How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Eat The Bomb

Macaroni and cheese may not be the meal of kings, but it sounded pretty good when I had to make my own lunch on Sunday while the Mrs. was getting certified on something called ACLS. I guess I didn’t hear it correctly when she first told me so I thought it had something to do with predicting division winners, the wild card and who the American League would be sending to the World Series this year. She never seemed like that much of a baseball fan, but, hey, she never suspected my Batman fetish until she came home early one day and found me wearing nothing but my crimefighting cape and utility belt. But I digress.

She told me it was ACLS, not ALCS, and had nothing to do with baseball. I scoffed at her ignorance and reminded her that Lou Gehrig was a baseball player before he discovered his disease. She scoffed right back and alleged that he had ALS, not ACLS. She continued that in ACLS they learn to use stuff like AEDs. I put my foot down. Disarming roadside bombs seemed much too dangerous an activity, especially on a weekend. She explained I was watching too much network news and was thinking of IEDs. I tried to laugh it off like I was joking and told her I knew all along that AEDs were used to prevent pregnancy. She stormed off mumbling something about automated external defibrillators. I told her I had one in my utility belt and asked if she’d like to borrow it for training. But I digress.

So I’m making macaroni (the Kraft kind, since that’s how America spells cheese (actually I bet all the kids today spell it cheez when they text)), and grab it to take it back to the table and suddenly I have one of those slow motion moments where it slips out of my hand and starts slowly falling towards the floor and I yell “nooooo…” in a voice that sounds like a 45 played at 33 1/3 rpm. But it was too late. Glass, cheese, and pasta splattered across the floor and nearby cabinets and appliances like blood in a Tarantino movie.

It’s a small galley kitchen, and of course I was barefoot and pregnant and trapped in a bad situation like a 15 year old from a small town in Louisiana. But rather than marry my high school boyfriend and sign up for life of quiet desperation, I hopped the counter and spent the next 2 days cleaning up the mess. I had considered stepping on a piece of glass so that I could go directly to the ER, do not pass GO and let the Mrs. clean it up out of sympathy, but I grabbed some paper towels and did the right thing.

But it got me thinking. Screw all the money developing nuclear weapons. All we really need to do is drop giant loads of mac n’ cheese on our enemies. You probably won’t kill any civilians as long as you make sure the pasta isn’t al dente, but damn it’s a bitch to clean up. The cheese sauce dries up pretty quickly and once that happens there’s no way you can just hose everything down. Besides, the pasta would just clog up the sewer drains. Wisconsin and Kraft become the new beneficiaries of our defense spending (aren’t Boeing and Lockheed getting a little tired?).

Besides, with all the money we're going to need to cover unfunded Social Security and Medicare obligations in the future, our Department of Defense will only be able to afford mac’ and cheese. Welcome to the real world, DC.