Yoghurt

Yoghurt can also be spelled yogurt and in fact that's the more common spelling. Lately I've been eating yoghurt in the evenings, just a small bowl of plain white yoghurt, to see if it prevents my getting heartburn at night that wakes me up. I think it's been helping.

Last night I thought I'd really put it to the test because I had pizza for dinner. I had pizza because I had a dentist appointment in the afternoon. You see, a visit to the dentist fills me with a mixture of pride in doing a righteous deed--taking care of my oral health--and self-pity for enduring the unpleasantness of metal instruments and high-pitched noisy gadgets inserted into my mouth to poke, prod, scrape, and polish. Since I felt sorry for myself, I felt I deserved a treat, and since I was proud of myself, I also deserved a treat, so on my way home I stopped at Papa Murphy's. That is a take-and-bake pizza chain in this region. They put the pizza together for you but don't cook it. You cook it when you get home, so it's freshly made.

So I consoled and rewarded myself with pizza and shortly before bed I ate my little bowl of yoghurt, and I think it helped. I did not wake up with heartburn. So tonight for dinner I had, you guessed it, leftover pizza. And now I ate my little bowl of yoghurt.

While I was dishing it up, I remembered some old commercials that seemed to hint that since certain Eastern European tribes who ate a lot of yoghurt commonly lived to well over a hundred years old, so might people who bought their brand of yoghurt. Hey, maybe in addition to settling my stomach I'd also live to be 120. However, I immediately thought that I could not afford to live that long. Given my current rate of pay, savings, and general prosperity, I'm expecting that if I ever do retire I will run out of money approximately a week and a half later. Then I will have to throw myself on the mercy of my relatives. And then imagine their chagrin if I lived decade after decade, the next generation of my family themselves retiring, and maybe even the next generation after that, and still having old Auntie sitting around the place swilling yoghurt. I was going to say "spooning yoghurt into my toothless gums," but remembering how this story started with a trip to the dentist no doubt I will still have a fine set of choppers.