Old Wounds and Adversaries

Is your family safe from—scurvy?

I ask because of a quote that came across my desk this week, in a David Masiel blog post from 2012. The post was I guess maybe about strip mining? (judging by the picture), but included an excerpt by Jason C. Anthony, regarding a symptom of scurvy.

"Without vitamin C we cannot produce collagen, an essential component of bones, cartilage, tendons and other connective tissues. Collagen binds our wounds, but that binding is replaced continually throughout our lives. Thus in advanced scurvy old wounds long thought healed will magically, painfully reappear.”

I contemplated this at lunch today, between bites of citrus fruit, bell peppers, strawberries, tomatoes, cruciferous vegetables, and white potatoes, making a mental map of my old scars. In addition to being a pretentious person (which I've been embracing lately, but that's another article) I am a clumsy person. I've learned the hard way that, for me, active listening and vegetable chopping are mutually exclusive activities. If my old wounds were to reappear en masse, my knees, toes, fingers, shins, and elbows would become unrecognizable.

But anyway, I've been on WebMD all afternoon, looking for information on Emotional Scurvy, which I'm sure I've had since childhood, now that I know it's a thing.

And that segues nicely into the local news. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, we've had a rash of strange goings-on, with a city-wide crime wave and a rooftop break-in at C-O Central. With those, and a few other small hints, I started chewing on the hunch that I may have laid off an alter ego, inadvertently, when I took over the paper. I've been asking around, trying to be subtle, though I ran into some resistance in the early going. I dialed up Sadie Street, our plucky Pulitzer winner, to ask who on the paper's former staff might be described as "mild-mannered," but she made it rather clear that my call wasn't appreciated. "Torture me if you must," she said, "I'll never tell you anything!" Dramatic journalists, am I right?

Thankfully I thought to ask Ken Bad-Mittens, our old sports editor, if he could recall a member of the staff who kept his head down, maybe spoke in a soft voice, wore glasses, deferred to authority. "Oh, they're all like that," he told me. "Real betas. Chump city." I went to refill his coffee cup while he thought of particular names, and he handed me a short list of "super losers," precisely what I'd hoped for.

I shouldn't be too specific about what I found from there. Suffice it to say I made contact with the people on Ken's list. Two of them were only average, run of the mill dorks, but one was surprisingly ripped, in a way you might not notice at first glance. I met the individual at their apartment, where I observed a small hole in the ceiling, as if a punching bag had been attached, then ripped down on accident. They fell immediately into the trap I'd planned, by politely taking my coat, never noticing the sixty pounds of weight I'd concealed in the pockets. I let them know the jig was up.

"Well, well," the individual said. "Surprise, surprise. Came to kick sand in my eye, did you, Tycoon?" The way they said it, I could hear the capital T.

So, look. In the course of life I've done things I feel ashamed of. I try to step lightly, try to watch my elbows, but I'm still no stranger to that ice-water plunge that comes when I have to confront some element harm I've done. I try to acknowledge my faults when I find them, but it's a whole new depth of personal reassessment, to realize you've become a Bad Guy. The kind whose name gets whispered in the hero's montage, whose well-deserved downfall has a thirty-million dollar effects budget. It's a wholly new situation for me.

I didn't stay long at the former employee's apartment. It was rather obvious that I wasn't welcome, and their state of sobriety was less than total. Certain threats were made, which I hope won't be realized. I'll cross my fingers for the best, while knowing I may have done damage that can't be undone. Hero types, in my experience, aren't the quickest to forgive, and some people's good opinion, once lost, is lost forever. Still, I'll try again. I'll make another visit in the future, trusting that wounds are wont to heal. In the meantime, for good measure, I think I'll send a bouquet of oranges.