My Chemical Romance

"I was at Maxwell's last night for no more than three hours, and it made me terribly sick."
"What’s Maxwell's?" JA asks.
"Oh," I say, "It's a rock and roll club in Jersey."
"Thank you for assuming that I'm hip."
I laugh. "I’ve become so allergic to cigarette smoke. I woke up this morning coughing blood, and I've got a horrible headache now."
"You must have some insect genes."

This is not an atypical JA response. He's sometimes very good at baffling. I wait for him to continue.

"You know," he continues, "because tobacco plants give off a chemical which kills the insects that might eat them."
"Oh," I nod.
JA reads my confusion and turns to Elizabeth, "And he's pretty tall."
Again, I'm baffled, but Elizabeth is right on cue and agrees: "Yes, like a praying mantis."
"Like a praying mantis?" I wonder.
"Oh," JA goes on, "but we wouldn't want him to be a praying mantis, because you know what happens to the male praying mantis."
Together, they laugh.

I rub my head, "Thanks guys, but we don't have to worry about that."

Stephen Mejias's picture

You guys are weird.

John Atkinson's picture

It's always puzzled me why so many substances that plants produce for their own purposes turn out to have entirely different effects on humans. The tobacco plant produces nicotine as an insecticide, and it turns out to be psychoactive. Similary, the hemp plant produces a gummy resin to shield itself from the rays of sun, and lo, we have marijuana. The biggest mystery, however, is why the soybean produces a chemical almost identical to estrogen?

social site's picture
