Course, the fact that I'm giving up Snus might have something to do with the last post's bitter
fittaness (as the Swedes say).
The last time I tried to give it up was just before the start of summer 2006. I was off for some three months, which means a total two weeks into the job I'd just bagged. When the stress of work became too much, I went back on the patch. When the contents of lunch talks dawned on me - fluff and I
think it was puppies back then - I popped a snus or two in alongside the patch. When the terrifying voices in my head turned out to be customers - who were very real, the world became a very strange place.
At any given break during that first month of work, you would have found me outside the personnel entrance - patch plastered to one arm, the snus-bulge under my lip only visible when I'd purse my lips to clutch a Marlboro between them.
But I wasn't doing lines back then! And I think that that is
very important to remember - since there were few other redeeming factors during that tri-poison period. So no, no cocaine. Never tried it, never considered it, never will consider it, I don't think my nose needs to get remodeled anymore than nature has offered already. So no - no coke no coke.
The patch exited my life quickly, and the smoking on the side stopped after about a couple of month's adjustment to the rigors of work-life. After a while you find yourself used to the you you're expected to be, and there's no need to have anything dull the horrors anymore. It gets easier to maintain appearances after a bit.
Except, perhaps, when it comes to that one guy who insists on staying behind and hanging out with me for half hour despite the check-out lines and other customers. I don't know what he wants. But I can't turn him away. I can't talk to him either because I've got other people to attend to, so he just stands there, smiling. It's weird, but that's just work I guess. Or as Dr. Alban so succinctly sums it up:
There's quite a few of these people, who form relationships based on the fact that your hand has nudged theirs while handing over a receipt. Or those people who think that you going extra mile means that you want sacrifice your ovary to their cause. They're like Arrested Development's stairs car. You're just driving along, and suddenly someone has hopped on before you know it.
You don't really notice them until you crane your neck and glance up the stairs or have a look behind you to realize that you have a little club forming behind your shoulder and - you're not invited. I mean you
really aren't. Because in these situations, who you are isn't as important as that you fill a space in the near vicinity. Your function is that of a comfort zone of some morbid kind, a perpetual party-hostess who's stuck in an open door that won't close.
But I'll be damned if the only thing I do to entertain myself while standing in that doorway - full breasted and ever perky - is smoke a cigarette or pop in a snus. I'm not good with dealing with people with notions of misguided familiarity - it breaks my mind. But I won't allow it to break my body. Let not tobacco be the cure for the cancers that sometimes sidle into the store. Because I mean, "It's MY life". You know?
Dr. Albans's got it right. It's
my life.
If this job is going to kill me, it's going to be while I'm standing on my own two feet, back turned to the wall, kicking,screaming, tearing out testicles left and right and for you freaks - I will find that elusive middle nut - AND ALL THIS WHILE NICOTINE FREE. I'll be all like "Look who's talking now biotchus!" which, I believe is the message Dr. Alban tries to send here, is his own esoteric way:
Yeah,
Look who's talking now. It'll be me talking. The ho with the mo backbone. AND the mo amniotic fluid.
Because the day I quit will be the day I be effing reborn. And I won't be one of those yellow withdrawal babies again (thanks mom), I'll be a young - albeit surprised-looking - healthy boy, possibly even born in Africa, apparantly:
Sometimes I think that Dr. Alban might not be the be-all and end-all to all of life's mysteries. I mean, if I do not l i t e r a l l y come back a tiny African boy, then I
must believe that the Doctor's message is a metaphorical one. Dr Alban does take some imaginative interpretation sometimes. To be fair, he's just not too versatile or wordy when it comes to his words of wisdom aka lyrics. The whole TWO songs that the dentist has made both comprise like the exact same lyrics of "no coke no coke" alternately "work work, work work". Although to be fair, the two songs weren't exactly the same, I think one was a Smurf Hits version.
One nicotine-free week down, a lifetime to go.
(
Disclaimer for you non-Swedes: Dr. Alban is one of the most tragic things to ever be produced by the Swedish music industry. The above is irony. Except for the part about quitting snus. )
