Dora was not exactly sure when she first noticed the uptick in unsealed envelopes arriving at her home. Maybe it was around the holidays when an unusual flurry of seasonal ads dropped through her mail slot. There on the worn linoleum she would stoop to pick up the loose assortment of insurance premiums, skin care samples, and an insert from a local grocery. It seemed there was always an endless trail of junk mail and lately, envelopes that had never been sealed. Unless it was the birthday card with fifty dollars in it from her aunt in Minnesota, the mail pile waiting for her was just another reminder of the drab life she led at a retail job that had long since run its course.
Still and all, today’s conversation with her co-workers had been an interesting ripple for Dora in a life of little variation. It started in the Trendy-Mart break room when their stodgy boss, Mr. Clamendorf marched through the door and did what he always did every other Friday – drop some change in the vending machine for a Diet Coke and throw their weekly checks across the lunch table with a trite warning to not spend it all in one place.
His arrival brought an abrupt end to the lunch gossip, as Dora and her coworkers, Trudy and Bertha, stared across the table at the stark white envelopes holding their checks. For these three, it was money that was already spoken for before it hit the bank.
Sitting at the wobbly fold-out table, only the oscillating fan made the atmosphere in the break room tolerable. All three were thinking the same thing as they unfolded their pay stubs – this day couldn’t be over soon enough.
“It’s bad enough they tax you on everything but the kitchen sink…” the older Trudy snapped. “Oh, and look, aren’t I special, they did it to me again. Every flippin’ week,” she moaned, “This gets soooo old.”
“What happened? The other two asked, looking up.
“They forgot my overtime… again,” Trudy snarled. “Now, I gotta walk all the way over to HR and have them write me another check for my overtime. It happens every paycheck. They know I worked the overtime – they know it, but they think that they can get away with it. The lady in there, you know, the one with the frizzled hair?”
“You talkin’ about fried Frieda?”
“Yea, that one,” said Trudy. “She always says, ‘Oh, did I forget your overtime again? I’m so sorry.’”
Dora tossed her check back across the table. “Look at this,” she said pointing at it, “they don’t even have the decency to seal the envelope. I mean, c’mon, have a little respect for our privacy. Close it up for crying out loud and seal it.”
“Right?” said Bertha, working on a bag of Doritos, “I think they leave the envelopes open on purpose. C’mon people, it’s not rocket science.”
“Respect, right?” added Trudy. I don’t want anyone looking at my check. Lick the envelope and close it up. Good Loooord!” added Trudy.
“Maybe they don’t want the calories from the seal. I heard there’s two to four calories on the seal of every envelope,” said Bertha.
“C’mon, really?” said Dora. “Two calories? You kidding me?”
“Right, like, who’s going to care about a couple of calories from licking an envelope?!” Trudy burst out. “I hate even touching the seal, like, it’s gross. I don’t want to touch where someone licked something, c’mon! My envelope, my space, y’know? Anyway, you can go to jail for foolin’ around with other people’s mail like that. You know my friend, Daphine? She called the police when a neighbor kept looking at her mail. She told the police if the neighbor touched her mail again, she was going federalo, like the FBI.
Bertha, who had been eating with her mouth open, said, “I don’t know about Daphine, but when I get an unopened letter, I like to lick them, seal ‘em, then reopen ’em again.”
Dora couldn’t believe her ears. “No, you don’t, c’mon!”
“Shut the back door!” Trudy wailed.
“Ohhh, yes I do! What if some handsome actor had licked that envelope that I resealed? It’s like kissing them in person. That’s the way I look at it – a chance for romance.”
“That’s crazy,” Trudy added, “and if I were you, I wouldn’t be tellin’ anyone that.”
“You are disgusting,” Dora piped in, “Seriously? You re-lick them? You certainly don’t need the calories.”
Bertha stood up and struck a sexy pose. “Excuse me? Look at this figure, will ya’? Who could resist this? When I get those unsealed envelopes in the mail, makes my day, like a sign from God – true love and new beginnings.”
Bertha taunted them by throwing her head back and pouring the rest of the Doritos down her throat. Shock statements were her go-to method for getting attention, but re-licking envelopes, even for her, was a bit over the top.
“Did you just say, true love? True love my fanny,” Trudy said. “Licking old envelopes is more like true disease.”
She turned to clock back in, and while Bertha followed, Dora was thinking of the unsealed mail waiting at home just inside her apartment door. She wanted to tell them about the increase in unsealed letters she’d been getting but didn’t want to stir the pot.
Yet, by the time Dora got off work and slid into the front seat of her beat-up Corolla, the envelope conversation had stood out as the highlight of her day, and as she merged onto the I-247 that curled around the city, Dora began to question a life where re-licking already licked envelopes took top billing. Seriously, she thought…what kind of demented person would even think about that kind of thing? Talking about it seemed crass, undignified, like talking about cutting toenails or clipping nose hairs.
She leaned over to turn on the radio, for distraction more than anything, catching the end of an interview on PNR, Progressive Nebraska Radio. A scientist with her doctorate in the cutting-edge field of Sustenance Science, Professor Adcock, was speaking about the finer points of her best-selling book titled Hard to Swallow.
“… yes,” she spoke excitedly, “and what people in our country don’t understand is that we actually ingest all kinds of absurd things that add up to quite a few calories – without even knowing it.”
“So,” the interviewer interrupted, “let me get this right, Professor Adcock. You are talking about things we don’t eat or consume that add to our caloric intake? How can that be?”
“Yes, I am. You have to understand that the human species was designed for many ways to acquire energy. Eating, or as we like to call it, sustenance renewal, can come in many forms. We are exposed to these sources all the time, but we don’t think of them as part of our regular diet, because we don’t actually chew and swallow them.
“So, in your research, what odd things did you find that we take in? Can you give me an example?
Dora reached over to turn up the volume as a semi-truck suddenly roared past.
Well, let me first explain that these calories are not from the usual places. They sneak into our system from sources that aren’t considered food. We sustenance scientists call these sources IBS’s, or Ignorant-Based Sources.
“So, these IBS’s, what are some of them?” The interviewer asked. “Like right now I’m imagining eating an ignorant pizza with extra ignorant cheese.”
“No, no. We don’t know we are consuming them. It’s not like that at all. Take for instance a bee stings. The average American is stung once every two years, totaling 9 calories of venom each sting. Red ants, 3 calories, a rattlesnake, of course, quite a bit higher. In one of our field studies a research volunteer allowed herself to be stung by a swarm of deer flies. We calculated the resultant caloric intake, the IBS, to be somewhere between twenty and twenty-three calories, equivalent to one or two M and M’s.”
“Oh, uh, wow, deer flies,” the PNR interviewer said.
“So, you see, it starts to add up. A person goes out on what they think is a peaceful nature walk, gets bit a couple of times by a honeybee or insect of some sort. At night, they brush their teeth but forget to rinse properly and inadvertently swallow the backwash, which adds more calories, then hits the sleeping bag with virtually a full stomach. Their ignorant-based score skyrockets, and there you go.”
“They might as well have eaten the whole bag of M and M’s,” added the interviewer.
“Exactly. And in this country, our average IBS score is almost ten times that of any other free society,” added Professor Adcock. “Day after day we allow ourselves to take in calories that we are completely ignorant of, and that’s only the beginning. Of course, I give many more examples in my book, An Unremarkable Diet: The Hard to Swallow Truth of IBS:
Listening to the interview, Dora could hardly believe what she was hearing. Apparently, her friend Bertha’s caloric intake from re-licking envelopes fell right in line with the national average of over-the-top IBS scores. She was literally licking herself to an early death. In addition, Dora was convinced her own Ignorant Score was hitting the threshold of what was unhealthy. Come to think of it, she remembered a time in her childhood when an infestation of bedbugs in her home was mysteriously followed by weight gain. As she gripped the steering wheel, her palms began to get sweaty as a dietary epiphany came over her. It may have been rush-hour on the I-247, but Dora had to get control of her ignorant calories, and fast! She certainly didn’t want to be headed towards an early grave and buried in a grand piano like that enormous man in Ripples Believe It or Not.
In addition, a moral dilemma was on her hands. Should she tell Bertha and Trudy about this landmark research for dieting or keep it to herself? A pound is a pound, she thought, and if the IBS trend could be reversed, it could mean the start of a brand new, ignorant-free life, one that would include an inspiring diet with life-changing weight loss. Still, there was a part of her that desperately wanted to hold on to her secret so she could waltz into the break room knowing she would always be one or two calories ahead of her friends.
She pulled into her driveway and entered her apartment. There on the floor, sticking out like a sore thumb, was another unsealed envelope. Dora felt her life was on the threshold of change. A decision had to be made, and she could think of only one person who could help.
“Professor Adcock,” she said aloud.
She pitched her car keys in the bowl on the foyer table and went straight to her kitchen. Laptop in hand, she sat down to email the doctor, hoping to high heaven the scientist would take her question over the air on the next episode of Progressive Nebraska Radio. It was a long shot yes, but the threat of constantly ingesting ignorant, hidden calories had become more than just a break-room conversation with Trudy and Bertha – it had become Dora’s quest to get her life under control.
A bee sting here, some backwash there…perhaps Dr. Adcock would hear Dora’s survival cry for help and help her begin her new path towards wellness and an ignorance-free life. You’ll find out in Episode 2 of The Unremarkable Diet of Dora Hubbard.