NaMe YoUr pOiSoN

Can you quantify your addiction? Are you willing to even admit your addiction? My boss, he loves his beer. He writes about it, he brews it ...he probably even brushes his teeth with it. A lot of his social life revolves around bars. In fact, his favorite thing to do at an airport is to arrive extremely early and relax at the bar; it's a HUUUUGE portion of his life. Now, don't get me wrong, he's not a lush (I don't think), he just loves his alcohol.

I tease him about it a lot and after hearing one of his more recent bar-based stories, I asked him, "how much would someone have to pay you to NEVER drink again?" My coworker let out an ooooh! and came running over to hear the response. My boss hummed and hawed a bit, tried to find some wiggle room to the question, "well if it was paid to me in installments..." or "maybe no wine or hard liquor, but what about beer?" Look at that, an addict shaking in his boots! After some uncomfortable acceptance on his part, the number came out to $10 million. He tried defending his atrocious amount by asking my coworker the same question, to which he nonchalantly replied, "$100,000 maybe? I don't care. But on your scale, I'd be fine with a million." However, we soon twisted my coworker's weakness out of him. Apparently, there is no way on earth he could live without chips. An interesting poison, but I poison nonetheless!

At this point they (my boss in particular) didn't want to the be only person admitting their hamartia, so next it turned to me. Knowing I don't drink, he tried to find something else. "Yeah, well what if you couldn't have coke...wait... what if you couldn't have luna bars...that doesn't work either... what if you couldn't, hmmm, what if you couldn't..." he kept repeating out loud. He did however, finally find my poison. His head shot up, gave a devious grin and said, "Yeah, well what if you could never travel outside America?" I shrugged a bit and said America was big (using technicalities of my own). However, he quickly narrowed it down to the U.S. and Canada. Then, pretty soon I wasn't allowed to leave the continental U.S.! Just to annoy him I said I'd take a few million to buy a beach house, a mountain cabin, complete with my own private plane, and contentedly soak-up the U.S. He was annoyed by my chipper response, but I think I was secretly more mortified by the prospect of never leaving these shores.

Hello, my name is Melinda, and I am an addict.