Fear and Lactose - by Douglas

I was someplace around Butte La Rose over the Atchafalaya Basin when the lactose began to take hold. I remember thinking something like, "I'm sure the newspaper would have mentioned if my stomach was the site of nuclear explosives testing today." It was my third straight morning making the 50-something-mile commute between Lafayette and Baton Rouge with a homemade ultra-grande' cafe' au lait. I had already unwittingly tempted fate twice and she was in no mood to give up the hat trick. Suddenly there was a terrible roar and my intestines turned to a fiery hell overrun with skittish bats scrambling for a way out. And the bats were not to be refused.

At that point I had been a fervent dairy consumer for nearly thirty years. Beginning my first day at whichever of my mother’s breasts was not occupied by my twin brother, I would be perfectly willing to wager that not a single day had passed that I had not ingested something that first saw daylight jetting from the nipple of my mother or a cow. All of that was about to change, although I didn't realize it as I waddled in full clench into the rest stop men's room. Until you have been the most disgusting thing in the men's room at a rest stop, you do not know humility.

Now, lactose intolerance is not something that you self-diagnose easily or readily. I would have just as soon assumed I was allergic to sunlight or my own saliva. I was therefore destined to fail to digest dairy products several more times before the reality dawned on me. Numb and disbelieving, I stood frozen and rapidly progressing through the stages of grief. I was up to bargaining when I realized my symptoms had proved to be so initially explosive due to the sheer volume of milk I drank. I learned that I could handle normal amounts of dairy with only extreme discomfort and enough gas to offend the senses of soapless gangrenous lepers. A price I will pay without a second thought. Turns out I love dairy far more than I care about whether my family can breathe or whether I want my walls to remain their current color.

Now I buy Lactaid dairy digestion supplements in bulk at Costco and pop them, as instructed, with the first bite of dairy. Or at least whenever I think about it. And when I don’t, it won’t take long to realize I forgot. My wife will say something like, “Oh man, that smells hot!” Or increasingly more frequently, “I swear on everything holy that I will sew your ass shut in your sleep and whistle tomorrow morning while I scrub chunks of you off the tray ceiling!” Some things are just worth the risk.