BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

“Awww, just shoot ’em,” Karen said.

It was an interesting response to spoiled milk, but hey, we all have our own take on life, correct? What? You don’t understand what I’m talking about? Well, I suppose I can see where the above might be a little confusing. How about if I back up a bit and see if I can explain…

So, I have these two girlfriends…

No, not like that… Sheesh… Get your minds out of the gutter, please. What I am saying is that they are girls, and they are my friends, therefore they are my girlfriends. And, since they are my girlfriends we do girlfriend stuff… You know, we sit around drinking coffee (or soda, or water, or nothing) and generally gossip about whatever comes to mind.

Well, that’s as far as I take it, anyway, because I just have to draw a line in the sand when it comes to shoe shopping, painting my nails, or getting all googly eyed over Antonio Bandera Pitt DiCapriGereFord-McWhoever. Not that there’s anything at all wrong with that. In fact, it’s healthy in a lot of ways. However, I’d much rather get all googly eyed over E K. (I’d
throw some actress’ names out there but I’m still recovering from the last beating The Evil Redhead gave me, and I’m not sure how much my insurance can handle right now…)

But, back to my girlfriends. We’ll call them Karen and Mindy. Not their real names for reasons of anonymity, of course. Also not my original pick for pseudonyms either. I actually wanted to call them Karen and Brenda, but girlfriend #2 didn’t like Brenda, so I have to call her Mindy. She was almost Muffy, but we won’t go there. Although, when she shows up doing the whole sweater arms tied around her neck, sunglasses on top of her head, and Star-make-a-bucks cup in her hand, she definitely looks like a Muffy… Or even a Buffy.

But, Buffy starts with a B, and that makes it too close to Brenda, so I think we’ll just stick with Mindy. Of course, after she reads this we might end up calling her Miffy.

I guess we’ll see.

Now that we have that settled… (sigh)

So anyway, here’s the thing. I only get to see Karen and Mindy for two weeks out of each calendar year. One straight week during the summer, and 5 consecutive Saturdays during the winter. I’m sure you are wondering why this is… I mean, if I were you I would certainly be wondering.

Well, I’ll tell you… It’s like this. Karen and Mindy are my College girlfriends, and by that I don’t mean we went to college together, because we didn’t. You see, twice each year I take the O-Spring out to one of the local community college campuses for “College for Kids” classes.

Yeah, as I’ve rambled on about before, my kid is utterly brilliant. Yes, I’m sure yours is too, but mine is more brillianter. (Yes, I know that’s grammatically incorrect. Remember, I’m a word on paper putting type person what make those things with words and stuff what tell things like… umm.. stories.. yeah… that’s it… So, I’m a professional… Therefore you should NOT try bending the English language over the dining room table at home without proper training. It’ll just get messy.)

Either way, back to this college thing… My kid is utterly brilliant, and so is Mindy’s kid and Karen’s grandkid. Therefore, because of this whole “College for Kids” thing it makes us college friends. Not “The Big Chill” sort of college friends, mind you, but college friends nonetheless.

Of course, once again I can tell that y’all are wondering how this all came about. Well, it’s pretty simple, actually. Parents of gifted kids will often seek one another out and come together to share notes. Important things like, “Who should I call when my kid clones the neighbor’s dog using only a PlaySkool Pretend Doctors Kit and a Dora The Explorer juice tumbler?” or “So, how do you handle it when your kid builds a supercollider out of Legos and aluminum foil and creates a God particle in your living room?”

See what I mean?  Really important crap…

And so, anyway, this friendship developed between Karen, Mindy, and yours truly. There’s even a particular corner on the second floor of the Science West building where we park ourselves around a table and chit chat – remember, I said no to the shopping – while we wait for the kids to finish their classes each day. This corner actually used to be my special quiet place. I would take my notebook computer with me, sit on the back side of the table, and write (we writers do that sort of stuff.) However, one day Mindy found me and, well, whenever I am on the campus I simply haven’t been able to get any work done since. She won’t allow it. But, that’s just part of Mindy’s charm.

And, yes, you guessed it – as it happens, this particular August week it is “College for Kids” week, and yeah, you guessed it again, I’ve been visiting with Karen and Mindy. That’s where guns and spoiled milk come into play.

There we were, talking about fast food and airports. (Hey, I said we talk about whatever comes to mind…) Anywhow, I had just finished telling about my bad Fuddrucker’s experience, how they had ponied up a gift card, and that I was impressed by their integrity. Mindy became wide-eyed and fidgety which was a sure sign she had her own story to tell.

Well, as signs go this one was pretty clear.

“So I was looking over the counter,” Mindy declared. “And I could see that the girl was using expired milk for my latte…”

Karen piped up. “Did’ja shoot her?”

Mindy looked horrified. “No.”

“You shoulda just shot ‘er,” Karen reiterated.

“Anyway,” Mindy continued. “I told her, ‘don’t use that in my latte, it’s expired,’ so she put it back in the refrigerator. You know she was going to use it for someone else, but since I was standing there watching she didn’t use it in mine.”

“Yeah,” I said, not entirely sure where this was going.

Mindy shook her head in an animated fashion as her eyes grew wider still. “Can you imagine that? Expired milk!”

“Was she running with scissors too?” I asked.

“No.”

“Okay, just wondering.”

“Shoulda just shot her,” Karen offered.

“So anyway,” Mindy said, ignoring Karen’s advice. “I kept watching and she started to put 2% milk in my latte. I mean, come on, 2% milk?!”

Karen grunted, “That’s what guns are for, you know…”

“So I said, ‘no, no, no you don’t’,” Mindy explained. “I only take skim milk in my latte. And do you know what she said?”

I shook my head. “Nope. I wasn’t there.”

“She said it was really skim milk, it just said 2% on it.”

“I’m tellin’ you, you shoulda just shot her,” Karen grumbled.

“So, what did you do?” I asked.

“I stepped away from the counter and called Star-Make-A-Bucks corporate office. I have them on my cell phone speed dial, of course…”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” I mused aloud.

Unfazed, Mindy continued. “…I told them that I was standing right there at the airport and that their employee was trying to use spoiled milk in my latte.”

“Awww, just shoot ’em,” Karen said.

I had always figured Karen for the non-violent type, I mean, what with her being pretty laid back. After all, she didn’t even object over her pseudonym like Mindy had, know what I mean? But her grumbling at this particular moment definitely wasn’t bearing that out.

“I couldn’t shoot her,” Mindy objected.

Karen sighed. “Why not? You forget your gun?”

“I don’t have a gun.”

“See,” Karen said, clucking her tongue. “There’s the problem.”

“What do you think, Murv?” Mindy appealed.

I shrugged. “Karen has a point. If you don’t have a gun you can’t shoot the girl with the expired milk.”

“See there,” Karen announced, then lowered her voice to a grumble. “M R agrees with me… You West county people make me tired. I think when I get home I’m just going to sit in my chair.”

After that, we talked about squirrels. Sounds like a good time, eh?

All I can say is I’m glad our kids are brilliant, because I think maybe the three of us have gone the way of the expired milk.

More to come…

Murv

I’m sure some of you noticed recently that the header banner for Brainpan Leakage went through a bit of a change. At the time of this writing (which is not necessarily the time at which this entry will be deployed) it is back to normal. However, around the time I was heading for Ohio it had the addition of some little cartoon characters along with captions, as seen above. This was because here in Saint Louis we were in our 11th straight day of temperatures in the 95+ range combined with high humidity, which in turn created heat indexes in the 110+ range and extreme heat advisories throughout the area. Being an old fat guy, I wasn’t overly excited about the weather, but then, that is what air conditioning is for, correct?

Well, I suppose that all depends on who you ask, or in my case, which airplane you board.

Yes, imagine my dismay upon boarding the decrepit DC-9, only to discover that the auxiliary power unit was malfunctioning, which effectively left us sitting at the gate with no Air Conditioning and unable to start the engines. As we sat there sweltering in the convection oven of an airliner, the captain came on the loudspeaker and announced that we would not be obtaining a new all weather DieHard battery from Sears as one would expect. Seems he had managed to bribe some guys in yellow vests and earmuffs to give us a jump as soon as they managed to find where they stashed the cables.

Eventually, the “screaming metal death tube,” as my publicist insists on calling airplanes, was coughing and sputtering up the tarmac, and soon afterward we were winging our way toward Detroit Metro Airport (remember, I said we couldn’t get there from here and all that…) The rest of the flight was uneventful, more or less. The guy next to me spent the entire hour and 10 minutes reading page 72 of a Johnathan Kellerman novel while bobbling his head back and forth and making “skrrrzzznnnnxxx” noises. And of course there was Mister Chronic Halitosis, but we won’t go there.

Upon finally reaching Detroit, the “farthest terminal/gate statute” was invoked and I had to trudge something on the order of a mile plus to get to my connecting flight. Now one of of the things about DTW is that they apparently watched the original 1976 version of Logan’s Run several times and then dropped a couple of hits of LSD before they built it. At least, that’s my best guess. I say this because they have this elevated indoor bullet train looking thing which will take you from terminal to terminal if you don’t want to walk, and it is oddly reminiscent of the “shuttle tubes” from the movie. If that’s not enough, (and this is where the LSD had to have come in) there is also the Acid Trip Tunnel, pictured above. This underground passageway runs beneath the tarmac and between terminals. Just so you know, it actually looks like that photo. It’s dark, lit only by weirdly shifting, low-wattage, multi-colored lights behind patterned Plexiglas panels along the sides. And, just to make sure it is “Carousel-Like” (see Logan’s Run) there are speakers playing whale noises, electronic music, and other bizarre electro-whacky sounds. One would definitely want to avoid this area after spending a bit too much time in one of the lounges if you get my meaning.

So, anyway, I hoofed it to my connecting gate since I didn’t have much of a layover and arrived with plenty of time to spare. What I didn’t realize at that particular moment was that I had way more time to spare than I originally thought.

“Why is that?” you ask. Well, I’ll tell you… (You knew I would…)

I had no more texted Heather of VFG (Violet Flame Gifts) to let her know I was on the ground in Detroit and that my next flight was running on time, than the gate agent flipped a switch and announced that there was a delay due to a crew member calling in sick and the standby replacement not answering the phone. Therefore, rather than leave in 30 minutes at 5:17 as scheduled, we would be departing at 7:11.

I immediately started looking around for a Slurpee machine, because it was somewhere around this point in time that I had an epiphany – It seemed that Northwest Airlines was now under the control of the Southland Corporation…

More to come…

Murv

Next Installment: You Want Blonde Or Brunette On That?