Someone needs to isolate human adrenaline, pour it into fancy little bottles and sell it over the counter. They could call it “A” and give it a nifty font. I’m thinking Honey Script.
Get some sexy celebrity to promote the stuff and market it like those 5-hour Energy guys, only better. I have a whole commercial planned in my head. Marketing executives, call me.
I bring you this can’t-fail sales pitch today because over the past week, my adrenaline tank has been on E. It’s particularly unfortunate because a week before, I had so much of the stuff sloshing around, I think I was actively combustible.
You know how you smell that sweet scent of skunk on warm spring nights? Yeah, that’s me. I apologize for ruining your dinner party.
Adrenaline makes me nuts. During the recent spate of fires, it had me flying around like a photon at all hours. Eleven o’clock fire downtown? No problem. At the frantic sound of the firefighters reporting a condition-red blaze, adrenaline shoots up like lava. When it happens, I sacrifice reason for energy — I can only think in tiny packets, planning ahead only as much as necessary to get me out the door and to where I’m needed.
This is why you often see me at the scene of spot news dressed in odd combinations. Cargo shorts with pink long johns underneath. Slipper on one foot, boot on the other. If I arrive downtown in a lacy bra and panties some night, you have to give me a pass because that’s adrenaline at work.
Probably it’s adrenaline at work.
A blast of adrenaline will keep you up all night. Firefighters know it and so do cops. Even after the work is done, molten “A” keeps coursing through your veins and you continue to whir like a Tasmanian devil. It’s 3 in the morning, but whoa! Those floors need a mopping. The sun is coming up and the birds are chirping, but look at this! That ceiling could use an extra coat of paint.
And this luscious chemical is not quick to leave. The day after a big fire, a shooting or an alien invasion, adrenaline wakes me up in the morning. My eyes fly open and I bounce out of bed as if on a spring. I hit the ground running and bounce through my day, a monster of energy leaping from one chore to the next like a coked-up flea. There isn’t enough work in the world to expend my new supply of “A.” Give me a hoe, somebody, I’m going to dig a canal!
Alas, when adrenaline finally departs, there is a hangover of sorts. You feel flat and empty, a deflated balloon two days after the party. You need heavy equipment to get you out of bed in the morning, and suddenly, even small tasks seem huge. You have to get someone else to scratch your itches because you’re just too tired to do it on your own.
What you need is a fresh splash of adrenaline, but what are you going to do? You can’t just head over to Axis and buy a bottle. There are no filling stations where you can plug a nozzle into one of seven orifices (go ahead and count) and top off your tank. Adrenaline will not be provided until there is some action that calls for it.
Sounds of crickets chirping. At the back of the room, some old man clears his throat.
In the week that followed the arson spree, an eerie calm descended on Lewiston. At night, I would doze by the scanner, waiting for THE BIG ONE to call me out. A brawl in Kennedy Park, perhaps. A gunfight, a cockfight or, hell, even just a particularly egregious jaywalking would do it. But no. Every time the scanner squawked, it was the antithesis of action.
“All units, be advised. We’ve got a report of butterflies flitting majestically over a verdant meadow.”
“Roger that, dispatch. I’ll just clear this prancing unicorn and head over there to sing songs of peace and love.”
I’m not saying I want bad things to happen, mind you, I just need a fix. I could try running from one corner of the city to the other, but every time I do that, dogs chase me. And anyway, you can’t trick your body into producing the stuff; it knows what’s real and what is not. If adrenaline is not required, it will give you something stupid, like estrogen or tryptophan or yawnizone.
And so, here I sit, pecking out this column one letter at a time because I’m too tired to reach for the home keys. I’ve been working on it for nine hours, for God’s sake, sleeping between sentences.
I need action. I need adrenaline.
I need to get that Honey Script font downloaded to my computer because, wow. It really is nifty.
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