Edit the sad parts

In times of crisis, repetition has always comforted me.

As an adult this has taken various forms, including cooking things that involved a great deal of chopping, beating, or kneading. [Actually, a close friend of mine discussed this tendency in one of his last blog entries: Still Life With Imbecile. Though he told me I was bat-shit crazy--a point that really cannot be argued--it was done rather affectionately.]

As a child, one way I fulfilled this need for comforting repetition was by pretending to sell hot dogs. It's still not clear to me why I did this because, for as long as I can remember, I've loathed hot dogs. But when I was upset and alone I would regularly gather up the raw hot-dog-making materials and pretend to sell them for hours.

The green waxy rhododendron leaves from the bush in our front yard made perfect buns. Broken sticks served as the actual "meat" (if any part of a hot dog can be called such). Freshly mown grass played the part of multiple toppings, including relish and sauerkraut. But my personal favorite were the onions. I would scrape white paint chips off our house that badly needed re-painting--and if I were ever to have been caught for this there would have been hell to pay--and break them up into bits for chopped onions. In my neighbor's yard a small dried up well with a lid made a perfect drive thru window.

I prided myself on the quality of my ingredients (each one hand gathered!), the value of my hot dogs (only pennies apiece!), and my unfailingly courteous service. Every once in awhile, though, a customer would get snippy with me. At my hot dog stand, the customer was not always right. When I was unable to reason with them I would take their order, throw it through the drive-thru window into their car, and tell them to go fuck themselves. Then I would brush the chopped onions off my hands while muttering, "Some people are never happy," and put on a big smile for the next customer pulling up for their order.

Sometimes I miss being little.