Admittedly there isn’t a great deal to do up here in the arctic. Especially when you bed-down with a polar bear, since the obvious activities are hunting polar bear and eating polar bear. Not wanting to kill one of Sherman’s relatives—not yet anyway—we stay in and watch a lot of movies. The fail there is that we don’t get Netflix in the land that never learned what grass is.
“You really remind me of Cameron Diaz,” Sherman chuckles one evening after watching a bootlegged version of Bad Teacher that ended up being dubbed in Korean. I had been losing a little weight around my mid-section, but that is no reason for him to compare me to the most ridiculous star in America.
“You mean because I am looking svelte these days?”
“No, because I think you are probably about as good of a teacher as she is,” he bursts out laughing. “Plus, you have a bit of a drinking problem.”
It’s true, but it’s not what you think either.
I don’t have a drinking problem when it comes to alcohol. Alcohol and I have a stable relationship. The kind most people inappropriately associate with lesbians. You know, where two people have found that magical place where they complement one and other without causing a hangover in the morning.
My problematic relationship is with Dr. Pepper. I love that shit so much that if it were legal, I would marry it, divorce it and take it for all it is worth.
This isn’t really an issue up here in the land that time forgot, since we rarely have access to anything containing sugar, let alone pop. However, when I took my daily stroll to the Co-operative to harass my students to come back to class my jaw dropped and the fat kid inside of Scott came running out. There, on the counter, was a box of Dr. Pepper. A box! Beside this was my other addiction—limes.
After the fat kid inside of Scott took a moment to rub the hamstring he pulled running the three feet over to the Dr. Pepper, I read the label accompanying my elixir of life: Dr. Pepper ONLY 3.50$ a can!!!
“What the ba-hiffy!” I scream/swallow. I can’t believe they are trying to charge three dollars and fifty cents for a can of the greatest thing ever made. I have to keep myself in check though. I remember the last incident involving me appearing to scream at the frozen pizza that is only fifteen dollars here. If I keep yelling at the produce the people of my new land are going to think I am a lunatic. Which I am, but it’s generally a nugget of wisdom I like to only share with the polar bears I sleep with.
After another minute and a half of screaming expletives on the inside of my head, the fat kid inside of Scott says “Fuck it!” and buys two. I didn’t come up with the Fuck It diet, but I endorse it. Maybe not to the pseudo-sexual extent that Jerrod endorses Subway, but it is one of the paths that will eventually lead to my dream lifestyle: The Cake-A-Day diet coupled with zero point zero percent physical activity. Oh, to live the dream!
Since I still haven’t sold Sherman on “the lifestyle” yet, I instead choose to down both Dr. Peppers and read some David Foster Wallace on the ice berg I frequent. I don’t understand what Wallace is talking about most of the time, but it makes me happy that Sherman does. Also, since water is a fairly prized commodity in the arctic, his commencement speech takes on an even more layered meaning. Since this is the closest I am going to get to a layer cake this afternoon, I dive right in.
In this space, where I feel free from all I held dear in the south, I know my understanding of freedom pails to that of Sherman’s. It is he who anoints me even as I annoy him and it is he who welcomes me into all that he cloaks from so many. He makes me believe in myself enough to forget to think about it. He allows me to be unconscious. “Damn this is good Dr. Pepper! It beats the shit out of that apple juice I had the other day, too!”
When I get back to school after my lunch break from heaven, I ask my literature students one question: “What is your name?” The caffeine over-load has caused me to forget even my own. After I recover, I ask them a better question: “Why do we celebrate Halloween?”
It is a timely question, given that it is All Hallo’s Eve.
One of my students, with a visible insulin patch, looks up at me and, instead of acknowledging I had even spoken, says "Boring Dr. Bubbles, you have a double chin! Bwahahah! You better lay-off the Dr. Ps!"
"Thanks for the insight Cooper!". Given Cooper’s understanding of English, “double chin” could mean anything from a double chin to a hang nail. Either way, it really is a reality check. They have also come up with a myriad of clever nicknames for me. Little-Head-Big-Gloves was the first, because I am always wearing three more layers of clothing than anyone else. This was followed by Boring Dr. Scott, which eventually bled into Bubbles, presumably from The Trailer Park Boys because, like Bubbles, I too wear glasses.
On the inside, I am Boring Dr. Bubbles. I probably always will be. The reason I forget this most of the time is because of Sherman. It’s his petty little sacrifices—the ones that go completely unnoticed most of the time—that make me believe I can do anything. Even move to the Arctic Circle and carve out a life in the snow.
I should remember to thank him when I get home tonight. Or, even better, to treat him with the same unflinching devotion that he extends to me. Then, on my way home, I go into the Co-op to pick us up a couple of Dr. Peppers. As I walk toward our frosty abode I take a sip. And then another. And then another. By the time I’m inside I’m on a sugar high.
In addition to my aforementioned double-chin, a sugar high inspires me to believe that “You know what? I probably should have been a pop star!” I then proceed to sing Train’s Soul Sister on a loop until someone throws something at me. In the south this job went to the pesky Blue Jay family that lived next to my cave. In the tundra, it appears the job has been inherited by a white fox that lives just down the snow trail from my front door.
“Hissssss!” he screams.
“Yeah, yeah,” I snarl, throwing him some raw caribou meat I picked up a few minutes before. It was supposed to be for Sherman’s thank you dinner, but I suppose he’ll have to settle for my continued company. Even I know that this is a rather weak consolation prize.
By this point I am in a complete mood. The empty calories from the Dr. Peppers are leaving both me and my double chin tired and irritable. The fact that the post office was again closed bothers me way more than it should and I think I can barely see anything because everyone in the school just has to try on boring Dr. Bubble’s boring glasses.
I throw down my briefcase and remove my glasses. I look into the kitchen, where I see Sherman and Ms. Richard Hatch both sitting at the kitchen table, with a full meal of broccoli and whale in front of them—guess whose is whose—waiting for me. “Welcome home honey!” Sherman says, smiling.
I am definitely the ungrateful one here. I know I don’t deserve him—and I doubt I ever will. I’ll probably never get around to telling him how much it means, but, at least on the inside, boring Dr. Bubbles is starting to get what that Wallace dude was talking about. I am standing in the midst of frozen water and I am home.
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