The past two weeks have been chaotic with house guests, dog sitting, and diarrhea. I don’t regret any of it but there’s certainly a calming bit of gratitude when it’s over and a familiar routine returns.
One of the dogs we watched has a condition that triggers insatiable hunger. The cutie-pie is just about twelve pounds and very old, but pounces like a famished tiger when a morsel of food hits the ground.
We had to work out routines to feed our own dogs so that no blood was spilled. At one point, we mistakenly put down a food bowl for one of the other dogs and I nearly lost a finger pulling our guest away from that food.
We left the house for a short while and the cutie-pie clawed her way into the pantry and ate the only thing she could reach, a bag of egg noodles. Not cooked egg noodles, but the dry-like-a-popsicle-stick egg noodles waiting patiently to be boiled. Only the empty plastic bag remained as evidence that something was amiss.
About an hour later, I noticed the cutie-pie pacing and agitated so I hustled her out to the yard. She immediately blew out her back end. I’m pretty sure she lurched forward with each blast, the jet-powered force from her ass propelling her forward across the lawn.
She reminded me of myself.
I’ve mentioned in passing my youthful craving for Miracle Whip on Wonder Bread sandwiches. It was something my brother and I ate after school while we were home alone and otherwise unsupervised. Nutritionally, we were probably better off eating chips of lead paint from the wall, or maybe gnawing on the asbestos tiles peeling off the basement floor, but boy-oh-boy did those gooey sandwiches satisfy.
Miracle Whip on Wonder Bread was the most American thing we could have eaten at the time. I know most people would think hot dogs and apple pie are true Americana, but I’m thinking more in terms of advertising, promotion, and merchandising—America’s gift to Western culture.
Miracle Whip, if somehow you’re not familiar, is tangy mayonnaise. Is it better than mayo? Maybe. But it has the best possible name for a condiment. That fancy name allowed Kraft to foist tangy mayonnaise upon the dinner tables of millions of homes, claiming precious space away from ketchup, mustard and plain, old, boring mayo.
Miracle Whip pairs nicely with anything, especially really white bread.
Wonder Bread is the whitest of the white breads, fortified with vitamins that really can’t be used by our bodies but which made our brains think it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. In reality, it was just inferior sliced bread dressed up in red, white, and blue packaging and given one of the greatest names ever. Wonder Bread was the super hero of breads we didn’t need, but probably deserved.
Of course we ate Miracle Whip on Wonder Bread sandwiches in the 1970s! We were home alone, trying to fortify ourselves while watching cartoons, waiting for Mom and Dad to come home. We were latchkey kids living the upper lower class/lower middle class American dream.
And it didn’t even give me diarrhea.
Meanwhile, at My Writing Desk…
I wrote a lengthy essay about creativity this past week and—surprise, surprise—I use Miracle Whip on Wonder Bread sandwiches as a metaphor to help explain why any of us can improve our creativity.
How to Find the Time to Do the Thing You Want to Become
Maybe You’d Like
This week I’ve joined with science fiction & fantasy authors for a group promotion of free books: SFF Giveaway September, so give a click and check out these covers!
https://storyoriginapp.com/to/tCosl3K
Next Picayune
I’m still loving this class on the craft of writing so I hope y’all love the Picayune just as much. I’ll be back in a couple more weeks with more stories about writing, books, and whatnot. Thanks for reading the Mickey Picayune.
All the best,
Mickey