Granny gear on Sunday

I am in granny gear today.

Technically, "granny gear" is an extremely low gear that is installed in big trucks. In granny gear, you can only go two or three miles an hour, but granny gear will get the truck to the top of the hill with a heavy load.

Granny gear will also get you from LAX to JFK in a middle seat between 300-pound pussel-gutted stink bombs and babies screaming fore, aft, and amidships. Granny gear will get you through this presidential campaign. Granny gear will get you through a colonoscopy.

Yes, today, my granny gear is a colonoscopy, which I am having tomorrow at 2 p.m. LIFE ALERT! NEVER SCHEDULE A COLONOSCOPY FOR A MONDAY AFTERNOON! Write this down and tape it to your forehead until needed.

God, I'm hungry. It never occurred to me that, by scheduling for a Monday afternoon, I was destroying a Sunday. Today, Sunday, I am forbidden to eat anything, or to drink alcohol. What are Sundays for? In the refrigerator is a gallon jug of solution that I am to start drinking at 5 this afternoon. Apparently it tastes so bad that the pharmacist said to refrigerate it ("It doesn't taste as bad cold") and pointed also to a little bag of lemon flavoring, taped to the jug, that would help.

Starting at 5, I am to drink eight ounces of this solution every 10 minutes until three-quarters of the jug is consumed. Very soon after I start, my body will produce results, and continue producing them for two hours until, the instructions say, "the liquid will be clear." Hey, don't go "EWWWW" to me! I'm the one sitting here, and I'm sure as hell not watching Sunday Night Football.

Sorry. A man turns cranky, sitting in the bathroom deep into a Sunday night, his life in granny gear moving forward at two miles an hour. Tomorrow morning, starting at 6 a.m., I am to consume the rest of the jug, and produce the rest of the results. I will be in granny gear all morning, then at 1 we will leave for the appointment. By 3, it will all be over. Karen will drive me home, and it might look like me in the seat. But behind my closed eyes, I'll be flying first-class.

Richard Gere gear. And at home in the refrigerator: a pint of Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia, and a bottle of champagne. No matter how bad things get, there is always compensation.