Pain

Life has a lot of pain. Sinus pain, headaches, broken, dislocated, sprained, fingers, ankles, arms, ankles, bee stings, paper cuts with lemon juice, and so many other forms and incarnations of that four letter word. Eskimos have something like 23 different words for snow. Don’t you think there should be more words for pain?



Anyway, I just discovered another. This morning it felt like somebody drove a nail into my thumb. Arthritis. Either that or some little gnome worked his way into my joint and used a tiny little claw hammer and roofing nail in there. My son asked what was wrong and I diagnosed myself to him. I think it was weird for him to hear his father complain about one of those things that tends to be a curse of age. For him, it was painful to hear that. And then it was painful to see him react like that.



Pain. Ben and Jerry don’t have as many flavors as there are permutations of this tiny word. But down at their base there’s a lot there that gives us information we need, information that opens realities and possibilities that we wouldn’t consider or imagine. In spite of all that good stuff, sometimes I’d rather have a gnome or two. Then again, ewwuu.