Grandpa was crazy, waking up at five o'clock every morning just to go jogging. At a time when the planet had barely summoned the energy to turn itself around and allow the sun to illuminate the mountaintops out west, this ursine old man had already put on his tan velour suit to do some deep knee bends on the front porch.
He always ran the same route, even in the burgeoning heat of a midsummer morning: a circuitous six-and-a-half mile trip starting at his sprawling, flat-roofed, four-bedroom home all the way to the enormous Golden Lasso Buffet where a two-story cowgirl proclaimed via neon speech bubble that inside were Las Vegas's "sauciest ribs." Upon reaching the entrance of the restaurant's empty parking lot, Grandpa would turn around and jog all the way back without a break or a breather anyplace along the way. Then finally, barely winded, he bolted through the front door, accompanying the creak of the hinges with a baritone growl of his own, and headed straight into the kitchen to run a peculiar combination of fruits and vegetables through his juicer.
This fondness for juicing developed almost overnight. His newest juicer, the third one he had purchased in as many months, was a massive stainless steel industrial model with the pulverizing power of a wood chipper. It whined like a jet engine as it liquefied the flesh of any unsuspecting produce forced down its feeding chute.
Grandpa had seen the appliance on television. Not on some thirty-second spot sandwiched between acts of a courtroom drama, but featured in an entire half-hour-long production extolling the virtues of the wondrous contraption and the therapeutic powers of the fluids secreted forthwith.
These juicer shows fascinated him. It didn't matter which juicer was being demonstrated, or if he had already seen it, or already owned it, Grandpa still sat there, fixated on the screen. Of course to most people, it's obvious that thirty minutes is an inordinate amount of airtime to dedicate to an invention which really has only one purpose, but Grandpa thought it was real entertainment—notwithstanding the fact that each episode consisted of nothing more than a hundred or so close-up shots of questionably talented actors sipping a viscous gray-green beverage before squeezing out a smile. The lack of content didn’t seem odd to Grandpa at all. He leaned close as the frantic announcer shouted the toll-free number that had to be dialed now (now!) before the limited supply of juicers disappeared. And like a boy watching his favorite cartoon, this sixty-something-year-old grandfather of one would sit enraptured until the false urgency coerced him to pick up the phone before the show was over.
The last juicer arrived only a week after the one he had ordered earlier.
“But, Dad, you have two of these things already,” his daughter said.
He adjusted his thick-lensed glasses and stared for a moment at the package, a bright green box marked Juice Monster.
“Karen, sweetheart, this one's a good one,” he said. “It's the only one I'll need.”
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