Lance the human Hot Pocket

(originally posted 2/2/2020)

For anyone who has ever had an MRI this might be old news but for those who have never had the pleasure of being slid into a tube and asked to remain motionless for an hour I feel like some sort of analogy is in order… so here it is; now I know how a Hot Pocket feels.

You might think that this would have been a momentary feeling but it wasn’t. For an hour I felt like a Hot Pocket.

Of course thirty years ago I would have said I felt like a Pop Tart being slid into a toaster but with the advances in microwave technology I feel that the Hot Pocket analogy is even more spot on. I will forgo the obvious questions surrounding what flavor of Pop Tart I would have been, just like I’ll avoid the question of what Hot Pocket meat would be lurking inside me. Those types of inquiries threaten to derail even the most stuffy story.

If despite this warning you felt the urge to shout out “Strawberry!” or “Brown Sugar Cinnamon!” I’ll ask you to try and restrain yourself moving forward.

If you feel the urge to repeat the words “stuffy story” in your head a few times I completely understand.

So I’m in the tube and with everything that I am, Enriched Flour (wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Reduced Fat Mozzarella Cheese (pasteurized Part Skim Milk, Nonfat Milk, Modified Food Starch, Cultures, Salt, Vitamin A Palmitate, Enzymes), Pepperoni (pork, Beef, Salt, Water, Dextrose, Spices, Lactic Acid Starter Culture, Oleoresin Of Paprika, Garlic Powder, Sodium Nitrite, Bha, Bht, Citric Acid), Tomato Paste, Palm Oil, Margarine (palm Oil, Water, Soybean Oil, Sugar, Mono & Diglycerides, Soybean Lecithin, Potassium Sorbate And Citric Acid [preservatives], Annatto And Turmeric Color, Vitamin A Palmitate), Whey, Soybean Oil, Fractionated Palm Oil, Modified Food Starch, Yeast, Dough Conditioner Blend (calcium Sulfate, Salt, L-cysteine Hydrochloride, Garlic Powder, Tricalcium Phosphate, Enzymes), Salt, Dried Garlic, Sugar, Spices, Dried Onions, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Maltodextrin, Potassium Chloride, Citric Acid, Soy Flour, and Egg Whites, I’m wondering to myself “Will I be delicious?”

It was a long hour, laying still and embracing my Hot Pocketness.

Eventually I feel the little tray I’m laying on begin to move and I realize that I’m leaving the safety of the MRI machine. My stomach tightens. What I’ve waited for my whole life is about to happen. I was literally made for this moment. Is it fear or exhilaration I feel? About to be consumed. Transformed. I envision an enormous creature waiting for me to emerge and so it can bite off my feet. I realize that I would no longer feel them as it chewed but I would still be fully aware of my fillings beginning to squirt out of my legs.

Am I delicious?

In the end it doesn’t really matter if I’m a Pop Tart, Hot Pocket or human, life is finite. Everything we do is just a story and every story builds up to a conclusion. The best we can hope for is that we enjoy the ride and that story takes some interesting twists and turns before we stop being one thing and become another.

Did I find love?

Did I find meaning?

Was I delicious?