by JOHN A. WARD
Yogurt is my favorite part of a soft diet since Doctor Cutter removed half my large intestine and left me with a semicolon. I like spooning it out of the cup. Today I have lemon meringue. It’s like dessert. I savor it all the way down. Then I see it. Nestled in the space where the bottom meets the side is the hair. It is as long as a finger, not a pinky finger, but the longest finger. You know the one I mean.
Because of the sheer length, I think it’s a woman’s hair. I hope it is a woman’s hair. It’s brown and I like brunettes. Of course, I like blondes and redheads too. It’s a head hair. Thank God it’s not a pubic hair. I show it to Anne and ask, “What should I do?”
“Throw up,” she says.
“Are you serious?”
“What can you do?” She goes back to doing her crossword puzzle.
“If it was a pubic hair, I would seriously consider it. How many hairs do you suppose are allowed in a batch of yogurt?”
“I don’t think there are standards for something like that.” She doesn’t care because it’s not her food. If she were to find a really big rat turd in that bowl of mixed nuts she’s eating, she’d take a sudden interest.
“There are limits for the number of rat turds in grain.” I think that I read somewhere there are USDA standards for that.
“But rat turds get into grain naturally. That’s different.” She eats a big unshelled Brazil nut, just to rub the turd business in my face.
“My mother said you have to eat a pound of dirt before you die.” My mother really did say that, and a doctor I told about it said that’s probably about right.
“I wonder how close you are to that pound now.” She’s saying that because she knows I take special pains to eat mostly unprocessed foods, because I feel processing removes natural nutrients and adds unhealthy preservatives. She’s hinting that the unprocessed food leaves in natural contaminants. It’s a nasty insinuendo.
“I’m not sure it’s a cumulative dose. She may have meant all at once. Maybe this doesn’t count. I didn’t eat the hair, just the yogurt it was in.”
“Are you sure it was the only one in there?”
“I don’t really know. I didn’t look very closely at what I ate, but you know how annoying it is when you have a hair in your mouth.”
“It’s hard to miss.” She never missed hairs when they were on the soap. That’s why she switched to the deep moisture body wash in the big plastic bottle that I keep knocking off the shower shelf when I reach for the shampoo.
“I’m pretty sure it was just one hair. It was at the bottom. I escaped unscathed. What are you laughing about?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Yes you are, tell me.”
“No, it’s nothing really. Think about it.”
