Yumminess...

A few days ago, I met up with an old friend whom I had not seen for more than a few minutes at a time in at least a year. Almost every time I had seen Frankie since the end of high school he had been in a state of something other than sobriety. This time, though, we were just hanging out, driving around and enjoying each others' company. Catching up with an old friend has always proven to be an enjoyable activity to me. And this time was no different.

We were in my car, and for some reason, we decided to drive around the circular pick-up lane of the regional Gainesville airport. This didn't strike me as an overly exciting course of action, but Frankie insisted. I usually wouldn't partake in such an activity if I weren't trying to pick someone up from the airport, but given the rarity of the situation, I decided to comply and drive in circles for a while.

After probably the fifth lap, I began to grow weary of the monotonous music Frankie had been playing, so I went to adjust the station. Much to my surprise, I noticed that my control panel looked incredibly unfamiliar. Completely dumbfounded, I decided to investigate the matter further. As I closely examined my surroundings, and it quickly became apparent that the entire interior of my car was made of chewing tobacco. When in the world did that happen? I'd been driving this car for almost 5 years, and I'd never noticed chewing tobacco anywhere, let alone being the sole constituent of the entire car. Frankie, being the pushy and somehow strongly influential person that he is, encouraged me with aggressive zeal to indulge in my car.

I reluctantly decided to break off a chunk of my stearing wheel, and put it into my mouth. I bit into the chunk. Absolutely disgusted, and using Frankie's advice, I started spitting copious amounts of tobacco laden saliva out the window in a fashion that could only accurately be compared to the excretory methods of a steaming geyser. I continued with that for what seemed like an eternity, while the quantity seemed to defy logistics and increase as time went on. My level of disgust was so high, I had no other option to just close my eyes and stick with it until I freed myself of this burden.

When I opened my eyes, I saw a familiar shade of dark forest green, and immediately checked around me to make sure that the aforementioned spewing had not developed into a serious physical manifestation. The sense of relief that filled me when I realized it had not was overwhelming.

At this point, I feel that I have been brought to a related story pertaining to a completely unrelated event.

This past weekend, some friends and I went to Ginnie Springs, where we had the chance to drift along a nice big river. As we were flowing through, Richard and I noticed a man put a chunk of chewing tobacco into his mouth, and then a few seconds later, light up a cigarette. Unsure of the event that we had just witnessed, we felt it was necessary to ask the man if he was indeed performing both of these actions at the same time. His response was a powerful and proud, "Sure am!" We could not help but step back and admire this man for his extreme devotion to the tobacco industry. While so many others in the world are trying with every ounce of strength they have to quit the addictions of nicotine, this man was laughing in their faces, exclaiming, "Hah, for every ounce of tobacco you refrain from using, I'll use two more on my own!" What an incredible feat he was accomplishing.

So, I suppose the moral of my story, boys and girls, is that you should trust your dreams when they have to do with something you've never actually experienced in real life, because a lot of times, they tend to be fairly accurate. I don't need to chew or smoke tobacco to know that I think it would be utterly disgusting. But just in case I'm not sure, I can be confident that my dreams will be there to convince me with resounding gusto. And if you don't find this lesson of mine to be valuable in your own life, I hope you at least enjoyed reading about it.