The other day — Valentine’s Day, in fact — I had to go to the store to pick up a prescription. I had one other mission in mind: Not to buy Sgt Lucky a present.
This will sound strange to you, or even kind of mean, but since we have entered the new austerity, we try not to get loads of presents for each other, especially when it’s a holiday and everything is overpriced. So I wondered around the store, picking up heart-shaped candies and stuffed koala bears holding lollipops and I felt generally pretty grim about the whole deal.
Not buying anything was making me feel poorer, I realized. This is a magic trick that poverty performs upon your person. It’s happened to me before. The other big trick is that it makes you think that you’re going to be poor forever. That one usually dissipates after a few years. I hope it does this time, as well.
In the end, I bought Sgt Lucky a bottle of Monster Energy Drink, because he loves it and never buys it, and I bought us both some vitamin D, because I think we’re both depressed — either because of not getting enough sunlight, which the vitamins might fix, or because of not having enough money, in which case, they didn’t make a vitamin for that. If they did, that shit would be sold out all over Brooklyn.
When I got home, I handed Adam the Monster and vitamins and said, “Take two of these, with a meal.”
He popped them in his mouth and swallowed them immediately.
“Wow,” I said. “Usually, I have to fight you to get you to take any medicine at all. What’s up?”
“It’s like giving a dog a pill wrapped in a piece of cheese.” He held up the can. “The Monster is the cheese.” He paused. “Wait. Did you just treat me like a dog?”
Only kinda sorta. For one thing, he won’t do tricks at parties no matter how much you beg. I’ve tried.
Image: http://unobtainium13.com
Jennie Smash 