Merry Christmas from the trio who live in the hidden world beneath your ribcage — part science, part whimsy, all heart:

Polly Parietal™ — the elegant, acid-crafting architect of the stomach wall.
Ivan Intrinsic Factor™ — the loyal courier whose entire life mission is to escort B12 safely home.
Freddy Fundus™ — the jovial dome-dweller who keeps the neighborhood’s tone and stretch tuned just right.

Together they form a tiny orchestra of digestion…
until autoimmune gastritis crashes the party.

Prelude — “The Stomach With a Sense of Humor”

By Rex Wiig
Author, Engineer, and Founder of Subsurface Press

Deep beneath the bustle of ribs and lungs lies a neighborhood most folks never think about.
A place where acids swirl, enzymes dance, and three unlikely heroes work the perpetual night shift:

Polly Parietal™ polishes her proton pumps like a jeweler tending diamonds.
Ivan Intrinsic Factor™ adjusts his IF cap and prepares for another B12 rescue mission.
Freddy Fundus™ hums like an old jukebox, stretching and relaxing as meals come and go.

It’s usually peaceful down there — predictable even —
until one day something strange begins to happen…

A confusion of signals.
A mix-up in the mailroom.
A storm of misguided immune messages raining down from upstairs.

And suddenly this tiny trio must figure out how to keep the system running
—even when the body that houses them is at war with itself.

This is their story.
And mine.
Where science meets humor,
and where even the smallest heroes matter.

The Afterlife of the Gingerbread Man

Beyond the Duluth Trading Commercial

Haven’t seen the ad? Watch the Duluth Trading Co. Gingerbread Man commercial here.
(Warning: contains cookie screams and mild dairy trauma.)

It all began, as most great existential crises do, with a Duluth Trading Company holiday commercial.
You’ve probably seen it — the one where the Gingerbread Man gets dunked into a glass of milk, screaming as his leg falls off.
Absurd. Hilarious. Unforgettable.
And as I watched him meet his soggy fate, I couldn’t help but wonder:

What if the person eating him had autoimmune gastritis and no stomach acid?

Because that’s where Duluth’s story ends… and mine begins.

Our beloved Gingerbread Man survived the dunk — albeit minus the leg that slipped into the milk with a tragic plop.
It was supposed to be his grand finale, his sweet dissolution into calcium and nostalgia.
But fate — or more accurately, achlorhydria — had other plans.

The unlucky diner who devoured him that day had no stomach acid.
None. Not a drop.
Just a calm, neutral pH landscape — a place where cookies go to linger and reflect on their choices.

Expecting the infernal roar of gastric acid, the Gingerbread Man landed instead on a soft mucosal plain that smelled faintly of mint tea and medical resignation.
“Is this… it?” he asked, brushing crumbs from his chest.

Scene Two: The Labor Dispute

As his crumbs settled, three figures appeared from the gastric gloom — the unlikely heroes of my ongoing internal drama.

Freddy Fundus™, shy custodian of acid management and autoimmunity risk control, who spends most days fretting about containment breaches.
Polly Parietal™, glove-wearing head of acid production, proud but perpetually under autoimmune siege.
And Ivan Intrinsic Factor™, clipboard in hand, responsible for escorting Vitamin B₁₂ through the bureaucratic maze of absorption — a thankless job even on good days.

They are, in a sense, the stomach’s Three Stooges: overworked, underfunded, and occasionally philosophical.
And if they’re not careful, they’ll slip on a Hoopty-Doo™ — an epitope in disguise, the kind of molecular misunderstanding that turns peacekeeping into friendly fire.

A shadow emerged from the rugae.
It was Freddy Fundus™, squinting at the intact cookie.
“Impossible,” he muttered. “He should be ions by now.”

From deeper in the folds came Polly Parietal™, gloves on hips, voice sharp.
“I told you the acid line’s been down since the last autoimmune flare! Nobody listens to Quality Control.”

Ivan Intrinsic Factor™ arrived last, clipboard in hand.
“If we can’t absorb B₁₂, at least absorb some accountability,” he sighed.

The Gingerbread Man blinked.
“So… none of you are working?”
Freddy shrugged. “Management issue. Autoimmune layoffs. We lost half the proton pumps.”

Scene Three: The Philosophical Crumb

Hours passed.
Nothing dissolved. Nothing digested.
The Gingerbread Man remained intact — a symbol of everything the body could no longer break down.

Finally he whispered, half-crumbled,
“Maybe dissolution isn’t destruction. Maybe it’s how meaning is released.”

Ivan paused mid-note.
Polly folded her gloves.
Freddy nodded slowly.
“He gets it,” he said. “He’s not food — he’s philosophy.”

Epilogue

When the gut microbiome finally arrived for cleanup duty, they treated him gently, like a saint of starch.
Somewhere beyond the pylorus, faint jingles from a Duluth Trading Co. radio ad echoed in the distance.
And thus ended the curious case of the Gingerbread Man who could not dissolve —
a holiday reminder that even without acid, there’s still plenty to digest.

About the Author

Rex Wiig is an author, engineer, and founder of Subsurface Press. After developing autoimmune atrophic gastritis, he applied his background in systems engineering to study how the body’s feedback networks fail — and how awareness can help restore their rhythm.