Metaphors mixed, with salt

Of all the ways to exit this world – drinking, fast cars, lion taming, rock climbing – mine will probably be death by liverwurst.

I’m not sure about the exact components of liverwurst, though grease plays the starring role. I’m guessing the ingredients are something like fat, fat, fat, fat, fat , fat, pig organs, fat. Bucking the tide of current nutritional wisdom, I take mine with a dollop of mayonnaise.

It’s my comfort food. What we ate as kids, after a long day skiing. It warmed us up, along with a thermos of tea and a hit of brandy if we complained our toes were cold. My toes were always cold.

At every new school, my sister and I were the pumpernickel kids. The ones who unwrapped sandwiches of thick black bread slathered in suspicious meat bi-products and fragrant cheese, while everyone else tucked into peanut butter and fluffernutter. And just to make sure we could strike the gong on the cholesterol scale, my mom topped it all off with a hard-boiled egg.

Probably I was so popular because I never asked to trade lunch.

Last week, I loaded the fridge with all the foods of my childhood. Let me tell you, that shit tastes foul. I didn’t remember it was quite that bad -- a frontal assault when I opened the refrigerator door. Now even the cream in my coffee carries a whiff of Braunschweiger.

I’ve sworn off equating life to a deck of cards. Though I’m not sure why, because life is like a deck of cards. If you hang around for awhile, you’ll learn to play all sorts of hands. You have to. Sometimes your cards will be sweet, so sweet, and sometimes they’ll just smell like liver. It’s my personal opinion that any hand falling between these two extremes will benefit by a certain amount of bluffing.