Foiled
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Herby always has Churchill to fall back on, but I have only aluminum foil.  Therapists say I have an unhealthy bond with Reynolds Wrap, which is the leading foil, and they’ve been producing it since 1947. Says so right on the box when I buy my monthly supply at Stop & Shop. I keep foil on my head, below my Miami Dolphins’ baseball cap, which I wear in an inside out, backwards style. Truth is, I always shower and dress in the darkness of the bathroom. No one has ever seen me without the foil on, save for doctors in a yearly checkup. Such is the state of my currently odd life. 
Everyone’s got wounds, though, right?  After I shower in darkness with Dove soap, use Head & Shoulders, swipe Right Guard and wear clean boxers, I move forward. Tinfoil delivers me a state of comfort.
“How so?” Herby always asks, in an annoying tone. 
I’ve told the Brit the story numerous times, but he only cackles and rolls his eyes with a great smugness. The short answer is my great aunt once wore the same look. I visited her in a psychiatric facility when I was fourteen and she embraced me, saying, “You’re wonderful, and I want you to do anything you wish in life.” It was just like her to make me feel comfortable in the midst of her decline.
She wept as I embraced her and her foil pressed against my cheek and a shock ran from her to me. I was a jittery, neurotic lad, but still I felt something bizarre and inexplicable had occurred. I tried to break away from the foil after that, but no luck. I wore a thin piece in my cap through middle and high school, which kept things subdued. I was even set to take a popular girl to prom, a lovely artsy redhead named Shea. 
But she split to Philly a day before the prom, and I was thrown off kilter. My great aunt subsequently died and my foil habit burst like a clogged artery. I experienced my first semi-psychotic break and—voila—Reynolds Wrap spilled over my ears and shoulders like ever-expanding dreadlocks. From that moment on, everyone treated me like I was a sedated fool from Saturn, and I didn’t disappoint. 
You may wonder, why continue with the foil if it leads to such heartache? It sounds self-indulgent, I know, but it keeps the beasts at bay and keeps me grounded, as well. At times, though, all I want to do is rip it off, and sprint through a cavernous rainforest shouting, “I’m alive, morons, don’t you see I, too, am hungry as a panther?”
 * * *
Each August, a cohort of Yale-University-Docs-in-training appear at Courage to do their best with us for nine months before matriculating. This year, a shapely young woman named Rain works hard to get me to function without foil. I call her Kiwi - an MD from New Zealand. She’s spending one final academic year in New Haven before flying home to treat her fellow New Zealanders. Rain gets pumped up to help me relinquish the chrome crown, although I’m certain I’ll die wearing it. 
Herby continues filling the air with Churchill classics like, “It is no use saying ‘we are doing our best.’ You have to succeed in doing what is necessary.” The younger Brit teases me about foil, and I stay out of his path.