A Removable Feast

I must sing the praises of Hick.

Stop that! I must. Putting your fingers in your ears is not going to stop me. I'm a born warbler. I can sing like a canary in a coal mine. Which is a bit of foreshadowing, perhaps, in this being a limited engagement.

You might be thinking that I'm belting out my appreciation for Hick acting as the chauffeur of my Chevy limousine to the grand book-signing extravaganza on Saturday. But I'm not. Oh, I sincerely extend props to Hick for being such a sit-down guy, he of the driver's seat, looking left, looking right, occasionally looking where he's going. But there's another arena where Hick cannot hide his beacon under an air-tight bushel. And that is family safety.

Sunday night, The Pony and I heard Hick stomping around in the kitchen overhead. Hick doesn't regard it as stomping. He thinks he is walking. Which he is. Like a man with no feet at the end of his ankles. Stomping around on stumps with no fat-pad cushions at the heels and balls of his feet. Even though he has them.

"Hey! Don't eat the pepper cheese!"

This was an odd command. First of all, we had just consumed a tasty supper of beans and ham and corn muffins an hour earlier. Perhaps a meal that was not sticking to Hick's ribs, but was at least lingering in his large intestine. I have almost thrown in the towel in the contest of assigning a method to Hick's madness. I decided that he was making lunch for work on Monday. Yeah. That must be why he was into the cheese right after a sumptuous repast.

Secondly, Hick need not tell The Pony and me not to eat the pepper cheese. Because we don't eat the pepper cheese. Ever. It's spicy, you know. And has those red and green flecks of pepper where nothing but holes or more cheese should be. He might as well tell Superman not to eat the kryptonite.

Thirdly, it's not like Hick to warn us away from something he wants to save all for himself. That's because he's quite adept at eating things others would like to save for themselves. So he figures if he lets people eat his stuff, he has free rein to consume anything he runs across, no matter whether it was a special item reserved for a gala affair, or a birthday treat, or items already promised to my mom.

"All right. We won't eat the pepper cheese. Why do you say that?"

"It has MOLD on it!" Hick acted like this was a personal affront. How dare that cheese allow nature to take its course! That cheese conspired against him. Who woulda thunk that a package of cheese left on the top shelf of the refrigerator for a month, having the hands of Hick and Genius paw it willy-nilly with questionable hygiene, would sprout hyphae? Not Hick. He wouldn't know a hypha if it twined itself around his butt and colonized it for the planet Mold.

This is where the going gets tough. Would a normal person not throw away moldy cheese? Did Hick worry that The Pony and I would claw through the tall kitchen wastebasket and find that pepper cheese that we never eat, and say, "Hey! Hot furry green wastebasket cheese! Let's have some!" Or did he think the proper procedure upon discovery of moldy cheese is to put it right back in the refrigerator where you found it?

Yes. Hick's heart is in the right place. It's his cheese that needs to be moved.