled "grey," so this poor bird spends much of its time at appearances explaining why its own name is spelled wrong.

     So we should choose our National Snack carefully. Wise potato chips would literally be a wise choice. Americans probably nosh on French fries more than anything else, an irony which would not go unnoticed if we chose them as our National Snack. The Kit Kat Bar is not only a great candidate for National Snack, but also for National Adult Recreation Area.

     Let's play a game called, "You Think THAT'S a Snack?" To me, a snack is something you derive pleasure from eating, mostly because it's so bad for you. Did you ever have a boyfriend that treated you horribly, yet you couldn't break up with him because he had a car and a somewhat valid driver's license, and made you laugh and your Mom said he was no good for you? Well, please apologize to your Mom for me. Anyway, a decent snack should have an unhealthy amount of calories, salt, anything bad for you, lead, asbestos, I don't know. To say that you're going to have dried fruit as a snack is like saying, "You know what? Let's do something CRAZY and FUN today! We're going to clean out the garage!"

     I'm HUNGRY! And my Mom would say, "Why don't you have a piece of celery?" Celery? To me, celery is a substance that has only one function, and that is to display the effect of capillary action, as a science experiment. I bring a beaker with a red liquid in it to physics class, and perform a demonstration using a stalk of celery. "Watch," I say, "as the liquid moves up the tiny openings, propelled by the property which I am demonstrating." And the teacher, instead of complimenting me on my presentation, asks, "Mr. Melén, is that a bloody Mary?" No of course not, it's a chemical reagent, which I drank anyway just so I could pack the beaker away, actually a cocktail glass.

     A rice cake is a thinly veiled attempt to shoehorn one of the dullest foods on the planet into the snack category. Until such time as they put icing on a rice cake, please leave me out of that conversation.
     I'm so happy now that chocolate and peanut butter have found each other, and I want them always to be together, like traffic and weather. Two seemingly oddly-matched partners that have forged an unbreakable bond. I want them to never be apart, and I've even hired an intimacy coordinator to make sure that all their scenes together are mutually nurturing.

     I don't want them to get into a toxic situation where they can't even coexist in the same room without airing their petty jealousies. "So, what's this I heard about 'chocolate and coconut?'" "Oh, that was nothing serious." "Well what about almonds?" "HEY! Have you seen the new Timothée Chalamet movie?"

     Anything with "nougat" in it is also a win with me, since it seems like candy, but no one really knows what nougat is or what it's made of. I've looked in the table of elements and seen it there only periodically. All I know is that I intend to go over to Greenland with a butter knife, easily conquer it, and commandeer its sources of nougat in the name of, well, me.

     Whatever you choose to snack on, just make sure it's not a bunch of empty calories. Fill them up with chocolate, marshmallows, nuts, those crispy crunchy things and other nutrients. You'll pay for it down the road, but if you walk there you can burn a few of them off. Maybe it won't cost as much as you think. That's why I hooked my toll house cookies up with an E-Z Pass tag.

SURVIVAL OF THE HALF-WITTEST

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (03-13-25)

     Ever since the devastating wildfires that held California hostage for weeks, there has been much chatter about what you should take with you in the event that you have to quickly leave your home, not knowing if you'll return. In a doomsday scenario, I've always been trained to do one thing before all else: panic. 

     After a reasonable amount of time running around like a chicken with its head cut off, you need to quickly gather the things that are most important to salvage. You should have your important papers located in one place, hopefully in a fireproof lockbox. Birth certificates, passports, insurance papers, deeds, and the combination to the lockbox.

     Consider taking sentimental things that you can't replace. Many older photographs aren't in digital form, so take an inventory of the pictures where you look better than everyone else. Keep your expensive jewelry together, hidden in a place where you'll never find it in a million years. It might not be the expensive items that you take; I have an ugly tennis trophy that I hold onto to remind myself that I was once the only person who signed up for a tennis tournament, and when I grab it on my way out the door, my wife will say, "Well, at least that thing is finally out of the house."

     Be practical. Remember the "one year" rule: If you haven't used that 20-piece bar set in over a year, maybe it's about time you dusted it off.

     Keep your wits about you. If you see a sign that says "Break in Case of Emergency," it's very good advice. Emergencies can be stressful, so take a 20-minute breather.

     CHANGE YOUR SMOKE ALARM BATTERIES! I can't stress this enough, especially now that some states are doing away with Daylight Savings Time, which was when you used to be reminded to replace them. Instead, pick something else you do twice a year, like intending to clean your garage.

     A good flashlight is essential. One that has 6 or 7 different modes, so that if you keep pressing the button, you can come up with a beam that's not too bright, but not too dim, and flashes to the beat of "Stayin' Alive."

     It couldn't do any harm to stick a Swiss army knife into the kit. There's a lot of useful stuff on it, like a toothpick and tweezers, and some stuff that maybe is superfluous, knives and saws, and the like. If you see two people in a dire situation, who are you going to rescue first, the one with spinach in their teeth and eyebrows that look like the Amazon jungle?

     There are commercially made emergency backpacks that contain all sorts of useful items that you may not have thought about. A whistle, for instance, that you can blow if you're in a life-threatening situation. Someone a mile away might hear it and say, "Jesus, that's annoying." A foldable shovel, in case you have to clear your car out of a snow squall, or perhaps dig a latrine. A latrine should be at least two feet deep, and at least 100 feet away from the nearest working toilet, or else the people whom you made use it will take the shovel and hit you over the head with it.

     Some survival kits have fish hooks. Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and after he wastes a whole day not catching anything, he'll be angry that he didn't take the fish instead. Another thing to consider is a crank-operated portable radio. Could you really call it "surviving" without the Yankees?

     A first aid kit is important to have with you at all times. I don't know why there is not a second or third aid kit available for people like me, who are NOT punctual at all but still want to be able to weigh in with some helpful hints regarding life-saving techniques. For example, in the event of a snake bite, I arrive at the scene about 20 minutes after the paramedics, and I feel I can still help but I need some questions answered quickly: "Okay. Where is the snake that's allegedly been bitten?"

     Hopefully the crisis will abate, and you'll be able to return to your home unscathed. But in the process, you will have made some valuable discoveries about the things that are really important to you. It's better to make those difficult decisions before they are actually necessary, than to regret them after the fact. Was it more important to take your Grandmother's ring, even though it's not worth much, or the box of Wheaties with Michael Jordan's picture on it, SIGNED by Michael Jordan (yes, I really do have that)?! Your Grandmother is not going to like my answer, but in my defense, if we run out of food, how is that ring going to taste?