In an effort to improve my health, I have recently begun drinking a brand of “mushroom coffee.” Now before you turn your nose up at the idea, it actually tastes pretty good. It tastes just like any other coffee, which means if it has enough zero sugar vanilla Coffeemate, it’s actually pretty good.
I laughed a couple of mornings ago as I was mixing my mushroom coffee and I was reminded of a movie my dad and I watched one rainy Saturday afternoon. He and I had done our “Saturday morning chores” and it was permissible to take an extended break at lunchtime, especially since the weather was beginning to look a bit ominous for any outdoor activities. I often enjoyed those ominous weather days, unless I had something more fun than yard work planned. My dad and I had watched Bug Bunny and Road Runner (my dad was a fan of Road Runner cartoons, as was I) and it was time for the usual Saturday afternoon movie on channel six. Channel six was the one channel we could pick up on our televisions. Often, those Saturday afternoon movies were classic monster movies. Many times, these were one of those great, Japanese, English-dubbed Godzilla vs. Somebody movies. I don’t remember the title of the movie on this particular Saturday afternoon, but I remember the premise of the movie was a group of people were stranded on this island and all they had to eat were these mushrooms. Now, these particular mushrooms had a rather odd and horrific side effect. After you ate them, you turned into a zombie-type monster person with huge warts all over your face. The entire thing was so crazy that my dad and I laughed all the way through the movie. For years, it became a running inside joke for the two of us. “Be careful eating those mushrooms, they’ll make you grow warts,” was a common word of caution among us. My mom would just roll her eyes, as she often did when my dad and I would share our inside jokes. I do miss those Saturday afternoons and will always cherish those memories.