Saturday, May 12, 2018

The Pure Pumpkin Polka

I think we've established that I'm a bit of an over-sharer, but lately I've been thinking maybe that's not such a bad thing. Maybe it's not over-sharing so much as the right amount of sharing - in fact, I've been percolating a theory around the benefits of over-sharing, and was planning to one day flesh it out for y'all right here on my blog. Something to the tune of sharing your shit being a public service. If nothing else, I figure it can help other people feel less alone in dealing with their own personal steaming heaps, y'know?

So I was standing in the coffee aisle at the Co-op last night, deciding which beans looked most likely to get me through the coming week, and this middle-aged woman stopped to tell me what kind of coffee she thought was best. Awesome, right? Thanks, rando lady. But then she just... stayed. And started telling me about her dog. Who was sick. With - and I quote - "the green apple two-step." And needed canned pumpkin. But not pumpkin pie filling, just pure pumpkin, and Co-op is the only store that stocks it year-round, and the reason the dog needs pumpkin is because it's a bowel regulator (in case I missed out on what "the green apple two-step" might imply).

She acted all of this out for me while telling me about it, and let me just say: I had no idea pumpkin could be such powerful medicine. The very. forceful. hand gestures. she used to demonstrate what a "bowel regulator" might accomplish in the case of a green-apple-two-stepping dog led me to believe that if she's not careful with the dosage, she may be back again in a day or two buying her dog a bottle of remedial prune juice. I didn't think to ask what euphemism she preferred to use for that particular affliction, so let's call it the pure pumpkin polka and imagine her cornering some poor fellow and telling him all about it under the pretext of helping him select a nice brand of cereal.

It was right around "bowel regulator" that I realized I was seeing the future.

My future.

In addition to being a chronic over-sharer, I'm also an incorrigible over-explainer; a persistent hand-talker; an unrelenting user of euphemisms; and a habitual maker of unsolicited recommendations to confused-looking grocery shoppers. I helped a guy navigate curry pastes just last weekend! I'm like a ticking time bomb of over-sharing. It is only a matter of time before I literally transmogrify into that exact woman and start offering up vast amounts of unrelated personal information alongside my, say, cantaloupe selection expertise.

In light of this new evidence I must entertain the possibility that over-sharing may not be the public service I once thought it was, and if I can't feel bonded with you because of whatever natural reticence you happen to possess, that's my own problem.

I don't know if I can turn this thing around for myself, but it might not be too late for you, my friends: please know that you don't have to share your shit if you don't want to. And you really, really never have to share your dog's shit.

Thank you for your attention to this important public service announcement.