Tis the season, for flu

     You have reached the Covenant Medical Group. All our lines are busy assisting other patients. Please hold on and your call will be answered promptly. Thank you.

     Shortly after 9 a.m. I heard it for the first time. An eight-second message, I learned when, after hearing it for 10 minutes or so, I took out a stopwatch and timed it, along with the gap before the message repeated.
     

     Every seven seconds. Like a ball peen hammer tapping against the side of my head.
     

     I wondered if, assuming I ever get through to the nurse, and assuming she gives me an appointment to see the doctor, whether I should ask: "I assume the purpose of the message is to thin the herd of sick callers waiting for help."
      
     But doctors can react poorly to that kind of thing. They don't like to be questioned. And they are genuinely busy. This year's influenza outbreak started early, hit harder, and is now widespread in 43 states; 21 children have died. Serious stuff.
     

     Particularly when it happens to you. The Steinberg household is not faring well. My younger son succumbed a day or two before New Year's and has been battling it for a week. My wife was felled like a tree over the weekend. I assumed I was immune because of my hardy Eastern European lineage and general bullets-will-not-harm-us exceptionalism.
     

     Then I started to cough. And sneeze. And get ... well, achy. And very tired.
     

     Nothing to bother a doctor with. I'm a big believer in soldiering on, waiting and letting things go away. But my wife, God bless her, insisted, I get tested. If I catch the flu early, she said, I can take something called "Tamaflu" which will shave off a few days of misery. If I don't have it, I can get a vaccine, which are 50 percent effective in good years, but only 33 percent effective this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

     

     You have reached the Covenant Medical Group. All our lines are busy assisting other patients. Please hold on and your call will be answered promptly. Thank you.

     "Influenza" is an interesting word. Italian, obviously, for "influence," and it refers, not to what a person needs to get through to a doctor quickly, but to astrology. In the Middle Ages, people though the stars influenced illness (some still do, but that's a different column) bringing sickness on, particularly plagues and general outbreaks, and the word was applied first to any sort of epidemic, then to a certain kind of contagious respiratory ailment previously known as "la grippe."
     

     "News from Rome of a contagious Distemper raging there call'd the Influenza" The London Magazine reported in 1743.
  
   

     You have reached the Covenant Medical Group. All our lines are busy assisting other patients. Please hold on and your call will be answered promptly. Thank you.
     

     Half an hour. I'd say they've blown "promptly." Let me say, lest I malign hardworking, dedicated professionals, that I've gotten my health care there for years, and am always very happy with their treatment, and I'm sure I would be happy again now. If they'd pick up the phone.
     

     Do I even need to go? The CDC points out that you shouldn't seek medical attention unless you are in a high risk group: young children, the elderly, already suffering from lung or heart ailments, or have severe symptoms such as high fever. The CDC recommends you stay home for 24 hours so you don't spread the thing around. People worry about being sneezed on, but the virus can live for hours in dried mucus. I've taken to using the paper towel that I wash my hands with to open the rest room door, fat lot of good that has done me.
     

     Up to 40 million Americans get the flu each year; what makes it so contagious is that the flu viruses constantly adapt. This year's strain is not the same as last year's, and you can have various types of flu being passed around at the same time.
     

     Because of the mutation, settling on a vaccine for the strain of flu that might be around is considered a "crap shoot." This year the doctors lost.
   

     You have reached the Covenant Medical Group. All our lines are busy assisting other patients. Please hold on and your call will be answered promptly. Thank you.
    

     I set the volume down on the phone and put it on speaker, making it more of a background, the gentle hum of anxiety that all medical situations bring. I avoid doctors and hospitals—half the time they get you sick there—and you usually get better whether treated or not.
   

     The hour mark—that seemed a decent period to abandon the quest—the sun was dazzling the frost on the window. I listened one more time to the friendly mantra.

   

      You have reached the Covenant Medical Group. All our lines are busy assisting other patients. Please hold on and your call will be answered promptly. Thank you.
     

    At least this column was about done. I wandered downstairs, figuring I should tell my wife before I hung up. My wife made a face, grabbed her cell phone, dialed the same number I had dialed an hour earlier. Someone answered immediately. My wife shot me a just-how-stupid-are-you glance, then handed me the phone. I'm seeing the doctor this afternoon. Better safe than sorry.

     Postscript: I didn't have the flu. 

The atrocity in Paris

Calligraphy by Stephanie Shapiro

     Journalists are very fortunate in this country. We can write what we please, without fear that somebody is going to come around and kill us. Some nasty remarks from disgruntled cops, some noxious posts by Right Wing haters, but nothing that can't be shaken off with a shiver, like a dog coming in from the rain.
     But the slaughter of 12 staffers of Charlie Hebdo, a French satiric newspaper, reminds us how precious that is, how threatened. How history is dominated by the brutal and the powerful crushing those who question or laugh at them. Or, in this case, the armed and the fanatical, trying to.
     You know why they do it. It's hard to be ridiculed. To have your most cherished beliefs held up for mockery. The intelligent person examines the scorn and satire directed his way, roots around in the mess for what kernels of truth may be, and tries to learn from those. None of us is perfect, no belief system without flaws.
     The fanatic doesn't have that option. When you can't examine your own beliefs, the only outlet is to attempt to silence those questioning you. Just a few days ago a Chicago cop started demanding online, in posts and tweets brandishing images of his badge, that I apologize for something I said about the police. I saw his efforts, shrugged, and thought, "I don't have to ask permission from the Chicago Police Department to say what I think, nor do I have to apologize to them when I do." What I said was true, and even if it weren't, that's what freedom is, a cacophony of voices, some respectful, some irreverent, some false, some true. In a democracy, we respect citizens enough to let them sort it out. Some of us do, anyway.  Some haven't gotten the memo, or refuse to read it, or have read it but can't quite grasp the concept. Free speech is great for them. For others, it's just blasphemy.
      A shame. Free speech makes you strong. It creates a world where ideas thrive because they work, not because those who would point out the flaws are beaten down. Fanatics who must gag opposing thoughts, inspired by their supposedly powerful faith, ironically have less faith, in themselves, in what they believe. Otherwise, why couldn't they trust their ideas to succeed on their own merits? Terrorist outrages like the one in France are, in essence, expressions of weakness, of doubt. My God—or at least God as I would envision Him—is a powerful God, not undercut by cartoons. You would think that would be an easy position for anyone of faith to embrace. Alas, it is not.
    The purpose of these crimes is to instill fear, the fear they already feel, terror of life, of otherness. We should react the opposite: by renewing our courage, our belief in the redemptive power and beauty of free speech. These terrorists do not represent a faith, they do not represent a philosophy. They are ragged stragglers fighting for a cause that has already lost, long ago.

Those Winter Tuesdays

    
    
    "It's six below out," I told the back of my younger son's head, as he sat at the computer in the darkened living room, eating a bowl of cereal.
     He mumbled wetly in reply.
     "I'm going to take this recycling to the curb," I continued. "You want me to start the car for you? Warm it up?"
     It was about 6:30 a.m. He'd leave for school in a few minutes.
    "If it can be warmed up," he said, turning. "The heater light hasn't been on." 
    He's been complaining about having to drive such an old car. "A 20 year old car is not a thing," he'll say, trying to explain to me, through logic and figures, that buying a slightly used car is much more economical than continuing to own a car that needs a minor repair every six months. He has not yet convinced me.
    "Or not," I said, moving toward the door. "Up to you."
     He handed me the keys.
     "Tell me if the heater works," he said. 
    It was dark, the moon cast shadows through the trees, the snow was grey and crunched. I ferried a few shopping bags of cans and cardboard to the recycling bin, then opened the garage, got in, started the car, which groaned to life. I backed the sedan up, set it in park, lights on, running. 
     There's a popular poem, "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden. Well, popular might be overstating the case. Popularity is relative, and you could argue that no poems are popular, not compared to, oh, video games. The Columbia University Press called "Those Winter Sundays" "the 266th most anthologized poem in English" which is either high praise or the worst kind of damnation. David Biespiel called it a "heart-wrenching domestic masterpiece" in his essay on the poem on the Poetry Foundation website. 
     The poem begins:

                 Sundays too my father got up early
                 and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold

     I won't reprint the entire 14-line poem—copyright law—but you can read it on the site of the Poetry Foundation, which did get permission, by clicking here. The father pokes the fire into life, calls his son into the warm room. "No one ever thanked him," Hayden notes.
     There is,  I realize, an element of self-justification in my quoting Hayden's poem, like those successful businessmen who love to quote Teddy Roosevelt's "The Man in the Arena" as an attempt to stifle valid criticisms against them. The Hayden poem is not a perfect fit. I am not a laborer whose hands ache. Our house does not seethe with unspoken anger, at least I hope it doesn't.
     No matter. As I backed the car out, I thought, justified or not, of the poem's great closing lines, as the son recalls his father long ago. I think I can get away with quoting them here.

                 Speaking indifferently to him,
                 who had driven out the cold
                 and polished my good shoes as well.
                 What did I know, what did I know
                 of love’s austere and lonely offices?  

     I went back inside, stamped the snow off my shoes.
     "How is it out there?" he asked.
    "Not bad,"  I said. 
    "The car going?" he said.
    "Yeah."   
     I looked at him. Handsome. Trim. Seventeen. 
     "You have a button half done on your sweater," I said, pointing to one big blue button not quite pushed through its buttonhole. He looked down, annoyed at first then. Then seeing that what had been said contained some grain of truth, apparently, despite being spoken by his father, pushed the button all the way through.
    We looked at each other.
     I thought of filling the silence with, "The phrase you're groping for is, 'Thank you.'" But that what good would that do? And, besides, it was unnecessary. No one raises a kid for the thanks. 

Is there life on Mars?

    It was so cold Monday that I thought of outer space.
    Zero degrees on the Metra platform, in a long, bundled line, waiting to exit Union Station onto Madison Street. I watched the warm breath steam out of my fellow humans and thought warmly, or as warmly as I could, about the 125 degrees or so above us, the temperature range of human life, of all life, excepting some hardy bacterium that live in thermal vents. 
    A pretty narrow window. Then again, life is very localized event, as far as we know.  
    Space is a different matter. Space is very big and very cold, and time is very long, so it's poignant that people waste so much of their far more limited time pondering whether  extraterrestrial life is here, now, watching us from nearby, when it's a far more probing question to ask if extraterritorial life is anywhere, ever, even long ago and far away. 
     I would say, given the vastness of creation, that the answer is probably yes, with an asterisk, and that asterisk is a) it's most likely so far away we'll never know about it and they'll never know about us; and b) it probably took place a billion years in the past, or will, in the future, or both.
     Two asterisks. 
     Which doesn't even raise the question of "intelligent life" as if that weren't pretty rare here on earth, among humans. Why does it have to be intelligent life to matter? If there are solar sponges, or unicorns on Mars, would they not count? Would that not rock our world in the way our world is supposed to be rocked by the wise and gentle overlords of Rigel 6? I suppose a being has to be smart so it can appreciate us. That's what this whole UFO charade is really being about: drumming up imaginary fans, ginning up some cosmic interest in we oh-so-important humans so we can feel as significant as we'd like to be and not as small and trivial and alone as we actually are, like some jilted interstellar suitor, in our straw hat and candy-striped suit, our bouquet wilting in our hands as we stare with sagging hope, awaiting our star date who never arrives or, rather, only arrives for those willing to make the leap and interpret a splotch in a photograph as the Starship Enterprise.
    Of which, I should point out, there are quite a number of us. About a third of Americans believe that UFOs are in fact space visitors. But then, a third of Americans believe in angels, and there is no doubt significant overlap in those two groups of believers.
    People turn every blur that someone else glimpsed in the sky into motherships from Alpha Centuri out of neediness and vanity. Once God was watching  over us and now, in his apparent absence, we conjure up new protectors and new judges to peer at us through the clouds. 
     So life, probably, somewhere, sometime, based on the undeniable fact that we popped up here, now—it's been done once, so it could be done again. One roll of the biochemical dice led to us, after only a billion years of slow transformation. Given the number of times those dice are being thrown, on trillions of planets over billions of years, odds are ... maybe not good, but certainly there, that other planets evolved similarly though, as I said, 10 million years ago and a billion light years away. Completely cut off from us by unspanable expanse of time and space.
    Not as satisfying a plot line as aliens picking us up willy-nilly for sex experimentation. Very few fairy tales involve a beautiful princess in a castle in Never Never Land and a handsome prince in Shangrila who never meet, though one suspects the other does exist. 
    That said, the issue is  worthy of at least a little contemplation. I think it is romantic, to stretch the idea of romance a bit. Usually the parties meet cute, interact, something happens, leading to the loss, and yearning that bring wisdom. But in this case, we start with the absence, the ache. You've got our swain hungering for company here, gazing up at the sky—and a tremendous yellow full moon Monday morning, the "Wolf Moon," the Native-Americans called it, which might have helped prompt all this. And whatever unimaginably alien multi-tentacled sweetheart over there, somewhere, across the galaxy and back, or ahead, in time, regarding the heavens with her one giant eyeball, or whatever, and wondering, in her own strange way, about us. Both parties never meeting, never knowing. But still, a kind of love.
     Anyway, it was enough to get me to the end of the Metra platform. 

"Dear Friend" — A final kindness from Judy Baar Topinka

     It couldn't be.

     Could it?
     I had been burning off a few excess vacation days at the end of December, working at home on home stuff instead of working at work on work stuff, when I stopped by the office the day before New Year's Eve, to write a column, schmooze and collect my mail. Last-minute Christmas cards, a manifesto of some sort and . . . a white legal envelope, bold return address: JUDY BAAR TOPINKA.
     Judy wrote to me — and I assume to all reporters, perhaps to all Illinoisans — more than any public official I know. I received more mail from her than from the rest of state government combined. After she died Dec. 10, I had hopelessly pawed through the piles of clutter in my office, looking for the quaint little 1950s-style folders she sent with a clipping tucked inside. One last one, as a keepsake. They were designed to send to constituents, but she used them to praise things I had written, with underlines and highlighted sections and exclamation marks and comments in her tiny, crabbed hand. The sort of thing you'd look at, smile at and throw away. I couldn't find any and felt bad. It would be good to have one.
     This . . . oh wait. I quickly remembered how a Topinka staffer had come by the office, the day after she died. Could she buy a few extra copies of the paper, with Judy's obituary? No, I said, she couldn't buy one. But we of course would be happy to give her some, and I handed her a stack. This must be her note of thanks. Who does that? But if anybody still did, it would be someone from Judy's office.
     No, not a thank you. The same cheesy folder, with a photo of the Capitol in Springfield, shaped to the outline of Illinois, with a retro "I Saw You in the News!" across it, and "STATE OF ILLINOIS COMPTROLLER — JUDY BAAR TOPINKA."
     "Dear Friend" began the form letter printed inside. "I enjoyed this clipping about you in the newspaper, and thought you might like a copy. Congratulations!"
 

   The clipping was a Nov. 17 column, where I begin by talking about the variety of books in my home office and end by talking about Kim Kardashian's backside. "What a wonderful column," Judy scrawled in the margin. "Gets me somewhat motivated to organize my voluminous library of books. If you ever need anything ever written about Elizabeth the 1st and her age, let me know (Sincerely) Comp. JBT."
     For the record, it wasn't a particularly good column, never mind wonderful. But if you were puzzled by the outpouring of general sadness at the passing of Judy Baar last month, I think that note explains a lot, and perhaps gives us all a few tips about living our own lives in the coming year.
     What does it show?
     1. Make an effort. Judy put herself out. She went to the trouble. There is no part of the comptroller's job that involves greasing reporters' massive egos and, indeed, her note wasn't done with the idea of a quid pro quo, of tilling the soil for good coverage. Her kindness would curdle if it were followed up by her rattling the cup for publicity. But she didn't. She was just being nice.
     2. Be nice. When people have a complaint, you sure hear from them. And sometimes I want to say, "You've never said a word, for years, about ever liking anything, and now something bothers you and I'm supposed to listen to you grouse?" Being nice is planting the seeds that flower later. I guarantee you, had Judy Baar been irked by something, I'd have snapped to attention, because that wasn't her way.

     3. Be interested. My column started by talking about books and ended by talking about Kardashian's butt. Judy moved the focus into the age of Elizabeth I. There's something refreshing about that. The range of interesting things is boundless, unless we blinder ourselves. Look around.
     There are more conclusions I could draw, but that's enough.
     I checked the postmark of the envelope. Dec. 2. I've never been so grateful for the foot-dragging of the post office, though the paper's decimated back-office staff might also have had a role. My guess is it worked its way through the Chicago mails for a week and spent another week in a bin at the paper.
     No matter. I have it now. I carefully returned the clipping to the folder, the folder to the envelope, and filed them under "Topinka, Judy Baar." A little scrap, a tangible token of the love and enthusiasm that she radiated. I was lucky to know her. We all were. And if you want people to miss you, too, when you're gone, the way everybody misses Judy, you might consider adopting a few of her practices.

But are your vegetables really clean?

     Tofu is white, cool and gelid, and if you need to find it in a grocery store, you would proceed to the ... 
     No, no, wait, hold that thought. I'll answer it shortly. 
     Well, eventually. I'll answer it eventually.
     There's something more incredible I want to tell yo about.
     Did you know they sell a product designed to clean the inside of your washing machine? 
     I didn't.    
     Tide, of course. "Washing Machine Cleaner." I took a photo in case you didn't believe me.  I could hardly believe it myself and the thing was right in front of me.
     Were I been less busy, maybe I'd have stayed and studied the product. As it is, I snapped this and hurried on to my task. I don't know if the cleaner is a sort of liquid or an infused sponge or a kind of hand grenade.
      I would have thought that the drum of a washing machine is already very clean, since it's always being filled with sudsy water, then agitated with wet clothes, and rinsed, thoroughly. 
     But wait, as Ron Popeil would say. There's more.
     They also sell a spray to clean vegetables.
     An expensive spray it is. $5.99 for 16 ounces. You can buy red wine for far less.
     Red wine from France.
     And the vegetable cleaner comes not in one, but in a variety of brands: three types offered for sale at Sunset Foods. Who buys that? You'd have to be insane. 

 If you're wondering where this is coming from, my wife has the flu. I was busy making peppermint tea and pumping ibuprofen into her when she informed me that I would have to do the shopping. Of course dear...
    What was I supposed to say? No...?
     Target. Sunset. Max & Benny's. Sure, I've been to these places. All the time, on small scale errands. But never on a Saturday. With a list. 
     A long list. 
     I'm tempted to post the list, but that strikes me as crossing some sort of line. Spousal cruelty, perhaps. As it is, this is a fraught topic, but my wife is a good sport, or will be, when she's feeling better. 
    I hope.
    The list. A full 8 x 10 sheet of paper, covered —covered—with a small scrawl detailing products and brands, flavors, sizes, prices, beginning with "—Bounty Paper towels [lg amount -select sizes if available]."
    Before I left she stressed the Bounty part. Don't be gulled into getting cheap paper towels that don't work. This was foreshadowing, but I missed the logic at work, and didn't realize it applied to more than paper towels.
    Nowadays a "large amount" is a given. Try buying a small amount somewhere that isn't a 7-11. Stores realized that customers will warehouse their merchandise for them if given a small discount. I bought an enormous slab of paper towels-- 8 rolls--for $9.99 and a second, equal size slab because it was half price. I didn't even try to figure out what "select sizes if available" meant. (A reference to the way the towels are perforated; my wife had actually explained that to me, prior to my leaving, but in the heat of the moment, I forgot).
     Space—or rather, your attention span; space here is unlimited—won't allow me to go into the careful calculations required before each item was slid into the huge red bin on wheels Target calls a shopping cart. My wife had written simply "Ibuprofen." The price range was astounding -- 100 200 mg tablets cost the same as 40 200 mg liquigels. Less than half the cost, per dose. I compared the small reddish pills—they looked like Tylenol, and we had that--with the ovoid blue caplets. I didn't remember any instructions as to one being superior to another. 

     The true difficulty came with "Aquaph0r." I was fairly confident, Aquaphor-wise, as I remembered the squat white jars with the blue lid scattered around the house. So I know what it looks like. But standing in the vastness of Target, I realized I had no idea what Acquaph0r is. A cream? A cleanser? A lotion? My wife and son both use it. Something for the skin. Not knowing its nature, I couldn't figure out where to search for it. Personal hygiene? Office supplies? I approached a lady with a name tag, begged for help, and she guided me to the right expanse of shelf,   which is where the real trouble began.
    A small, 3.5 ounce jar of Aquaphor is $6.99. A monster 14 ounce jar, $14.29. Two small jars would yield 7 ounces of the stuff, whatever it is, for $13.98. You were paying almost twice as much for the convenience of small jars.
     If my wife has a Primary Shopping Directive, paper towels notwithstanding, it is this: save money. Drilled into me. For years: I am  a spendthrift idiot for not looking at prices, figuring out amounts. Be be be. Frugal frugal frugal. Why buy brand names when the ShopCo brand costs a fraction of the amount? 
     So I tried to think on my own, using the Primary Directive as a guide. Was this not a huge saving?  Twice as much Aquaphor gloop, whatever it is, for the same price (God, I sure hope it isn't some embarrassing personal hygiene product. I'm utterly buggered then). I took the large jar and put it in my cart. She would admire my ingenuity.
     Or would she? Qualms set in. I had never seen a jar that size in our house. If it was such a bargain, why hadn't she bought it? Maybe I, me, could have some input in the household process. Okay ...  I ... I would swing by the pharmacy, where they had all those travel tubes and empty jars, buy a small jar—it wouldn't cost $7 certainly—and scoop out some of my bargain Aquaph0r. 
     Problem solved.
     The image of myself with a tablespoon transferring white cold cream, or clown make-up, or hemorrhoid ointment, or whatever, from one big jar to a little travel jar spurred me to whip the phone out and bother the sick woman to confirm the wisdom of this. 
     "Honey," I began, explaining my reasoning. 
      "Absolutely not," my wife instructed, explaining that in this case the need to divide the cream trumped the need to save money. My divide-the-larger-jar-ourselves idea was waved away as lunacy.
     I won't go into the internal debate over the dizzying array of brands of toilet paper. I was attracted to a brand with ridges. I had never seen it before. It looked futuristic, like the toilet paper you'd find aboard the Pan Am rocket ship from "2001 A Space Odyssey." But I had to buy 18 rolls of it. I couldn't sample one, as a test. We'd have to live with that ridged toilet paper for a while, and what if it was the Wrong Toilet Paper? What if there were something inherently wrong with ridges that I didn't know about? You can't very well take toilet paper back, can you? "I'm sorry, I'm returning this plastic wrapped palette of toilet paper. It has ridges." 
     That's when I encountered this display, for a product to clean out your clothes washer. To be honest, it further unsettled me, as if I had glanced down an aisle and seen a row of mummified puppy heads, the latest thing. What is this? (My wife later informed me that washer cleaner is not the scam it seems -- mold -- but that she used a rag with some Simply Green). 
      At this point in Target my mind must have shut down, because I simply left, without getting two of the 11 items on my list: milk and cereal. Basic stuff. I'd suppose that the idea of buying food at Target was alien to me, but I managed the Amy's frozen burritos--which my boys consume after they spurn home-cooked meals. I think I simply missed her elaborate explanation of the sort of milk to be gotten, four gallons (my younger boy guzzles it). As for cereal, my wife helpfully listed a few examples: Raisin Bran, Special K, Rice Krispies, in case I wasn't familiar with the term.
     Maybe it was because my cart was full, packed with blocks of paper towels and toilet paper. I'd need to start on a second cart. The bounty set me back $107.50.
      Perhaps rebelling against the Target mega-cart, at Sunset Foods, I chose one of those small, urban grocery carts that look like they're made for dolls. Usually they're fine for what I want, and more maneuverable, around my fellow Northbrookites, their faces masks of pain and the ravages of time, standing in the center of the aisle, blocking it with their carts, whining into their cell phones to Herbert, their husband, apparently. 
      I dragooned a butcher to help me with the Amish split fryers and the pork chops. With the later, he said something like, "I could make a joke about that," and I almost replied, "What? What is it? Tell me the joke! It's because I'm a Jew, isn't it?" I didn't actually say that, but took the thought as evidence my composure was starting to crack. I had been shopping for over and hour at that point. 
      Done? I've hardly bgun. There was the wait at the deli counter, the Banana Choice: yellow or green? Squinting at what seemed to be "comic pears" in my wife's handwriting. Looking at all the variety of pears—who knew. Anjou pears and Bartlet pears. Ah, comice pears, only 99 cents a pound. I wouldn't eat a pear if you put a gun to my head: mealy. I bought four.
     Near the end of my shopping trip at Sunset, I realized I had forgotten the milk and cereal at Target. Go back? Never. It's milk. And cereal. It's the same everywhere. Right? Raisin Bran was on sale -- that would do. By the time I got to the milk aisle, my little cart was tottering with merchandise piled upon it. I'd have to get another cart. Maybe two gallons will serve. Two gallons ought to last a while, right? He's just one teenager. 
      A quick swipe of a red card, $121.50 vanished from my life and I was on my way to the third stop, Max & Benny's, where my list was simple: chicken soup, to nurse the sick girl. No matzo ball, which I had a hard time understanding, intellectually. Chicken soup with no matzo ball? Some kasha varnishkas on the side. My people's comfort food. Think bow tie noodles with some kind of grain tossed in. Cookies for my college student to bring to a party.  Three items. 
     The soup was in a blizzard of sizes and varieties. I called home again. Do you want noodles and chicken in it? Or just broth? No noodles.
     I picked out a pound of cookies, added six ruggeleh—little square pastries, for the sick girl. My wife loves 'em. Total bill for my soup, cookies, kasha, half dozen ruggeleh and pint of broth: $31.97. They get you at Max & Benny's.
     And so home, having been gone about two hours on a cold, slushy, sleeting day. I would have been more relieved, had I not known what was coming.
     They took turns reacting in goggled horror. Two gallons of milk! My younger son was aghast. I was supposed to get four. Two would be gone in a moment.  And where was the Special K? "You didn't get Special K?" he said in a tone normally associated with "Lassie's dead!" 
    "The pills don't work," my wife informed me, of the ibuprofen. "Only the gel-caps work."
     "You could have told me that," I replied.
     "I can't think of every possibility," she replied.
     "You told me which flavors of Greek yogurt to get..."
     Then the soup. Why no chicken? 
     "I called," I said weakly. "I asked you. No chicken."
     "No noodles."
     "They were paired, on the sign. 'Chicken and noodles.'"
     She was sick, so I let the matter slide and slunk upstairs, happy to ... well, write this post assuming I don't delete the whole thing, which is probably prudent. 
     In the past, I vaguely resented my wife doing all the shopping -- obviously done to keep control on finances, to prevent spendthrift me from buying expensive stuff. From now on, I will only be humbled and grateful. Thank you honey for sparing me this. I thought my mind would crack. In the parking lot of Sunset, for one crazed moment I considered going home, grabbing the gasoline from the garage, spreading it around the ground floor and burning the house down, then starting life afresh as a hobo. But that would be bad. I decided it might be better just to let you do the shopping. 
     Tofu, by the way, though it is white and chilled and gelid, was not to be found among the cheeses and the yogurt and the kefirs and the eggs where I expected it to be, and where I searched for it, for quite some time, until I began to look for an employee, finding one on the other side of the store. It was in the "Organic produce" section, next to the lettuce, I learned this after asking a clerk, who obviously had never heard the word "tofu" before, and then accompanying him while he consulted with another clerk who had. Of course, tofu. Made from soybeans. Grown from the ground. Practically an apple. 
    This is what the philosophers would call a "Category error." I had lumped it with other white, cool, gelid materials, like cream cheese, when it really is a plant. Like lettuce—next to the lettuce, in fact. So learning was accomplished, though I fervently hope never to have to put my newfound shopping skills, at least not after this flu passes. Which, I'm told, should be another eight days. By evening, I was coming down with it too, and as I sniffled and hacked and ached, I thought, happily, "One of the boys can do the shopping..."  

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

     Starbucks coffee is too strong for me. Industrial strength, I'm not sure what it's intended for. Stripping the paint off old buildings. Or maybe I drink too much coffee to be its target customer. I like a coffee I can drink in volume. One cup of Starbucks and not only don't I want another cup for a day or two, but the entire idea of coffee is thrown into question. I only go there if I'm meeting someone who suggests meeting in a particular Starbucks, and half the time I get a cup of tea. Drinking Starbucks coffee, it's like a wine connoisseur drinking a bottle of Thunderbird; too overpowering and destroys an experience that should be sublime. 
    Then there is the whole drink-it-and-get-out corporate vibe the place radiates. I can't settle in with my coffee and scone and newspapers and just be. It seems rude, with the line and the other people prowling around, looking for a place to sit themselves. Starbucks is like Whole Foods, a stage set of expensive fakery that many people fall for. And I used to fall for, years ago, if I recall. I suppose it's like McDonald's. Cool, during the initial red and white tile new stage. Now it's just commerce.
     Small coffee shops, on the other hand—independents, or modest chains—that's a different matter. They still have personality, soul, gumption. When I was living on Pine Grove and Oakdale, I'd love to walk up Broadway and hang out in Intelligensia or, if I was up in Evanston, sink into one of the old cast-off chairs at Kaffeine.  Maybe that isn't fair: they're commercial too, just on a tinier, small ball scale. Maybe that's why I prefer them: a certain kinship.
     Or this place. Quirky, with a resident ... well, I guess I better not say, lest I give away the game too easily. This one will probably be cracked in a moment by one of its patrons, who as a prize will get a bag of fine Bridgeport coffee—the kind I drink at home, and also the brand served at The Grind, the coffee stand in the Northbrook train station, which is where I discovered it.
     Remember to place your guesses below. Good luck. 

Spoiler alert:

This was a toughie, not solved until an unprecedented 2:13 p.m., and it took the sleuthing of King Dale, the Tiger Woods of the Saturday Fun Activity and now our four-time champion to ID this place as the Jupiter Outpost, 1139 W. Fulton Market. The resident I almost revealed is an "urban turtle" named Phoebe.