The Brain Storm

There’s the weird, there’s the wonderful and then there are the things that are just plain barmy. If we lived in a book, the world would make sense, because you have to sell the reality of a book. Get too weird and people stop believing. Reality, fortunately, doesn’t have to sell itself. If you stop buying reality you’re either dead or living in a padded cell with a straightjacket and the voice in your head that you like to call Larry.

Any writer knows – and dreads – the step of classical writing composition called brainstorming. This is where you let your thoughts fly wild. If you’re lucky you hang onto them long enough to nab some feathers and force them to compose coherent thoughts on paper. I have yet to meet a writer who likes this step; most, in fact, skip it. You can’t REALLY skip it, though, because reality is always brainstorming for you.

Welcome to my brain storm.

I knew a long time ago where I got most of my more noticeable oddities, such as my obsession with pranks or my love of tormenting loved ones. My dad generously donated a carbon copy of his own politically incorrect, socially unacceptable downright obnoxious sense of humor. And I love him for it. Just the other day my dad, my sister-in-law, my one-year-old niece and I were all in the car. It was a nice day, Dad was targeting the sewer lids (if you hit them at JUST the right angle they go clank) and everything seemed normal. Then I looked down and saw the rubber chicken. This was no ordinary rubber chicken, mind: its face was a mask of terror, its mouth and eyes opened in a permanent scream of utter terror. My dad bent down and gave the thing a healthy squeeze and it SCREAMED. It screamed long and hard and loud. The thing was so terrifying that it actually made my niece (who will laugh in your face when you give her a smack on the bomming) cry. Apparently he won the thing for a month at a business meeting. His new game is to roll down his windows at stoplights next to another car with its windows rolled down and squeeze the thing. Really, though, I shouldn’t be so surprised. After all, this is the same man who honks at road kill because if it was dumb enough to run in front of a car once it might do it again.

So, if you are ever at a stoplight and you hear a screaming death rattle from the car next to you, roll down your window and blow a raspberry at the man driving the car, because it’s probably my dad.