Too soon old, too late smart
Oh, but we can be so slow to learn…
I’d been there before and should have known, but there was good company, good talk, cold beer and an attentive bar keep who kept them coming to guys who kept staying well past when they should have been going.
Next morning the eyes were a bit slow to open, the legs a bit slow to move, the head a bit larger than it needed to be. It was Mother Nature putting the yin and yang back into balance. Just a little reminder that for every good there is an evil; for every pleasure, a pain; for every suck-down, a throw up.
I thought back to the night before, and realizing that I remembered all of it also remembered the words of a country song I’d played on many a juke box. And since country music is the pure distillation of life’s truth set to a four/four beat, I had to admit that age is creeping up on me…the hangovers do hurt more than they used to.
Hangover, the disease of self-indulgence; Puritanism made physically manifest. The term derives from the Olde Englishe: hange-overe; a colloquialism popular among the servant class describing the posture his Lordship would assume relative to his chamber pot the morning after a night of ribald debauchery.
In those superstitious times the peasantry believed that particular state of generalized wretchedness was the work of evil spirits. Those of us who live in more enlightened times realize that they were absolutely right. The quality of booze available to the lower classes made the spirits they consumed evil indeed, and as anyone who’s tied into a fifth of Thunderbird will attest, one does well to avoid evil spirits.
And as seen from the perspective of the morning after the night before, all spirits seem pretty darn evil.
I make it no secret that I’m a better customer of the international brewing industry than the average Mormon elder and that I have, from time to time, suffered through a bout with the 3.2 flu. And while I’ll acknowledge, a hangover is generally not terminal, anybody who’s ever managed a truly wicked one will agree, death is probably the surest, quickest cure. Which leaves us all a-lookin’ for less drastic remedies.
Through the years a lot of folks swear that a “hair of the dog that bit ya” is the most reliable fix for a self inflicted misery. The truth is that a drink or two will send a lot of hangover symptoms packing, but the technique is effective over the long haul only for folks willing to commit to spending the rest of their lives drunk.
Folks who have need to return to the workaday have needed to be more creative. Working on the principle of comparison and contrast, amateur hangover easers have cooked up some truly horrendous concoctions featuring copious amounts of cayenne pepper blended with raw egg and prune juice. If you can get it down and keep it down, you know that compared to how it’s making you feel, you definitely will soon be feeling better.
Personally, I prefer a much more gentle approach. Before retiring I leave a note to the family reminding them that I know how to use a shot gun and that I own ammunition; just in case there are some misguided fun-seekers among them. At the 5 a.m. potty break I use a sink full of water to wash down a fistful of aspirin and Rolaids, retreat to my warm fuzzy blanky and soft, fluffy pillow and stay put in a quiet darkened room.
Around noon, I’ll be doing OK.
By supper time, I’ll be raring to fire up the grill, toss on some brats and crack a couple of cold ones.
For all that suffering, there ought to be a reward.