Perched in my rocking chair, the vestiges of a once adventurous youth now nothing more than the echo of a faint longing, I felt the unyielding rapture of anticipation tingling in my finger wrinkles. Held captive within my grasp was a curiously named concoction – Millennial Milled Marvel, they christened it, huh? The name left a gnawing bemusement in my withered brain, akin to my great-grandson's absurd obsession with a digital fowl-flinging pastime.
This wasn't my maiden voyage across the vast, cannabidiol-laden seas. Remember, dear readers, I was a CBD finesser at the prime age of 81 – I was "groovy", as they say. Seeking another reprieve from the hellish grip of my serratus posterior inferior, I downed the dainty tincture with a twinkle in my eye and a hope in my heart. Little did I know that I was setting sail for a whirlwind journey, armed only with my trusty readers and a diabolical jar of cherries.
Millennial Milled Marvel, it turned out, borrowed its moniker from the infernal mechanism of its creation – a mill, no less. By grinding hemp into a fine powder akin to a desert’s swirling sand, they fancied themselves pioneers of a new CBD era or some such. That’s all fine and good, but what really made my arthritic knuckles clench was my discovery that this magical tincture was tested on a dapper chap called Pinniped – a Californian Sea Lion. Why, in my considerable years, I've encountered many a thing, but a non-vegan, sea-lion-tested millennial marvel – that's right new!
Well, I'm about as vegan as a hawk with a rabbit fetish, but this struck me as ethically Fifth Amendment, or was it the Eighth? I've never been good with my amendments… But I digress! The stakes are high; I had already ingested the Sea Lion-approved, Millennial Milled Marvel.
The sensations began to wash over me like a wave breaching a lonesome sandbar. I could feel it – an orchestral sonata for pain, multiplying in minute degrees, tiptoeing its way up my old vertebral column, setting every nerve ablaze. My serratus was no clamorous general barking orders from the frontlines, but a deranged and treacherous magician, conjuring mysterious pains in all its whimsical delight.
It was an ambush! I was cornered in my own body, betrayed by my trusted CBD tincture. I imagined the countless seals of California, incorporated into this bizarre battalion, flapping their fore-flippers and laughing in Sea Lion, a script even Dr. Doolittle would fail to decipher.
Hours stretched into days, or at the very least, a mild melodramatic moment in the grand operetta that is my life. My son found me later, sprawled across the Persian rug, locking horns with the phantom armada of carnivorous sea lions in my mind, a jar of cherries nestled in the crook of my arm like a trusted sidearm.
In the cold light of day, I can offer one piece of wisdom: Sure, Millennial Milled Marvel packs a punch as potent as a sea lion's flipper, but smoky back rooms filled with milling machines and haunting, laughing seals are as far as my old, milled, marveled self wants to go. Godspeed, dear readers, and remember – always check for sea lions!