Wednesday, December 13, 2006
In Essence
A long time ago, a teacher told me that every time we breath, we are inhaling a molecule that had previously been exhaled by every person who has ever lived on Earth. We are inhaling Shakespeare, Hitler, Jesus, Doris Day, Jim Morrison -- anyone you can think of -- every few seconds. It's really fun to think about this when I'm in the presence of a celebrity I love. After two nights of Live concerts, Kat and I kept exclaiming, "We breathed air with Ed!" Once, an actor who was in not one but TWO movies with Tommy Lee Jones, kissed me (in a social-setting kind of way) and I'm still going on about it. A guy who breathed air with Tommy Lee Jones KISSED ME
I guess it would also stand to reason that we are drinking water passed from person to person as well. Water isn't created or destroyed, it just flows around the world in the form of rivers, oceans, rain, clouds, coffee, sits in bottles at 7-11 and pours out of our tap and swirls around in our toilets. If we're going by the whole inhaling-others-molecules-thing, it would make sense that every drop of water we are drinking was at some point inside someone else's body. You could be sipping recycled dinosaur piss as you read this.
How much of other people are we really absorbing? We know that dust is made up of mostly dead skin, think of how much of that gets breathed in every day. It probably falls in our food and we eat it. Not to mention sweat, sneezed-out-nose-droplets, skin oil, and hair. I saw a dentist, just once, who had a skin problem; his face was red and coverd with giant yellowing flakes. I thought about this as I was laying back in the chair with my mouth open, praying that a piece of his face wouldn't fall off and land in my mouth.
We have all heard about how every time you have sex with someone, you are, in essence, having sex with everyone they have ever had sex with. And everyone they have ever had sex with, and so on, and so on. Think of the Breck Girl commercials from the 70s and you get the basic idea. And I guess it's feasible, if you think about the microscope people-fragments that get left around all the time. So, if takes the human body seven years to regenerate its cells, you could have bits of millions of people floating around inside of you.
My friends and I used to play the "in essence" game, which is just another form of You've Got Cooties. Since Frieda kissed Nathan, and Nathan kissed Julie, in essence, Frieda has kissed Julie. We would keep going until it got really gross. Like the time that Ted took in a stray dog that had been hanging out in his yard.
"I let the dog sleep with me because it was cold, right?" He said as he sipped his beer over a game of darts. "I wake up in the middle of the night and he's licking my balls," and when everyone went "eeewww!" he added, "Don't worry, I made him stop, I wasn't sure if he bites."
While we were all wondering how far it would have gone if Ted had been sure the dog didn't bite, Nathan pointed out that Ted's dog had licked me on the mouth earlier that day. So, in essence...
"SHUT UP!" Having an ill-mannered dog jump up on me and lick my face is one thing; implying that, in essence, I had Tedsticle on my lips was quite another. We quit playing that game that night and many of us distanced ourselves from Ted.
Dogs are interesting creatures, they are too curious to worry about germs and DNA. A dog will drink out of the toilet, not even concerned with actual pee, much less imagined dinosaur excrement. They lick their own balls, no in essence about it; they'll lick their friend's balls, and in the case of Ted's dog, they will lick an strange man's balls. If they want to get to know you, they just take a sniff of your crotch and BINGO you have a new pal.
My dad learned this the hard way when he got out of the shower and realized he didn't have any clean underwear. My parents live up in the mountains, and with no close neighbors to worry about, Dad nonchalantly walked out into the back yard to yank a pair of boxers off the clothesline. It was then that a dog from up the road wandered onto the property and came back to introduce himself to my father.
Between shakes of laughter, my mom told me that my dad's screams of "Get back!" caused her to look out the back window. Dad was running around the back yard, flicking his underpants at a nice, sociable German Shepherd. The dog got in his final cold goose as Dad flew up the steps to the back porch.
I've come to learn that nudity and pets just don't mix. My parents live alone with a couple of dogs that stay outdoors. They have spent their entire lives outdside, running the property and hanging out in their house with automatic feeder/waterer, and you cannot force either dog indoors. I know this because sometimes, when it's late at night and kind of spooky, I try to get Gordo to come in the house and watch movies with us and he just stands on the porch and wags his tail, not putting one giant paw across the threshold.
The other night my mom opened the back door to let out some of the stifling heat -- there is no thermostat on the wood stove and the house sometimes heats up quickly-- and to listen to the relaxing patter of the rain. Gordo came flying into the house, soaking wet, only stopping for a brief hello. Mom was fairly surprised but went back to listening to the rain and watching the outline of the trees against the lightning. A few minutes later she heard my dad scream. Dad had been asleep in bed, too hot to get under the covers, in fact too hot to wear clothes. Gordo wandered into the dark bedroom to say hi to Dad by giving him a lick on the butt. At first, for some reason I didn't ask about, my dad thought it was my mom. What else could it be? It's not like the dogs ever come in the house. Well, imagine his surprise.
My own dog, Snake, is very jealous when anyone gets affectionate around him. If I hug my daughter, Snake jumps up on his hind legs and barks at us. More than once, when Steve leans over to kiss me, I'll have a confused moment until I realize that Snake has suddenly jumped up to lick my ear. I push Snake away and think, in essence, a molecule of everything that Snake has ever had in his mouth is now in my ear. I get up to find the peroxide when I make the decision: Gordo is never licking my face again.
I guess it would also stand to reason that we are drinking water passed from person to person as well. Water isn't created or destroyed, it just flows around the world in the form of rivers, oceans, rain, clouds, coffee, sits in bottles at 7-11 and pours out of our tap and swirls around in our toilets. If we're going by the whole inhaling-others-molecules-thing, it would make sense that every drop of water we are drinking was at some point inside someone else's body. You could be sipping recycled dinosaur piss as you read this.
How much of other people are we really absorbing? We know that dust is made up of mostly dead skin, think of how much of that gets breathed in every day. It probably falls in our food and we eat it. Not to mention sweat, sneezed-out-nose-droplets, skin oil, and hair. I saw a dentist, just once, who had a skin problem; his face was red and coverd with giant yellowing flakes. I thought about this as I was laying back in the chair with my mouth open, praying that a piece of his face wouldn't fall off and land in my mouth.
We have all heard about how every time you have sex with someone, you are, in essence, having sex with everyone they have ever had sex with. And everyone they have ever had sex with, and so on, and so on. Think of the Breck Girl commercials from the 70s and you get the basic idea. And I guess it's feasible, if you think about the microscope people-fragments that get left around all the time. So, if takes the human body seven years to regenerate its cells, you could have bits of millions of people floating around inside of you.
My friends and I used to play the "in essence" game, which is just another form of You've Got Cooties. Since Frieda kissed Nathan, and Nathan kissed Julie, in essence, Frieda has kissed Julie. We would keep going until it got really gross. Like the time that Ted took in a stray dog that had been hanging out in his yard.
"I let the dog sleep with me because it was cold, right?" He said as he sipped his beer over a game of darts. "I wake up in the middle of the night and he's licking my balls," and when everyone went "eeewww!" he added, "Don't worry, I made him stop, I wasn't sure if he bites."
While we were all wondering how far it would have gone if Ted had been sure the dog didn't bite, Nathan pointed out that Ted's dog had licked me on the mouth earlier that day. So, in essence...
"SHUT UP!" Having an ill-mannered dog jump up on me and lick my face is one thing; implying that, in essence, I had Tedsticle on my lips was quite another. We quit playing that game that night and many of us distanced ourselves from Ted.
Dogs are interesting creatures, they are too curious to worry about germs and DNA. A dog will drink out of the toilet, not even concerned with actual pee, much less imagined dinosaur excrement. They lick their own balls, no in essence about it; they'll lick their friend's balls, and in the case of Ted's dog, they will lick an strange man's balls. If they want to get to know you, they just take a sniff of your crotch and BINGO you have a new pal.
My dad learned this the hard way when he got out of the shower and realized he didn't have any clean underwear. My parents live up in the mountains, and with no close neighbors to worry about, Dad nonchalantly walked out into the back yard to yank a pair of boxers off the clothesline. It was then that a dog from up the road wandered onto the property and came back to introduce himself to my father.
Between shakes of laughter, my mom told me that my dad's screams of "Get back!" caused her to look out the back window. Dad was running around the back yard, flicking his underpants at a nice, sociable German Shepherd. The dog got in his final cold goose as Dad flew up the steps to the back porch.
I've come to learn that nudity and pets just don't mix. My parents live alone with a couple of dogs that stay outdoors. They have spent their entire lives outdside, running the property and hanging out in their house with automatic feeder/waterer, and you cannot force either dog indoors. I know this because sometimes, when it's late at night and kind of spooky, I try to get Gordo to come in the house and watch movies with us and he just stands on the porch and wags his tail, not putting one giant paw across the threshold.
The other night my mom opened the back door to let out some of the stifling heat -- there is no thermostat on the wood stove and the house sometimes heats up quickly-- and to listen to the relaxing patter of the rain. Gordo came flying into the house, soaking wet, only stopping for a brief hello. Mom was fairly surprised but went back to listening to the rain and watching the outline of the trees against the lightning. A few minutes later she heard my dad scream. Dad had been asleep in bed, too hot to get under the covers, in fact too hot to wear clothes. Gordo wandered into the dark bedroom to say hi to Dad by giving him a lick on the butt. At first, for some reason I didn't ask about, my dad thought it was my mom. What else could it be? It's not like the dogs ever come in the house. Well, imagine his surprise.
My own dog, Snake, is very jealous when anyone gets affectionate around him. If I hug my daughter, Snake jumps up on his hind legs and barks at us. More than once, when Steve leans over to kiss me, I'll have a confused moment until I realize that Snake has suddenly jumped up to lick my ear. I push Snake away and think, in essence, a molecule of everything that Snake has ever had in his mouth is now in my ear. I get up to find the peroxide when I make the decision: Gordo is never licking my face again.
