It’s about suffering and redemption.
Infidelity and infertility.
Betrayal and heartbreak.

It’s about the choices people make when at their most vulnerable.
Their most courageous.
Their most inebriated.

But mostly, it’s about peanut butter.

The players are the usual suspects. The hero. The villain. The doting wife. The overbearing mother. The comic relief sidekick. And the lovable dog who inevitably gets hit by a car or otherwise injured and yet miraculously survives in the end.

Nothing changes. There’s no character arc. No one learns anything.  They all exist in a cocoon of consumer excess and designer drugs and reality television. So don’t expect growth and revelations. These are, after all, mostly men.

So why would anyone care about what happens to these people? That’s simple…

Because of the peanut butter.

other than being allowed to take an occasional pine-sol bath, i don’t get invited into the house very often.  this probably has something to do with the fact that the last time i sat down with my parents for dinner, one of the stitches on my face popped and a piece of rotting tissue fell into my mother’s homemade gazpacho.

for the most part, mom and mad have been great – though my mom still lets out an occasional scream and runs away when i try to give her a hug.  and dad keeps dropping not-so-subtle hints about the stench of my rotting flesh and wondering aloud if i wouldn’t be happier in a zombie shelter. 

so i spend most of my time sitting in the wine cellar on my mattress, drinking wine and watching cable on the 32-inch television my parents had installed.  it could have been worse.  i could have ended up imprisoned in a zombie zoo or exploited on a reality television show.  i’ve heard “zombie nanny” is the worst, though apparently “zombie survivor” runs a close second.

sometimes i feel guilty about what i’ve put my parents through, but it’s not like i reanimated on purpose. still, i appreciate what they’ve done for me.  they could have left me at the spca.  i guess that just proves that you never stop being a parent, even after your son comes back from the dead.