Synthetic Memories

I am of the Chemical Generation. In 1998 you could wake up and pour nearly luminous pink syrup onto frozen waffles. You could squirt blue and green ketchup all over your processed pork logs.

 At school I would gleefully plop down at lunchtime, tear open my hermetically sealed sustenance package, and squeeze room temperature meat-paste out of a tube onto mini-tortillas. 

*Purple-Nerds are part of a balanced diet.

At my pee-wee soccer games we would re-fuel with Sunny-Delight, a liquid so saturated with chemicals, that spilling it is akin to toxic dumping. 


During art class I drew camels that smelled like chocolate and licorice. 

I remember when Thomas was sent to the nurse's office after returning from a bathroom break looking like a bloody jowled  hyena, but smelling like a cherry limeade. After school I would watch shows wherein the contestants were doused in neon green sludge as it spewed out of a steel pipe like some sort of Soviet-era industrial accident. After which we all giggled and rolled around like noodles on the carpet. 

We used to play with electric ovens that smelted molten hot plastic into centipedes and scorpions. In almost unbearable anticipation, Peter and I would scrunch our little faces up to the vent and breath in the fumes as we re-wrote the book of Genesis with our creations. 

As a country we became so adept at microwavable insta-cuisine, that baking things would take less time to delicately nuke than they would to cool. 

And when all us Chemo-kids die of either Poptart cancer or chronic Gogurt Syndrome, don't worry, you're burial and embalming will be cheap, because inside you're already a chemical éclair.