We get attached to the silliest objects.
In the comics, you always
see Linus clutching his blanket protectively, shielding it from Snoopy’s
prying muzzle. I can’t admit to being a huge fan of “Peanuts” – every
time I read a strip with no dialogue that ends with Charlie Brown crying
on a pitcher’s mound, I always feel like I’ve wasted some small part of
my life. But there’s something truthful about Linus. He represents
those of us who have trouble letting go of certain things. He also
represents chronic thumb-suckers and looks like he has spaghetti on his
head, but we’ll forgive him that for now.
In some sense, we’ve all got our Linus blankets – our feel-safe objects
that comfort us, and without which we feel strangely empty. Usually this
is something small and disposable, like a routine morning coffee, but
don’t discount the eccentrics who have assumed more permanent
affectations – the old man with the gleaming silver cane who doesn’t
actually need it, the would-be pirate with a patch covering a fully
functioning eye; people like that. There was a time, lamely, when I once
considered carrying around a tennis ball, thinking that if I
intermittently bounced it through hallways and off the sides of
buildings, I would shed my identity as Weird Aloof Guy and become Edgy
Tennis Ball Guy. This fantasy lasted about a week before I realized that
the two identities would simply merge, and I’d be the weird aloof
schmuck with the annoying tennis ball fixation. Add to that a complete
lack of motor control, and you can see why the only Dunlops I touch are
covered in dog slobber.
Gum. Wristwatch. Giant sunglasses that could provide cover from enemy
gunfire. We are all the sum total of the choices we make, large and
small, and the small ones are fascinating to me. Look hard enough, and
you can see little character flourishes in just about everyone –
including yourself, Mr. Double-Espresso with Cinnamon Shavings.
Sometimes, though, these choices can morph into a semi-permanent routine
that can become addicting.
I started mulling this vague and mystifying topic while roaming the
supermarket last week in a hunt for mints. I’ve talked about mints
before, but perhaps I failed to convey just how important they’ve
become. Let me put it this way: If they announce tomorrow that they’re
halting production of IceBreakers Frost, I’m taking one of my remaining
mints to a scientist so he can determine its exact chemical composition.
Then I’m starting a lab in my living room, where I’ll sequester myself
for days at a time, replicating with a lover’s exactitude that cool,
crisp, winterfrosty goodness that starts each and every workday. The
police will receive confusing reports and suspect that I’ve started a
crystal meth lab, and when they bust down the door and storm the living
room, I’ll simply smile and offer them a mint. We’ll all share a laugh,
and sit around sucking homemade IceBreakers and watching “Mad Men.”
I like mints.
Somehow, over the past year, they became my tennis
ball, my Linus blanket. And that’s all well and good, except now I fall
into a panic whenever I can’t find some – a feeling that would be all
too familiar to smokers, heroin addicts, and anyone who’s had more than
one Thin Mint. (Seriously, Girl Scouts, those are pretty rad.)
Last week’s grocery outing was a harrowing experience, the stuff of cold
sweats and flashbacks. My basket filled with provisions for the week, I
lumbered up to the impulse-item rack to grab a couple containers of my
favorite mid-morning treat, only my mid-morning treat was gone – just
the gaping maw of an empty cardboard box in its place. Nothing on the
rack but Certs and a gum called Orbit. Certs are a pale substitute, and
Orbit? Who chews Orbit? Astronauts on the International Space Station?
Weak.
Thus began the great IceBreakers hunt of 2013. It’s a testament to my
sad and pathetic mint addiction that my real groceries, the milk and the
rice and the boneless chicken breast, were temporarily forgotten, left
behind with the Orbit and that other weird gum that looks somehow
Scandinavian. It was only after a frantic and frenzied search that a
solitary container – one lonely soldier tucked into his foxhole –
appeared behind an overhanging price sticker. Relief washed over me, the
kind only rivaled by that of re-elected presidents and shark attack
survivors.
They say the first step to overcoming an addiction is admitting you have
a problem, and I admit that fully. But as long as it doesn’t harm
anyone, and gives me minty-fresh breath, I’ll shrug and pony up the mint
money without qualm. As Linus well knows, sometimes it’s worth a little
inconvenience to hold onto small creature comforts.
Plus, let’s face it. They’re way tastier than tennis balls. Trust me on that one.
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