Going Turbo!

In which Citizen Jim arrives and fails to enlist Chicken Sheets in his venture to create a new breakfast product.

It was 6:45 on a Monday morning and I found myself stuck in Wait Mode, as I had a doctor’s appointment at 7:25 and would need to leave by 7:10 to be there in time.

People who know anything about the Wait Mode of the ADHD-afflicted will nod their heads in agreement if reminded that during this block of suspended time nothing of any significance or importance is allowed to be accomplished.

Wait means waiting, not cleaning out the litter box or washing the dishes or sorting laundry. One cannot truly wait if one is dashing about in pursuit of ego-boosting task-accomplishment.

Thus, I was sitting at my desk staring at the clock in the right bottom corner of the computer screen when something thumped against my front door and began cursing a blue streak.

Was it a five hundred pound parrot being dumped off by a sea-faring picaroon who could no longer afford to feed such a monster on a pirate’s salary?

Had Dave Nexdore found the mummified remains of Mr Jerry on the roadside? Would he now be asking me to assist him in returning said remains to the studio apartment Mr Jerry had recently vacated?

Or maybe Bosh Dood, our maintenance manager, had ducked around the bushes and taken refuge on my porch. Bosh often finds himself being chased around the apartment complex by the cat lady on the south side of the property who is hellbent on knowing him in a Biblical sense despite their age difference.

When he gets tired of running, I’ll find him crouched down on my front stoop, panting and near tears as he begs me to be the “lookout” while he rests.

The mystery was solved for me a moment later when I got a phone call from Dave Nexdore. He’d apparently received a text from Bosh Dood regarding “some weirdo in green hospital scrubs sitting on top of a trash bag” right outside my apartment.

That sounded just nutty enough to turn my suspicion in the direction of Citizen Jim, my best friend and the person I love most in the world.

Then I grew concerned.

“Bosh isn’t going to call the police, is he?” I asked Dave Nexdore, my hand on the knob of my apartment door.

“I don’t think so—there were too many laughing emojis and ‘WTFs’ in the text for me to assume an event of that nature might occur,” he said, adding, “but I could get my gun and make a citizen’s arrest if you want.”

I told Dave Nexdore to hang tight and not to do anything rash until I investigated.

Before I could greet Citizen Jim, he fell backward off the giant trash bag that he had, indeed, been sitting on.

As soon as his head hit the floor inside my apartment, my two cats leaped over his body and ran outside.

“Damn it, woman! I guess I should’ve worn a football helmet instead of my lucky chef’s hat,” said Citizen Jim.

He sat up and yanked the ballcap off his head before trying to slap my ankles with it.

“That’s not a chef’s hat,” I said.

“It will be after you carry this bag inside and get busy helping me become a rich man,” he said. “When you’re a rich man, you can call whatever you want a chef’s hat.”

I looked at the giant trash bag on my front stoop. “What’s in there?” I asked.

“For the most part, it’s full of other bags that are full of…things,” he said.

“Okay, so what’re the things in the bags in the bag?”

Citizen Jim stood up and brushed off his scrub pants and put his hat on backwards. “I can’t get into it out here—that’s proprietary information,” he said, and walked inside.

While I continued to stare at the bulging hulk of plastic, he turned and said, “I guess I should have used a smaller word that you would understand. ‘Proprietary’ means that what’s in the bag is super-duper top secret.”

“Oh,” I said. “Whatever it is, it’s too heavy for me to lift.”

“Yeah, well, I guess when I drop off a big sack with your share of the profits from my great idea you won’t be able to carry that inside, either,” he said. “So I’ll just skip it and keep all the money myself.”

“I have to admit I’m a little intrigued,” I said.

“Little” was the operative word in this statement. The last time he’d shown up with garbage bags, they were full of “priceless treasures” he demanded I sell on eBay. ¹

The “priceless treasures” turned out to be:

• food cartons discarded on the streets of Fairhope by Tommy Lee Jones during the filming of Under Siege

• a broken CB mic he claimed was a prop from the TV show “B.J. and the Bear”

• a rusted Hills Brothers coffee can fashioned into a spittoon used by Fannie Flagg at a book signing for Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

---

My doctor appointment forgotten (because I had left the safety of Wait Mode, of course; this is why Wait Mode is so important), I sat on my couch while Citizen Jim explained the use for the “super-duper top secret” contents of the trash bag still outside my front door.

“Now, before you say anything, before you fall over and foam at the mouth like a town drunk five minutes before the liquor store opens because you think this is another cracked corn scheme that will come to naught, let me remind you that I’m willing to share the embarrassment of riches I hope to see pouring in,” he said.

I swore I would keep that in mind before I said, “Maybe there’s more to creating and marketing a new breakfast cereal than you seem to realize.”

I was desperately trying to keep the crisscrosses of yarn straight as Citizen Jim connected them to a thousand pushpins on the corkboard of my mind. This was exhausting.

Finally, I said, “Fine. Okay. So I’m going to assume that your bag full of bags is full of bags full of ingredients for your new breakfast cereal.”

“You are correct,” he said. “We need to get that stuff inside and start cooking up a batch as soon as possible.”

“But you still haven’t told me what’s in the bags in the bag,” I reminded him.

“It’s all stuff that, when combined, will produce the desired results,” he said.

I began blinking my eyes very rapidly.

“Gah! I’ll tell you—just stop looking at me like Mama always does when I tell her the cashier didn’t give me any change when she sends me to the store,” he said.

Nothing prepared me for the list of ingredients he revealed.

• loose tobacco from dead cigarette butts

• fermented coffee grounds

• prune shavings

• cat nip

• laxative-dusted oats

• something he referred to as “toothpaste crumbles”

I closed my eyes and shook my head. “You’ll never get away with it,” I said.

“Says you! By this time next month, there’s not even going to be a food and drug administration to ban my cereal,” he said.

“Do you really think anyone’s going to want to eat cereal made from—”

He cut me off. “The way I see it, desideration is the brother of intervention,” he said. “And brother, is this country gonna desire an intervention sooner than later! Do you know how much trouble stress can cause your bowels?”

I shook my head.

“Of course you don’t! Listen here: this country is about to have more stressed out people than any other country on Earth. The blacks, the browns, the gays, the women, the atheists, the liberals, the commies, the teachers, the librarians, the scientists, the doctors, the cops, the robbers—they’re all gonna be constipated. My new cereal is gonna help everyone,” he said.

“Aside from all that, there are already so many cereals to help people go to the bathroom,” I said.

“Not like this, not like mine! Going to the bathroom is one thing, but my cereal’s gonna blast their bowels to the moon and back!” he said. “That’s why I’m calling it Sugar Frosted Turbo Dump!”

“Are you sure about that name?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, I probably won’t keep ‘sugar frosted’ in the name, but that’s all right,” he said. “It doesn’t even have any sugar in it.”

“I think I’ll pass on this venture,” I said.

“Your loss. And don’t come crying to me when you’re on your third week of abdominal pain and intestinal agony,” he said.

“Don’t worry, I won’t,” I said.

“Good, because you’ve lost your chance forever,” he said.

“And besides, Precious Lamb—”

“You can stick your besides and asides in a turbocharged sidecar and zoom off to hell!” he yelled, and left.

He forgot about the trash bag outside the door and tripped, flying through the air and landing on the sidewalk.

I tried to ignore Jim’s screams as Bosh Dood trampled Jim while fleeing his still-smitten Cat Lady.

Prototype for the Turbo Dump cereal box

1. See above.