cold

I’ve been home for two days in bed with a vicious cold and cough, and during my infrequent trips to the kitchen for something to eat (and one trip to the store) I realized that I was looking mainly for comfort.  Not health.  Comfort.  I’ve tried the Special-Ops-combat-that-cold-with-fibervegefruitoxidans and it seems to have no discernible effect on the length of the cold.  So now it’s comfort, baby, all the way.

Stress kicks up a craving for Frosted Strawberry Pop Tarts.  Comfort, though, requires more salt than sweet in my case.  Grape Nuts will do in a pinch or milk and toast with a big pat of butter, but today it was Nacho Cheese Doritos with more cheese melted on top.  I loved Nacho Cheese Doritos as a kid, and once ate an entire bag by myself when I was supposed to be practicing my saxophone.

Yet it wasn’t until high school that I witnessed Todd Kotila do the unthinkable.  He buried a plate of Nacho Cheese Doritos in a mound of grated cheddar and popped the resulting orange and yellow mass into the microwave.  I was stunned.  Real cheese on top of fake cheese?  It seemed wrong somehow: a Frankenfood perversion.

Todd just laughed and shoved the molten pile in front of me.  “Try it, Finch.”

It still feels wrong, but on those guilty occasions when Doritos find their way into our typically self-righteous shopping cart, a portion of the chips disappear under Cheddar, Colby, or Colby Jack.  Today was one of those days.  There was a pre-Superbowl sale on chips, Tillamook at a discount, and my resistance to the unnatural lowered by a raging virus.

Then there needs to be a glass of milk to wash it down.  Milk that must… comfort dictates… be drunk from a small glass.