Month: June 2015

Inspired by Intractable Cheerfulness

No one I know, that’s who!

“There’s something to be said for impenetrability or, what’s the word, something to do with… you know? The thing.”

There was a time when I’d’ve happily gone on my way, just whistled on by, smiling in a daft kind of way, pretending that nothing was the matter. This time, though, this time! Oh, boy. You should’ve seen me not smiling at all, nope, I was almost just this side of scowling. Why, if I hadn’t had my sunglasses on, they would’ve seen me looking at them! Looking so that they knew that I might have seen them that one time doing the thing. You know, that thing?

“The one you mentioned the other day? When the, whatzit?, thingum cracked into the side of the”–AHCHOO–“What was I saying?”

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Exactly. EGG-ZACKLY. Like, ok, there’s the moon right? It’s up there in the sky. Sometimes it’s round, sometimes it’s like some mad smile, sometimes it’s just… what would you call that shape, anyway? Where it’s partly there and partly not? Something. It’s like that, you know?

“Now you’re talkin’ my language! You and I, like peas in a…”

You said it! Boy, no one gets me like you do.

“I know! It’s almost like we could finish each others–”

Scones!

The two high-fived, but it went off kind of awkwardly. On the third try, it was almost respectable.

Just So

Ordinarily, the gentleman screamed, I would be having beans on toast, but now! Now! Now!

I see I’ve mistaken you for a scoundrel, when in fact you are only a sullen child. A dullard, lacking wit, and a timely sense of what’s what. Time was, on the worst days, when even your most outrageous exploits, outbursts, mindquakes, seemed, if not charming, at least, well, sincere. Now, even your restrained cracklings seem like the torn scribbling of a layabout’s tear-stained maunderings. Too much ruminating in solitude leaves one with pretty threadbare illusions, no?

But, but, but…  Toast? sobbed the impeccably dressed fellow, blowing his nose on his silk, lavender tie. 

Here’s your toast, you emotional simpleton. Hush now, hush now. Take comfort in the fact that you’re as easily consoled as a spoilt child: all we have to do is give you what you want. Even now, see? Your tears swallowed up by the ruined desert of your face. Oh? Did I say ruined desert? I only meant handkerchief. 

Once, when the moon hung low and the stars flashed incandescent in the night, all the children slept fitfully in their beds, dreaming of space aliens that might rob their very souls, only, in time, they came to realize that the simple expedient of drawing a person would confuse the aliens and lure them away, and so it was, and all the children slept peacefully once more.

Yo.