Adam's Salt Lick

- Or - Interview with a Bible Vampire. Reprinted by request from another one of my blogs.


“Did you know this water was sodium free?” Donna asked, brandishing the plastic bottle in front of my face.

“That’s lovely,” I replied, internally cringing. Donna the Evangelical “fundie”, otherwise known as The Bible Vampire, had cornered me.

“Most bottled water has sodium,” Donna continued. “God didn’t create water to have sodium in it.”

Oh boy. “He didn’t?”

“Noooooo! Man puts it there.” She said this even as she crinkled up her nose, a toddler’s vowel sounds drawn out and quartered. I noticed that the makeup had caked into the new lines around her nose, giving her permanent whiskers.

No indeed. NOOOOOOOOO. Please God, anything but this. God, if you’re listening, please send angels to rip my ears off.

She smiles, having assumed that I am an eager pupil. “Uh huh. Haven’t you noticed how unhealthy sodium is? It’s in the news. God didn’t want us to have sodium. That’s why he created water for us to drink, and he wouldn’t put that stuff in there.”

“The ocean has salt in it. It’s salt water. Sodium is salt.”

She pauses and snorts. “Haha, you almost had me. Sodium isn’t salt. Salt comes from the earth. The bible talks about the salt of the earth. Not salt of the water.”

Hello God? It’s me again. Forget the angels. Send a plague.

“Salt is part of our diet,” I reply. "Too much or too little consumption of salt on a regular basis is found to lead to muscle cramps and fatigue. If not taken seriously, fatal irregularities such as neurological imbalances are also likely. Drinking too much of water, without sufficient salt intake, might lead to water intoxication termed as hyponatremia."

Foolish me, always wanting to volunteer information in the form of big words that Donna cannot process.

“No, you’re wrong,” she said, tossing her bushy and overly sprayed hair with a hearty shake of her head. (It isn’t fair to say that the individual hairs actually moved. The entire teased rat’s nest knocked about her cranium like a bleached-blond football helmet.)

“Actually,” I continue, “our ancestors received their salt through animal blood. Later, when agriculture was essential to survival, they would supplement their paltry dietary salt intake by consuming clay or other substances known to contain salt. Many animals do.”

“Humans are NOT ANIMALS.”

“Actually, we are. Primates, to be exact.”

“God created people, male and female he created them. People aren’t primates and they don’t eat rocks.”

“I didn’t say 'rocks'. The human body will die without salt. It’s an essential mineral. We require five to ten grams of salt per day. God must have created us that way, you'd think? Anyway, what did Adam and Eve do to supplement their salt intake? You told me last week that they didn't eat meat until after they had left the Garden. They didn’t have a way to, um, make table salt yet, obviously. Where did the salt come from?”

Very long pause.

Long indeed.

More nose crinkling.

She stares at me as if I were something spawned in the pits of hell. She purses her lips. She speaks.

“God gave them a salt lick.”

Mmmm’kay.

“I would imagine that it was in the form of the clay found in Africa,” I said.

“Oh jeepers no!”

“What? You don’t think it was a 'formed salt lick', do you?”

“It would have to be, wouldn’t it? God wouldn’t want us licking the ground. It isn’t good.”

So is this because the ground isn’t kosher, or is it because God would see it as a form of mud-man cannibalism? I was afraid to ask.