A Little Red, A Little Blue

Okay. So I have a weird sense of humor. But I couldn’t resist it. Lauren never smiles. Lord knows she needs to. Of course, she hates me. Rich says she doesn’t, but when it’s just her and me, she makes it pretty clear that she thinks I’m a freak. She hates magic and wicken and all that stuff, and she’s sure that I’m siring her a flock of trolls and warlocks and witches for grandkids. And what a worry-wart. Every time Becca sneezes or Seth skins his knee, she thinks they’re headed for the hospital. Can’t let them climb on the swing-set or even swim in the pool when she comes over. I put up with it pretty well, but we all get to a point, you know?

I guess there’s a sinister little part of me that just wanted to shake her up a bit on her next visit. Get a little revenge. It all started to come together one day after little Becca screamed at me from the bathroom.

“Mom, come here, quick!”

I ran and got there just in time to catch sight of a stream of bright red liquid that turned the toilet bowl pink. Becca stared at me in wide-eyed horror, but I just laughed.

“Beets,” I said. Becca loved cooked beets and ate them like candy.

That’s what gave me the idea.

Now, Rich’s number one rule is no magic – and that includes curses and even innocent little tricks, but I remembered having some red stool in my younger days when I was really hooked on Indian cuisine, so the next day I marinated a big batch of chicken in Tandoori paste with a lot of extra red food coloring and baked it up for dinner. We all pooped red bricks for two days. A little bit of experimentation proved that Red Velvet cake mix was effective too – and since it’s basically chocolate cake with red coloring added, dumping in some more red made it even better. So that’s how I came up with the Red Stool menu for Lauren’s visit. Of course, I went out and bought new stools at Dania with red leather cushions and we invited Lauren over to celebrate the new décor.

I fixed my special Tandoori chicken and beets and Red Velvet cake and the kids and I stayed on our best behavior all night. Lauren went home quite happy. The next day, Rich and the kids and I took turns marveling over the intense reds and subtle shades of pink that we produced in the toilet bowl. Van Gogh would have been proud.

I didn’t hear a peep from Lauren and I figured it didn’t work on her. Some people metabolize the betacyanin better than others, so I thought maybe she didn’t pee red, or maybe she just didn’t notice, or maybe she just didn’t care. But I got worried after I hadn’t heard from her for a few days. Rich finally let me know, with a stern, disapproving look that hid a hint of a smile, that she’d admitted herself to the hospital for “irregularities.” The doctor released her after running a few tests.

About a month after that, Seth drank a whole pitcher of Purplesaurus Rex Kool-Aid in one afternoon and his poop was bright green the next day. I did some research and found that the FDA Blue #5 combines with the yellow bile to make a great neon green. I had Seth and Becca experiment with me a bit. We made green poop with blue corn tortilla chips and Extreme Berry Sherbet too. I stirred a whole little dropper container of blue food coloring into some yogurt and we got great results from that. We’ve even started a web site and an on-line chat group for colored-poop aficionados. Last month we got over forty thousand hits.

With all the input, we’ve got a new menu all figured out. A little red, a little blue. Should be great fun.

Now, all we have to do is figure out a way to get Lauren back over for dinner.