Runny Ketchup

The people we (“we” meaning me) live with are not normal. Oh, they might fool you if you saw them at church. They know enough to wear an ironed shirt and pants that don’t have holes in them (or that don’t have a LOT of holes in them). But if you had to spend an hour or two with them after church - say at lunch - and you casually brought up the subject of biting the heads off live chickens then you would know by their reaction that they are not normal.

Of course if you are someone who brings up biting the heads off live chickens as a normal part of your conversation then maybe you wouldn’t think them “not normal”, but they are not normal.

One of the greatest inventions of this century was spandex and the associated use by cheerleaders. The person who thought of this should get the Nobel Piece Prize. Second only to this historic milestone of humanity is the new ketchup bottles that have up as down and down as up.

What we mean by this is that from the dawn of cave man times, ketchup bottles have been made so that the ketchup leaves from the top of the bottle. This caused a lot of problems as people could not get the ketchup out of the bottles. Getting the ketchup out required a long wait, pounding on the bottle, shaking the bottle, cursing at the bottle and running a knife into the ketchup. None of that worked but it passed the time and avoided mealtime talk about headless poultry.

But nowadays, in a stroke of spandex inspired genius the ketchup comes out of the bottom of the bottle! This allows the “law of gravity” (which is only a good law because no legislature voted on it) to pull the contents of the bottle toward the exit.

While making great strides in bottle technology, overall the ketchup making industry has failed us in the respect that when you first squeeze the new bottles what you get is a runny red liquid. Sometimes you get a lot of this before the actual ketchup comes out. This is not right and needs to be fixed.

Ending the Iraq war can wait, because this needs attention.

The non-normal people we (“we” meaning me) live with will pass the bottle around and insist that someone other than themselves use the bottle first. They try not to be obvious, but we all know what is happening when the bottle goes around the table twice. Obviously the first one to use the bottle is the one that is stuck with all the runny red mess on their plates or on their burger or on their chicken head. Who wants that?

We have had to set some rules with regard to using the ketchup bottle at meal time. These new rules have been altered over time. The rule that had the first person picking up the bottle had to use it first did not work, because no one would pick up the bottle. It was really more of an ego thing than anything, because no one wants to lose at the ketchup bottle thing.

The current rules are:

- If you get the ketchup out of the fridge and set it on the table, or on the breakfast bar, or on the floor in front of the TV (where we sometimes eat) then you must SHAKE the bottle like your life depends upon it. (This does help some... helps with the ketchup, not saving your life.)

- Those who are naturally “spastic” do not have to do this (the rule stated immediately above) for fear that they will be thrown to the floor and sat upon as the others in the house may think they are having another “episode”. Okay this only happened once but the paramedics from the fire station were pretty upset and so an exception to the rule is now needed.

- If you get to the floor (or any other place where the food is) before the dogs, you must protect the food that is there from the dogs. This is more important than any rule regarding ketchup.

- A knife is placed in a clear spot on the table/floor/counter. Said knife is spun in a manner that allows it to make several revolutions. Once it comes to rest the person the blade is more nearly pointing to must use the ketchup first.

- In case of a tie, the knife will be re-spun.

- The knife spin is final. Groaning and complaining about who had to set the table, guard the food from the dots, bite the chicken heads off, etc, will not work and will fall on deaf ears.

As of yesterday these rules are holding up fine.

We have found that the mustard bottle also has a runny liquid that comes out of it. We are going to work on this next week.