The First thing that happened after I stopped drinking was: The blonde left me and filed for a divorce… The next thing happened?  I found out I didn’t know how to cook.

Cheap Easy Food

It was truly pathetic that I had managed to live to the age of 26 and had no understanding whatsoever about the infrastructure of day to day living… Doing the laundry was so far out of reach that I discarded the idea straight off (just like I discarded my dirty clothes and bought new ones)… But I had to eat.

Yes, there are restaurants for people that like me that can’t cook but even all those years after the LSD wore off… Restaurants were still populated by ducks with evil intent and I simply could not abide sitting in their presence… So I went to the grocery store where I made a brilliant discovery… Top Ramen.

I stood in amazement, I had no idea that Top Ramen was so cheap, you could buy it by the case and at that time it came out to be less than a dime per serving!  And in reading the cooking instructions it was readily apparent that I could easily make it myself… It was like I’d found Mana from heaven right there in the Ralph’s at the end of my street.  Top Ramen isn’t all that filling but damn… It was cheap enough to eat 3 or so servings 3 times a day and still be way ahead in “saving the big bucks”.

 All was well in Mr Idiots world… Eat Top Ramen and use the savings to avoid doing  laundry.

 

 

Then suddenly one evening…

I Thought I Was Gonna’ Die.

For a few days I’d  had this nagging pain going on in my lower chest.  As I was walking down the hall that evening something went terribly wrong… Pain shot through me like a #2 Philips Screwdriver to the sternum, I immediately collapsed to the floor and started to retch… WTF?

Great… I’m having a heart attack.

 

 

911… The phone was back the other way on the other side of the house and I was certain I’d be long dead before I got to it but somehow I made it and dialed 911… I was in and out of it for a bit then the paramedics came rushing in stickered me up with every pantooka imaginable  then swept me up.. Sirens blaring… Lights a flashing… Off to the emergency room… I asked for a priest but all I got was a 12 year old in a lab coat and a 300 pound nurse jabbing me with needles pokin’ me all over and hooking me up to an Atari with the alligator clips the fastened to my nipples… What a way to die.

A short time later…  The 12 year old and another nurse drew back the curtain and stepped into the cubical where I was preparing to expire and said:

“Mr. Idiot,  good news, you are not having a heart attack… What seems to be going on is that you are severely… Constipated.”

All I could manage to say was:  “No $h!t????”

“You are going to be just fine Mr. Idiot” he said with a compassionate smile

 Spectacular Constipation Requiring Extraordinary Measures.

 

 

The Warm Slippery Enema from Hell was administered by a nurse that I’m sure was not as attractive as I remember her… Now had I known what was coming shortly afterwards, I would have asked for a bottle of champagne in order to christen the battleship that was built in the dry docks of my lower intestines… Truly amazing… Almost… Majestic… Displacing  at least 50% of the water in the bowl it was launched in.

 A New Lease on Life

It was something like 5am when I stepped from the hospital doors into the rest of my new life as a free man… I was young, Clean and sober and felt very alive… Life was going to be good as soon as I sorted out a few things.

As I walked the few miles to my little house on the wrong side of town I decided to embark on a new mission…

First step: Find a Girlfriend That Could Cook.