When I think back to the Saturday mornings of my youth, two things jump to mind immediately: vacuum cleaners and chocolate. Before you break out those old psychology books you never really looked at back in college, let me assure you this has nothing to do with any lingering "mind games" from my youth. Frankly, when it comes to mind games, I have always been a bench warmer. In fact, I still have slivers in my frontal lobe. No, my memories are grounded in reality...obviously, quite unlike most of my weather forecasts. I would wake up on Saturday mornings to the smell of chocolate chip cookies baking and the Hoover humming. I think it was a Hoover, the J. Edgar model. It was guaranteed to find every crumb, dust-bunny and Communist-sympathizer hiding out in your shag carpeting. At one point, my dad bought a very expensive vacuum cleaner, from a door-to-door salesman, with every imaginable attachment. Put together properly, the machine could actually clean the surface of the moon. My dad was a little odd about money. He bought the best vacuum...the most expensive, most complete encyclopedia set...the highest quality carving knives. All from guys that knocked on the door, but, just try to get him to pry open his wallet for a new bike or video PONG or a color TV! Thinking back, I really should have put on a fake nose and moustache and rang the doorbell.

Anyway, in addition to sound of cleaning, the smell of chocolate chip cookies (or chocolate cake or brownies) would often greet me first thing on a Saturday morning. It was a sweet, gentle way to start the day. Well, last night, an odor, once again, woke me up. It wasn't "sweet and gentle." This smell stormed out of the kitchen, marched up the stairs, blew open the bedroom door and proceeded to slap me around the room. My nostrils were screaming "UNCLE" so loudly I practically fell out of bed. What was that aroma? My first thought was that maybe one of the kids had made something in the kitchen and left it on the stove. So, I rambled down the stairs...thinking I may actually be saving lives. Well, it turned out that the whole family was still awake. Watching a movie...having snacks. Clearly, they have parties as soon as they hear me snoring. It turned out that the smell was from some sort of vegetable soup my wife was whipping up. She had basically cleaned everything out of the fridge, tossed in a bunch of spices and boiled it up. Now, I'm sure it will taste good and, with all the vegetables, be very nutritious. But, it really had a pungent punch! Being from Wisconsin, I grew up believing that cheese curds were actually little orange veggies and, frankly, when it came to hot foods, just watching Charo on The Dean Martin Show was about as spicy as we could stand. So, when my nasal cavity grabbed me by the throat...not an easy thing to have happen, frankly...and shook me out of my tropical torpor, it was rather unsettling.

The only thing worse than being awakened by this overpowering assault on my schnoz, were the looks of disdain directed at me from my loving family. It was clear that they consider the late evening their break from my presence. "It's just soup. Go back to bed, please!" they said, in unison. I don't think I'll be having any of this gumbo today but I will be having nasal nightmares for some time to come. And, the next time someone yells "Soup's on!" I'll probably burst into tears, grab my blankey and head for the corner of our basement.