Tag: just goofing around

The Topper

Ever have one of those people in your life that must tell something about themselves to top whatever is going on? Someone is sick and hospitalized, and they’re sicker, and should be in the hospital. Misfortune falls on another? That’s nothing, you should hear how bad they suffered. It gets to the point that you don’t know what to believe of them. Then, when something bad happens, you feel bad because you didn’t believe them.

It reminds me of that old comedy routine.

“You had a house? We lived in a box on the street.”

“I wish we had a box. We lived in a pile of old newspapers.”

“Newspapers? You were lucky. We held paper towels up around us and pretended they were a house.”

“Pretended? You were lucky. We were only eating once a week. We didn’t have enough energy to pretend anything.”

“You ate once a week? You were lucky. I don’t know what I would have done, eating that many times in a month.”

“Those were the days.”

“Yeah, they sure were.”

Know what I mean?

 

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One Piece

When you’re vacuuming, you ever notice there’s always one piece, usually lint, but typically a clump of cat fur in our house, that has supernatural powers to resist the vacuum? You run the sweeper over it repeatedly, but it defiantly stays on the floor, sometimes moving around and pretending that it’s been sucked up, only to re-appear a few moments later. Then you’re forced to other courses of action to get it up, even stooping to pick it up and feed it to the vacuum, just to prove who has the power.

Yeah, that’s so annoying.

2

Guns & Love

It’s a way of looking at love and how love is expressed that I never considered.

The radio commercial featured a woman, talking to men. “Hey guys, I know you forgot to buy a Valentine’s Day gift again.”

Pause to consider the stereotype presented.

“But don’t worry. February is the month of love. So all month, you can come to the gun store and buy a gift for the loved one in your life.”

Now my stereotype is showing. When I think of Valentine’s Day gifts, guns don’t leap to mind. Candy, especially chocolates, a night out, jewelry, diamonds, flowers, lingerie…these are the stereotypes of the V.D. (sorry) gifts that come to my mind.

I suppose it’s valid for some cultures to say I love you with a gun. I imagine, outside of my sphere, there’s a whole world of gun-giving as gifts for special occasions. Keeping with paper, first year wedding anniversaries are probably celebrated with gun-range targets. In the fifth year, a nice, compact .22 pistol is given. For the ten year anniversary, give her a 30/30 hunting rifle.

The restaurant moments write themselves. He’s down on one knee, handing her a Sig. Her eyes shine with tears as she gasps and whispers, “It’s beautiful.” Around her, other patrons are gushing with appreciation. Applause breaks out as she accepts the gun and hugs her man. One woman hisses at her husband, “Why don’t you ever buy me a gun?”

I wonder if Hallmark has a range of gun cards for holidays?

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Wrong

Do you ever catch yourself doing something that prompts you to ask yourself, “What is wrong with you?”

Yeah, it happened to me yesterday. I was in Costco, and as I walked along, I started singing Christmas carols to myself. That’s right, Christmas carols, on February 8.

I hope it’s not some harbinger of Christmas starting in February. I mean, what the hell?

2

Cat Commercial

I have to say, I’m a little irritated with a lot of the cat videos on the web. Many of them remind me of those commercials that imply, “If you eat this food, wear these clothes, or drink this beverage, you’ll be young, beautiful, and carefree, and have a wonderful, fun life.”

Doesn’t happen in my life, no matter what I eat, drink, or wear.

The cat videos often show a cat taken in as a stray or a kitten, and how the other cats and household pets adopt the new one, and they all start hanging out together, having fun, snuggling and napping together.

Yeah. Doesn’t happen in my house.

I feel like a U.N. Peace-Keeping Force in my house. I’m constantly manning observation points, watching their movements, and issuing warnings. “You. Tucker. Yes, you. I see you. No, it’s too late for you to try to get small or become invisible.”

Because that’s what cats believe. Cats believe, “If I don’t move, he won’t know I’m here.” Or, “If I get small and move real slow, he won’t be able to see what I’m doing.” These cats don’t think I’m very bright.

But like a life-guard at the pool, I persist. “You’re in the no-floof zone. Get back, please. Get back. Get back now. This is your last warning.”

You ever notice how they seem to realize you’re talking to them. But they’ll stall, putting on an act to buy time so they can come up with an excuse for what they’re doing.

“No, no, you misunderstood,” they finally say with their whiskers and other non-verbal communications. “I wasn’t sneaking up on that other cat with the intention of biting their ear off. I was just coming her to sit down in this spot to wash my face.”

Then that’s what they do. They sit down and wash their face, saying, “That’s all. There wasn’t enough light back there, where I had been napping. I wasn’t going to stalk and attack that other cat. I’m completely innocent.

“Trust me.”

Then they give me a look, to assess, is he buying this. Which is essentially a cat con commercial. So what the cats are really asking themselves as they watch me is, “Is this commercial working?”

2

Retrofloof

Retrofloof (catfinition) – a time-traveling cat who insists on living in the past.

In use:

Lady, the little gray tabby with a tawny belly, was a retrofloof, disappearing as suddenly as she’d arrived, with as little explanation to it.

He didn’t worry; another retrofloof would soon show up. Other people thought retrofloofs were strays, but he knew that cats liked time-traveling, and preferred (from his experience and perspective, at least) to go into the past to relive their past lives.

How did he know the cats traveled into the past? They’d informed him that it was what they did. Not all who disappeared were retrofloofs, of course; some were alterfloofs, choosing to live in alternative dimensions. But Lady, she had told him, was a retrofloof.

 

0

The Memory

Billy got hit by a truck, he says.

He thinks, a truck hit Billy, but he doesn’t say anything. The other is still speaking in slow, backwoods twangs and drawls.

Boy, do I remember that day. We were standing on one side of the road, by the school entrance. Billy was on the other side. He saw us and got this big grin. One of them big-ass coal trucks was hauling ass toward us, but Billy started running across the road. It was all so fast, I didn’t even have time to shout or think. The truck driver slammed on his brakes. The tires locked up in screaming smoke, and the brakes were grinding and squealing in what seemed like forever. I swear to God, I saw Billy turn and look at the truck at the last second, like he’d just realized it was there. Then the truck took Billy down the road.

His shoe flew off. I saw it fly away, like a damn bird. It landed off the side of the road. Then the truck was stopped, and it was all quiet for, I don’t know, it seemed like forever, but it wasn’t. Then someone shouted, Billy, and we all started running for the truck.

His blue eyes get still and wide, staring far off across time and space. Man, I remember that day like it was yesterday, he says.

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Steps

He’s thinking about the day. He needs to dress, which means walking to the bedroom, fifty-eight steps. He’ll walk around downtown. It’s eight hundred steps from the plaza to the library.

Do you want to see a movie? she asks.

I don’t know, he answers. What’s playing?

She reads him a list with the playing times.

I don’t know, he says. Let me think about it.

Instead, he thinks walking to the movies, thirty-two hundred steps. He thinks about getting a drink of water in the kitchen, twenty-one steps.

Something is wrong, he thinks, getting up. Something has gone awry. Counting steps, he goes into the other room. He was supposed to do something there, but it fades away under the count. He walks around the room for a quarter mile, four hundred and fifty steps, and then returns to the other room.

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