It was lunchtime, and I needed lactase. You have oceans of it swirling around in your gut, but mine well’s gone comparatively dry. Without it, I’m powerless to digest milk products. And there I was, and there was my lunch, a bowl of yummy home-cooked turkey and wild rice soup made with half-and-half. A shot of that stuff in my stomach and I’m off like a moon rocket.

So I put my boots on and hiked a couple blocks up the street to the co-op where I can usually buy a bottle of the really good stuff. I don’t know what makes one lactase product different from another. I assume they’ve all got lactase in similar amounts, and I usually take two or three pills anyway; the concentration shouldn’t make a difference. For whatever reason, though, the pills they have at the co-op let me eat mountains of cheese, cream and anything else that comes out of a cow. Almost anything else.

They were fresh out of the good stuff, though, and they had nothing else on the shelf I could use as a stand-in. Fortunately, there was a pharmacy down the block, coincidentally on the way back to the office. I popped in and got some emergency back-up lactase.

That stuff proved the lie that all lactase is the same. My tailpipe’s been rumbling like a dragster ever since. Note to self: Stick with the stuff they sell at the co-op.