If a cow ever got the chance...

Drinking Scotch. Hiccuping. Every time I hiccup I am irresistibly reminded of that guy who made the Guinness Book of World Records for hiccuping for 72 years straight. "He contracted the hiccups while slaughtering a hog. His first wife left him and he has been unable to keep his false teeth in." I am terrified that this, unlikely as it is, may be my fate.

The worst hiccups I ever had were last year after a party. A bunch of us were taking the train home and we had all been drinking--I'd had a few beers but I wasn't drunk. I just had MAJOR FUCKING HICCUPS like every 10 seconds or so, the kind that feel like your esophagus is trying to turn inside out, and unfortunately we were all in this underground train station so it was actually echoing. So me, my acquaintance and former coworker ("Gilbert") and his roommate all get into the same train car. Understand, Gilbert has made a point in the past of sucking up to me ([mainly because he thought I held some power in the organization, because I had a password for General Motors's mainframe computer and could look up the warranties and payment histories of our families and friends... I would do it as a parlor trick when we got bored]) We make polite conversation, punctuated by my intense hiccups. They tell me I should drink water. There isn't any. The roommate looks away. People nudge each other. I am mortified. The hiccups are getting worse, if anything. Finally I say, in weak jest, "You guys can move down to the other end of the car if you want, so you won't have to be associated with me." And they DO. Fuckers. They don't make eye contact, for the rest of our shared ride, which is admittedly somewhat short because I am so embarrassed I get off at the next stop and take a taxi... the driver doesn't mention my loud disability and the hiccups miraculously end somewhere along Lake Shore Drive...

That was when I decided I wasn't going to any more of my ex-coworkers' parties.

Confidential to The Fish, my only reader: I have decided to provisionally unlock this diary. However, I do not want to fall into the trap of censoring what I write because I don't want you to read it. So if you see something that offends you, please forgive me in advance. More insidiously, I don't want you to become my Reader--the person to whom I consciously or unconsciously address all my remarks... if that starts to happen, I will lock the diary again, thereby depriving the world of my musings! And it will be your fault!

Somehow I don't think this is the horrible burden of guilt that I intended it to be.

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