The Truth About 'Roid Rage

For the umpteenth Tuesday in a row, I missed "Bonds On Bonds" last night.
Only this time, I had a damn good reason (that is to say that I had an alternate excuse other than "If he ain't gonna talk about gettin' tail from women other than his wife, I'm not into his chemical dependency and emotional instability".
To put it another way: I couldn't watch the ultimate 'Roid Warrior because, ummmm ... I, myself, was 'roidin' on Tues. nite.

Seriously, I got my initiation by tumbling into the 'roid void for the first time -- and until you've experienced those mighty milligrams of magnificence zippin' through your bloodstream, it might be difficult to comprehend why exactly you're eating a bowl of Froot Loops, smokin' a Marlboro, wolfing down a Heineken and wearing an oversized foam-rubber No. 1 hand and giggling as you point that extended foam-rubber No. 1 finger at the TV and yelling, "No you DITT-INT! No you DITT-INT!" as a commercial for kitchen-cabinet refinishing is on the screen.

The rush isn't quite to the point to where you can actually hear colors and taste sounds, but it's damn close. Your once creaky middle-aged body is rejuvenated ... as if God Almighty himself ordered a nationwide recall and replaced your Cecil Fielder physique with a Prince Fielder model.
And, just like that, you're transformed into someone who, with little to no prodding, could be persuaded to grab a softball bat and find the nearest BALCO, errrr ... CVS Pharmacy and smash the front window (we call this "breaking"), walk inside (we call this "entering") and exit the store with armfuls of all things 'roid and 'roid-related.
We call this a textbook "smash n' grab."

How I reached this point was a blessing in disguise. While performing yardwork tasks the other day, I had a big-time run-in with some poison ivy. By the time a physician had examined me, he concluded that the welts, the red blotches and the oozing were the result of either an attack by a Portugese Man of War or a swarm of pissed-off scorpions, so he scribbled out a prescription for a cortico steroid.
Doc put me on the trolley to the prednisone.

From what Mrs. PF7 tells me, prednisone is prescribed to treat everything from asthma to Crohn's Disease to poison ivy to cervical or lumbar radiculopathy (which is exactly what I'm tellin' the Doc that I have when I need this script refilled).
With this new discovery, I'm no longer relying on playing this softball season with artificial assistance from syringes filled with Mometamax, Malaseb, OtiFoam and Otomax (each of them, a different type of ear medication for my SuperPup).
Now, with the uranium-enriched prednisone that I've been chopping up and sprinkling on my Cocoa Pebbles, this is going to be a softball season filled with a lot of six-run homers.

That's what the anti-inflammatory action does to your brain. It makes ya feel all spruced-up and nimble. Even if it isn't quite like when Brundle Fly was showing the earliest symptoms of Brundle Fly energy and mating stamina ("Be afraid ... be very afraid"), at the very least, I feel as though I can model myself after Bonds and get my hands all over three or four Kimberly Bells in one night and then come home to my wife and kids and play Daddy, like Barry does on his "Bare Cares" reality show which I never watch.

Perhaps a more appropriate way to illustrate the euphoria I'm experiencing is to envision that Wheaties commercial which you see from time to time ... y'know, the one where the setting is a slo-pitch softball game and the narration is provided by Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully as he offers his play-by-play of Kirk Gibson's walk-off homer in Game 1 of the '88 World Series.
You've seen it: That player from Joe's Paint drags himself off the bench, hobbles to the plate and digs in against the pitcher from Star Towing.
BAM! "Gimpy" from Joe's Paint launches that deep drive which clears the fence as Scully makes his historic call while Gimpy begins to peg-leg it around first base.
It makes ya proud to be an American.
It makes ya proud to be an American with such easy access to prednisone.

Pre-'roids, I WAS that pitcher from Star Towing, getting taken deep by some washout with a knee brace the size of a sofa cushion.
Now that I'm "higher than a kite in May," I'm the fence-bustin' slugger for Joe's Paint.
Feel my wrath, Star Towing.
Hop in your frickin' tow truck and drive back to Loserville.

Now, pardon me whilst I go outside and get myself all tangled up in more poison ivy. If I'm going to amp up the script on my 'roids, I've gotta at least look more like a junkie ...


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