I have not one, not two, but THREE videos to share with you today.

I know. I spoil you people. But you’re just so cute!

And upon each of these videos hangs a tale. We will begin at the happy end of the pool.

That’s me in the corner in the White Spot in Richmond Center, all happy and content and unknowing of the tricks fate had in store for me that day.

In addition to the aforementioned onions and potatoes, I also ended up buying me some Kool-aid. Yes, they still make it! Its shelf space has not been entirely taken over by powdered sports drinks and Crystal Lite yet. They are down to the three permanent flavours (Grape, Orange, and Cherry), but by God, they are hanging in there.

The idea came to me when I realized that with the onions and potatoes and the various munchies I was buying, I already had a lot to carry, and the thought of adding 2 liter bottles of pop to that load did not appeal to me.

Then I remembered Kool-Aid. I tried making Kool-Aid with Splenda before, but I couldn’t seem to get the elements to mix properly. Since then, I have been assured that if I apply enough elbow grease, the three Holy Elements of water, Splenda, and Kool-Aid will combine unto one, and I will be a big happy Kool-Aid drinkin’ kid again.

I drank a lot of Kool-Aid as a kid. Not that my parents bought it… my mother would never have bought such sugar stuff. But even as a kid, you can afford 25 cents for a packet of Kool-Aid, and I became quite the connoisseur. Those who know me will not be surprised to find that I was constantly experimenting with various flavour combinations.

Eventually, I settled on a fave : root beer (I did buy pop too sometimes) and Mountain Berry Punch. Sugar aside, I am pretty sure I would find it gag-inducingly sweet now, but as a kid, it was manna.

Now we move to the slightly darker side, wherein I get really fucking pissed off about this whole Ebola thing.

And it gets worse. Further headlines told me about the Ebola Task Forces that are popping up everywhere as a reaction to people’s entirely irrational fears of Ebola. Millions of taxpayer dollars are going to be wasted on completely pointless countermeasures simply because the world, or at least the white world, has decided it would be really fun to get all scared about Ebola.

I came up with a term for this. I call it Reality Horror Theater. It’s just like going to a horror movie, only real, or at least, as real as it needs to be. Reality show real.

And everybody can have jolly good fun getting their fear catharsis for the day from this rampant repugnant bullshit and feel perfectly safe in doing so because, like with a horror movie, you know it isn’t really real.

When looked at that way, you can see how every moral panic is basically the same thing as this Ebola shit. It’s fun to be scared of things that, deep down, we know are not real and therefore not really a threat to us. Getting swept up in a public panic feels good. Fear brings people closer together and makes them feel more unified, and how rare is that these days?

And on a sociological level, public panics serve the same purpose as anxiety attacks in individual. A certain amount of unexpressed tension (fear, anger, worry, etc) builds up and the cork pops and it all gets expressed in an uncontrollable gush.

So looked at like that, I suppose things like this are inevitable. And previous generations of the exact same moral panic lead to things like the Salem Witch Trials and Mcarthyism, so I guess I should be glad that it’s only money being wasted.

But god dammit, it sucks to be the only rational lemming in the lemming swarm.

And finally, we enter the most sinister chapter of today’s tale. A tale of…. MURDER?!?

Well obviously not. I’m here typing this, after all. But I feel like I still haven’t processed it all. This kind of mishap has almost happened to me numerous times, but today it finally got me.

I am fine now, don’t worry. The extra insulin did its job. I was trembling and sweating like an iceberg in May when I first got home from White Spot today, but now I feel calm except for the lingering feeling that I dodged a bullet today.

Maybe that is just me being as hysterical as the Ebola people. After all, a blood sugar spike would have to be pretty severe in order to threaten my life. Or even put me in the hospital.

But still, an awful lot of a diabetic’s life is about control, and losing control of your input like that really shakes a person up. Lord knows, I am no angel when it comes to avoiding the bad foods, but at least when I buy those damned cookies at 7-11, I know what I am doing and choose to do it.

Still, I am very happy about one thing : I was super assertive about the issue. I didn’t try to apologize or minimize the problem. I was very firm (polite, but firm) with the waitress, and even more so with the manager.

I think the manager could see how serious I was about it because he was definitely worried about what happens next. For all he knew, I was a brittle Type 1 diabetic who was going to keel over right there in front of him.

The fact that I was trembling and sweating like a pregnant sow probably helped convince him of that.

And yeah, I know, a lot of people would say “That is terrible! You should sue them for everything they are worth!”.

And if I experienced a more severe reaction, maybe I would have. But as is, I got a free lunch out of it (and they say there’s no such thing) and that is fine by me.

I am just not the sort of guy to bust people’s nuts over something like this. Maybe I should be, I dunno. But I’m not.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.