GOING ALL NEW AGE ON YA

Trying to recover from every retailer’s favorite masochism exercise – inventory – I have been dreaming about mathematicians sheering my manhood with a dead porcupine carcass and all I want to do is sing “3 is a magic number.”

As a diversion, I was reading various news bytes online, and came across a pretty mindblowing article about a chef who ended up battling cancer – of his tongue. He literally lost his ability to taste anything. I couldn’t even imagine, being that my sense of taste is crucial to my job – yet to be a chef, running your own restaurant, and not having the ability to know what you are putting on the plate would have to be the scariest thing you could face.

Grant Achatz is his name, chef of Alinea in Chicago, and doctors told him that he would have to lose ¾ of his tongue or he’d die. Refusing to quit, he found a doctor who treated him and saved his tongue and taste buds, and after several months, he got his taste back, and though there were drawbacks to his treatment, he is alive and well, and living his dream.

The article really struck a chord with me. I remembered my father asking me once how I would feel if I had lost my eyesight. For the life of me, I don’t recall why he asked me that question – I think I was 11 or 12 years old at the time – but I never forgot that prospect. When I played drums, I used to practice in the dark, in case I ever did go blind. God knows, I should have never turned on the lights when beating those things – I wasn’t very good – but the whole “don’t-know-what-you-got-till-it’s-gone” notion (cue the band Cinderella) is a place I don’t ever want to end up. I don’t want to take anything for granted.

Yet the pitfall we all end up, usually without realizing it, is that we do take things for granted, and we don’t know how good we have it until we lose it in some fashion. Now that isn’t to say that there are those folks who have nothing to begin with and, well, I am drifting away from my point now.

I guess what I am trying to say is cherish everything you do have, don’t take things for granted, and fight with all you have to be happy and survive.

Sorry for getting all New-Age-y again. Hope to get back to some wine stuff tomorrow.