He loves face watching. Looking at children’s faces, he wonders what they’ll look like in thirty, forty, fifty years and what they’ll become. As he considers elderly faces, he looks for the youths they were, and thinks of the lives they may have lived. So many mysteries slumber in each face, waiting to be discovered.
Thursday’s Wandering Thought
He and his friends met for beers and conversation. As they raised glasses and clinked them against one another, he said, “I just learned that the reason people originally clinked glasses like that was because the sound was supposed to drive evil spirits away.”
“Really?” Another asked.
“Yes, apparently the Gods didn’t like people to have fun outside of celebrations of Gods, and would send evil spirits and demons or minions or something after them to stop them from having fun.”
“Huh,” several said.
“Yes,” he continued, “and I just learned that when I made it up.”
Wednesday’s Wandering Thought
He read a Reddit thread on the insanepeoplefacebook forum. It claimed, with this capitalization and punctuation, “MENSTRUATION ISN’T Natural. It’s a UNNATURAL response to improper dietary habits & toxic environment. ALL ESTROGENS are POISONOUS.”
WTH, he wondered. Do people honestly believe this? Where do they get their ideas? Or were they just posting this insanity to pull attention?
Either way, it was from a wholly different world than the one he inhabited. Of course, that’s why he read it: to see what people in this other world were saying, so he could try to understand them.
Mewsday’s Wandering Thought
His wife needed new shoelaces. Only one store in town sells replacement laces.
He realized that finding shouldn’t surprise him. When he was a child, it was commonplace to snap a shoelace, forcing imaginative knotting to keep your shoe tied. In these times, the shoes usually wore out before the laces. His wife’s laces were for new shoes; she wanted white laces instead of the stripped ones that came with her shoes. Yes, it is a little first world pain, isn’t it?
No, the store didn’t have the laces she needed.
Sunday’s Wandering Thought
He was tired of fake news. They claimed that no one had done a moonwalk since 1972. He knew that was bull. He saw Michael Jackson moonwalk on televsion in 1983.
Wednesday’s Wandering Thought
The sign said, “Welcome back to our new store.”
He wondered if he could be welcomed back to a place which was new.
Tuesday’s Wandering Thought
He realized that many things needed to be done, and that he was the person who needed to do them. A list was made and priorities established, good initial steps. Critically, he would need to remain focused and ignore the call of books and computer games, and keep his energy marshalled.
That was always the challenge.
He Heard
She said, “I need to find silver hoops.”
He heard, “I need to find silver boots.”
And that’s when the fun began.
Michael Seidel, writer 