AD.


carnival ride – foto by smith

I’m a bit down today. Realized this when I told Lady, “The worst thing is to be born female, the second worst is to be born young, the third worst is to be born human, and the fourth worst is to be born at all.”

This came up talking about her cramps. I asked if they were similar to flu stomach pains, and she said no, they’re different. I replied how lucky she was to be born into extra pain as a woman, then gave her my worst born list.

I’m 62 years old, and I’m weary of the world’s sorrow, pain, theft, abuse and general knavery.

So it’s time for silliness, to reset my emotional index.

Told Lady today we’ll name our firstborn Almost Everything Smith. That way, after people meet her or him, they can tell folk they know Almost Everything.

Earlier told her we’d name all our kids Tope. A tope (toe-pay) is a Mexican concrete speed bump across the road, and what are else children but life’s speed bumps? We’ll name them Tope 1, Tope 2, etc and just refer to them by number.

Of course if we do have children, the Church will have to pay for them since it’d be a miracle because I had my sperm tubes cut thirty-two years ago. Whenever people wonder if I’m broken, I just tell them not to worry because I’ve been fixed.

Lady’s also a mite down, so I tried brightening her mood with a bit of surreal silliness. As she walked down the hall, I followed with two books. Each step she took I patted one of her buttock cheeks with a book, chanting “Beat-ing-her-but-tocks-with-books, beat-ing-her-but-tocks-with-books” – each beat one bat to butt.

It’s all the Academic’s fault – I wanted to be one of Them, but when I tried and applied, they rejected me, told me I wasn’t SERIOUS enough. And it’s been downhill ever since. Sometimes I wake up in condemned comedy clubs with the sordid memory of an empty audience and the taste of bad puns in my mouth.


carnival ride – foto by smith

One Response

  1. “That same afternoon, a child was born, a son. There were cries of wonderment and joy in Ingle. Then, threading through all that delight, a thin wail.
    The heir was commenting, with sorrow, on the shore of time on which he had been stranded.”
    – George MacKay Brown, Beside The Ocean of Time

    You are not petty or frightened enough to be an academic. You’re also far, far too moral.

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