Don't bathe me in your fantasy.

Don't bathe me in your fantasy.

It's the non-swimming advertising agency people who have this brainstorm about swimming and so they cast the part, looking for everything in an actor except the ability to swim.

So why am I so upset over this. I mean, it's just another mediocre crop of television commercials. At least they don't portray the men as idiots, unlike 90 percent of the other commercials. Or at least they don't portray the women as slim, smart, upwardly mobile, corporate types with impeccable manners, perfect mothers, reserve, taste and diplomacy. Yea, I remember a woman like that once. The Mona Lisa.

So why am I so upset over this. I mean, it's just another lesson we are teaching ourselves. A lesson in fantasy. We can be healthy people if we swim incorrectly, we can be a young, pretty, smart woman if we want to be. We are doomed to be stupid men, just smart enough to move our feet out of the way when they're propped on the coffee table so we can have a clear line of sight to the TV.

So why am I so upset over this. Well here's why. Because I'm trying to tell the truth in the way I live, and against the backdrop of current reality, telling the truth to the world is more painful than arthritis.

I'm trying to do my best with some pretty clunky body parts, and the rest of the world, and sometimes me, just can't fathom why I'm not the beautiful woman, or at least the dim-bulb of a man. I'm just trying to get along in the face of some pretty serious reality while the rest of the world can't understand why I don't choose fantasy.

It's because I can't. The closest I come to fantasy is when my NSAID is working and I can take a long deep breath with it being interrupted by pain.

So that's why I'm upset. It's reality anger that I can usually deal with. I see the illogic of the world around me, and the seriousness of my situation, and I accept today's reality with some anger. Tomorrow's reality might be different, and I might have less anger then. Or maybe more.

The only part of this drama I regret is that the agency creative types who cast those commercials will be replaced with another nest of shallow fantasizers just about the time they figure out how wrong they are.

You don't think so?? Remember low-fat food? How many of us lost weight eating the low fat cookies and cake that we learned about on TV commercials? I don't see any hands going up.

Oh yea, Santa isn't a fantasy. He's real. Leave him an NSAID tonight--and some food to take it with.