They buried Bouldergrass today. The cause of death was listed as “health.”
Bouldergrass had begun his health crusade more than a decade ago when he moved from smog-bound Los Angeles to a rural community in scenic green Pennsylvania, gave up alcohol and a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit, and was immediately hospitalized for having too much oxygen in his body.
To burn off some of that oxygen, he joined two-thirds of America’s “beautiful people” on the jogging paths where he believed he was sweating out all the bad karma. In less than a year the karma left his body, which had been coexisting with leg cramps, fallen arches, several compressed disks, and a strange black mole that had begun to migrate to several parts of his body. His solution was to increase his consumption of coffee, since he had read that caffeine blocks pain receptors.
To make sure he didn’t get the pain of skin cancer, he slathered four pounds of No. 50 sunblock on his body every time he ran, and went to suntan parlors only twice a week to get that “healthy glow.” He stopped blocking when he learned that suntan parlors weren’t good for his health, and that the ingredients in the lotions could cause cancer. So, he wore a jogging suit that covered more skin than an Arab woman’s black chador with veil—and developed a severe case of heat exhaustion
To avoid heat exhaustion, he stripped back to his jogging shorts and muscle-shirt, and began eating a dozen carrots a day after he learned that Vitamin A not only helps the immune system but reduces the possibility of getting skin cancer. However, when his vision improved, he read the fine print that warned an overdose was probably responsible for his nausea, vomiting, headaches, and irritability. To control yelling at the plumber, he ate a pound of spinach, because he read that it decreases irritability, depression, and bullies kicking sand in his face at the beach.
To further his quest for health, he began lifting weights and playing racquetball six hours a day. Four groin pulls and seven back injuries later, he had just six percent body fat, and a revolving charge account at the office of his local orthopedist.
Depending upon what he read in the supermarket magazines, he either did or did not eat eggs for breakfast.
For a couple of years, lured by a multi-million dollar ad campaign and innumerable articles in the supermarket tabloids, Bouldergrass ate only oat bran muffins for breakfast and beta carotenes for lunch, until he found himself spending more time in the bathroom than at work. He eliminated the muffins entirely after reading an article that told him oatmeal, bran, and hood ornaments from Buick Roadsters were bad for his health.
To reduce high blood pressure from the stress of dieting, he took a diuretic. The diuretic depleted his body of potassium, so he increased his consumption of baked potatoes, raisins, bananas, tomato paste, and beans. It also assured he’d need to get a second job to build a second bathroom on the first floor.
He had read that a daily dose of grapefruit, which is rich in naringin, can lower cancer-causing enzymes, while also lowering the body’s cholesterol levels. To keep up his strength and energy, he ate steak, ribs, and hickory-smoked slabs of bacon, figuring the grapefruits would solve his problem—when he wasn’t using one of the three bathrooms in his house. Alas, his physician determined his cholesterol level was higher than the average rock star, so Bouldergrass started taken statins. That’s when he learned that because of some issue that only Ph.D. biochemists understand, he couldn’t mix grapefruits and statins. But, he was healthy.
He became even healthier when he started drinking red wine, which helps circulation and keeps skin from sagging.
At one of his AA meetings, he learned that cheddar cheese increases the body’s pH levels to reduce cavities, but also increases cholesterol levels, so he upped his statin dose—and felt very healthy.
Bouldergrass gave up milk when he learned that acid rain fell onto pastures and was eaten by cows. When he learned that industrial conglomerates had dumped everything from drinking water to radioactive waste into streams and rivers, he stopped eating fish. Then, he gave up pasta after reading about all the creepy crawlers who become fat from dough.
At the movies, he smuggled in packets of oleo to squeeze onto plain popcorn, until he was bombarded by news stories that revealed oleo was as bad as butter, and most theatrical popcorn was worse than an all-day diet of Texas Roadhouse Porterhouse, with a side order of deep-fried onion rings.
When he learned that coffee and chocolate were unhealthy, he gave up an addiction to getting high from caffeine and sugar, and was now forced to work 12-hour days without any stimulants other than the fear of what his children were doing while he was at work. Unfortunately, he soon had to give up decaffeinated coffee and sugarless candy with cyclamates since he had read a scientific report that both caused laboratory mice to develop an incurable yen to listen to music from the Grand Funk Railroad.
His dietary habits were now exemplary—at least according to what he had read in the magazines.
Left with a diet of selected pureed fruits and vegetables, he was lean and trim. Until he accidentally stumbled across a protest by an environmental group which complained that the use of pesticides on farm crops was a greater health hazard than the bugs the pesticides were supposed to kill. Even the city’s polluted water couldn’t clean off all the pesticides. That’s also when he stopped taking showers, and merely poured a gallon of distilled water over his head every morning.
For weeks, he survived on buckets of vitamins. Then, after reading an article that artificial vitamins shaped like the Flintstones caused dinosaur rot, he also gave them up.
The last time I saw Bouldergrass alive, he was in a hospital room, claiming to see visions of monster genetic tomatoes squishing their way toward him while mumbling something about high density lipoproteins. Tubes were sticking out of every opening in his emaciated body, as well as a couple of openings that hadn’t been there when he first checked in.
Shortly before he died, he pulled me near him, asked that I write his obit, and in a throaty whisper begged, “Make sure you tell them I died healthy.”