I'M BACK!

Where have I been? Sick as a dog. Got some kind of infection and the doctor wanted a... urinalysis sample. Embarrassing, I know. So I bargained for the right to bring one in from home at my own convenience (I can't bear the thought of having to "produce" on demand). 

The nurse gave me this little plastic cup; needless to say, I promptly lost it and had to use an empty mason jar I found in the recycling bin. On my way to the Doc's, I stopped at the Commons. It was such a nice warm day, and I wanted to sit outside and have a coffee, a burrito, and a couple slices of pizza. Now here's the crazy part: relaxing on a bench, I spotted at least three other people walking around with Mason jars, presumably containing their "samples." What were the chances, I wondered? Had they too lost their plastic specimen cups?

One of the jar carriers actually sat down next to me and struck up a conversation about the weather and birds and shit. He was a pasty frail-looking guy in a beard, knee high Muck boots, and one of those sweaters your grandma knits for you when you're 14; I only hoped that my urine sample didn't come up positive for whatever he had. I mean, I'd love to be skinny, but not see-through, and certainly not if it meant looking like a cast-off from the Organic Goat Farm version of Survivor.   

A couple of days later, I got a call from the Doctor's office. "Mr. Santos, are you aware that your urine sample contained 70% organic green tea and 30% pear juice?" asked the nurse. 

I explained that I was not a tea drinker, and didn't even know there was such a thing as pear juice. There must have been some mistake, I said. 

"No mistake, Mr. Santos. I've been a nurse for 20 years, and yours was the only sample I've ever seen that arrived in a jelly jar." 

And then it dawned on me. The frail guy in the Muck boots had been carrying his tea in a mason jar. But why? I really didn't know. Maybe it was some local culture thing, like women wearing skirts over their jeans. Or maybe the $15 Lexan water bottles and the $25 stainless steel ones that they sell at EMS and Wegman's had been outed as unsafe. Perhaps the only safe drinking bottle in the world now is the glass mason jar! And maybe we will all be doomed to walk the commons in ridiculous hundred dollar farm boots, cradling the handle-less glass vessels, our teas and vanilla chais and juice blends sloshing gently within. A work of caution, though, if you're going to carry one around: be careful who you sit next to. And to the poor guy who ended up with my jar, sorry dude!