Lost Journal: Friend’s Odd Gift Delivers Cleansing Humor

Journal entry: June 30, 2006 (age 37)

Nothing brightens up a day like receiving an unexpected package. This afternoon, as I turned the just-arrived Fed Ex shipment over and over in my hands, I thought of all the things it could be. Perhaps a friend was sending me the first season of Lost on DVD as a belated birthday gift. Or maybe my in-laws had decided that Amanda and I deserve his-and-her monogrammed iPod shammies.

Excitedly, I sat down at our kitchen table and opened the package with a steak knife. As I cleared away the shipping peanuts, the first words I saw written on the contents were “5-Day Detox.” Below that and in a much larger, bolder font, was the word “BOWEL.” Further inspection led to a medicine bottle labeled “Intestinal Formula #1” and an even larger bottle labeled, creatively enough, “Intestinal Formula #2.” There was also a catalog, a book, and a motivational audio tape.

As I thought to myself, “It’s going to take a lot more than an audio tape to motivate me to do this,” I checked the address label again. “To: Timothy Mollen.” So this was indeed intended for me. But who in the world would send me a kit to “cleanse, detoxify and regulate my colon?” The very thought of someone thinking about my colon was unsettling. With friends like that, who needs enemas?

Then I recalled a phone conversation I had a few months ago with Julia Dellapenta, a friend from my high school days. Her married name is Julia Curiel, and she now lives in California. We keep in touch with occasional e-mails or phone calls. During that particular call, she described two things that had changed her life. One was a Tony Robbins motivational seminar, and the other was an intestinal purge. I asked if the two events were related, since Robbins’ mantra of “Awaken the Giant Within” seemed apropos in either instance. I don’t recall her laughing.

Today, when I realized that this was a gift of sorts from Julia, I knew I had to call her again. “Oh, hi Tim,” she answered, “Did you get the package?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Um…thanks?”

She said that I had seemed interested in the concept when we last talked, and that she had already bought the kit for her husband, Ed, and some of their friends. I voiced some surprise, to which she replied, “Oh yeah, I got them for my whole family for Christmas.”

That image was too much for me. Julia patiently listened as laughter strangled my attempts to further the conversation. I kept thinking of the whole Dellapenta family gathered around a Christmas tree, and the horrified expressions on each of their faces as one after another opened this most unusual of gifts. (“Oh, it’s a…oh, my dear Lord!”) I asked if she had attached a card to each that read “Here: you know what to do with it.” This time she laughed.

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Tim Mollen

Buy your copy of "Lost Journal - the Book" at www.timmollen.com.Each Lost Journal column is a journal entry written in retrospect. In other words, Mollen chooses a different day from his past, and writes about it as though it were today. The date may be last week, Halloween 1980, or the day he was born (May 4, 1969). Some of you may be asking, “But how would he have been able to write a journal entry on the day he was born?” To you he says: “Lighten up. It’s a humor column.” Mollen is a nationally syndicated columnist and actor, and he is available as a speaker on writing and humor.