CHEETOS

November 08, 2006

I wrote “Cheetos” on a night when the absurdity of the job finally boiled over into something that wasn’t just funny—it was necessary. It had been one of those days where I could have either laughed or scream, and I didn’t have the energy to scream anymore.

We’d run something like 14 calls in 10 hours, the kind of relentless pace where my knees hurt, my brain was mush, and my patience was a memory. Most of it was nonsense—narcotics seekers, repeat flyers, the usual revolving door of humanity in crisis or in need of a sandwich. But the Cheetos call… that was different.

It was ridiculous. A kid, Cheetos in his mouth, choking—not in a real, blue-lips Heimlich way—but in the “my mom freaked out and called 911 before wiping his face” kind of way. And I remember standing there, in someone’s living room at 11:00 p.m., staring down a bright orange cheese-dusted toddler who was now crying because we had scared him more than the Cheetos ever could.

And I snapped—not in anger, but in that internal, quiet, medic kind of way. I thought: This can’t be real. This can’t be the reason I missed dinner, again.

So I wrote about it. Not to make fun of the mom. But because I needed a pressure valve. I needed to bottle up the frustration and shake it with a little humor until it fizzed into something I could carry. That blog was never just stories. It was survival. A way to keep my sanity in a job that constantly asked for more than I had left to give.

The humor was real. But underneath it, “Cheetos” was me asking the bigger question—How do I keep showing up when so much of the job feels pointless, or absurd, or like a waste of the skills I worked so damn hard to earn?

Answer: I write. You laugh. You pass the damn Cheetos.