BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

It is a moral imperative that parents warp their children. Now, don’t get the wrong idea here… By warp I mean teach them the basics of sarcasm, satire, and acerbic humor.

That kind of warp…

Granted, we don’t want our kids being bitterly sarcastic with us. That only serves to make the old Mark Twain bromide about putting them in a barrel and corking the hole in the side when they hit sixteen sound like a truly excellent idea. But, by the same token, if you have a kid who is packing around an IQ that has the local chapter of MENSA handing them pencils and brightly colored bookmarks as incentives to join up, then you had best seize the moment and teach them about sardonic humor, otherwise they’ll just end up being boring people with big IQ’s. Trust me, I’ve met a few, and I prefer hanging out with the warped people with big IQ’s. They aren’t as… Well… Boring.

And so, this is why I warp my kid’s sense of humor at every opportunity. I want her to not be boring because the operative not portion of that trait will serve her well later in life.

Of course, you have to keep a close watch on this process and take note of when your child is properly warped; otherwise you end up with a smartass. I’ve met a few of those too. The general rule is that once you’ve put a sufficient bow in the lumber of the mind it will break free of the jig and smack you right between the eyes. This is the point when you can be truly proud of a job well done, and as of the other day, let me tell you,  I was beaming.

It was a Saturday as I recall, because E  Kay was home and it was the middle of the day. We were sitting at the table having some lunch before heading out to take care of grocery shopping and all that other jazz. As sometimes happens when the O-spring becomes a bit animated during a meal, some “foodgitives” escaped her plate. In this case, a few kernels of corn went over the wall and were trying to make their way across the tablecloth. At a point such as this it is the job of one of the parents to gently remind the kid that the food should go from plate to fork to mouth without any furniture or lap detours along the way. This is especially important if she ever wants to be invited out to a nice restaurant on a date (which is something we will allow her to start doing approximately 20 years after I die). This also goes along with the not chewing with your mouth open, not blowing bubbles in your milk, and not building scale replicas of Devil’s Tower out of your mashed potatoes.

Anywho, since I was sitting next to her, with E K on the other side of the table, it was my duty to point this out. Which I did… Of course, I then promptly slopped corn off my own plate to join hers in a bid for culinary escape.

Now I had a critical situation. I had just done exactly what I had just finished telling the child she should be careful not to do. Since I had yet to receive a sign as to the present “warpedness level” of the O-spring’s mind, I decided to punt.

Pointing at the freshly emancipated corn kernels I said, “Look what you made me do.”

Without missing a beat the child looked across the table and said, “Yeah Mommy, look what you made Daddy do.”

E Kay’s brow furrowed with understandable confusion. She shook her head and replied, “I’m way over here. How did I make Daddy do anything?”

It was at this very moment I knew the O-spring’s brain was ready to take on the world, because once again without a single pause she answered, “That’s simple. You used your evil powers.”

Even the Evil Redhead did a spit-take on that one.

Yeah… My work here is done. 😛

More to come…

Murv

Some of you have been asking how the “Coffee Talk” blog went over with my “College Girlfriends.” Well, I have to say, it seems that it went over well. Mindy shall be remaining Mindy, unless we slip and call her Muffy, which could possibly happen. I mean after all, the last day of classes she did haul off and show up wearing an alligator embellished polo shirt and packing a shopping bag from Whole Foods Market. However, the bag and its contents are fodder for a different blog. The point I am trying to make here is that we don’t have to call her Miffy (yet). She actually got a good laugh out of the “Coffee Talk” entry, as did Karen.

In fact, the two of them found it even more amusing than I had imagined they would… As in Laugh Out Loud funny… To the point of calling friends, relatives, and even writing to their congressmen to tell them they should read it.

Some of them did, and I now have a senator calling for an investigation of me. Something to do with “illegally purveying satire to the humor challenged.” I’m not quite sure how that is going to pan out, but I’m not really allowed to talk about it at the moment. All I can say is that my attorneys, Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe are on the case.

At any rate, much to my delight, because of a single entry on Brainpan Leakage, my college girlfriends effectively provided me with even more blog fodder…

Mindy topped the stairs, plodded across the mezzanine, then plopped down in her chair at the C4K “Coffee Talk” table. As she leaned back and slid down in the seat she let out an exasperated sigh.

Karen looked over at me, then at Mindy. “So, did you get a gun yet?”

“No,” Mindy replied, brushing off the gun reference as old hat.

“West county people,” Karen grumbled, shaking her head.

I picked up my cell phone from the table and checked the time. Mindy was actually running a bit late. We’d expected her a good ten minutes ago. Not only that, she didn’t look to be her usual Mindyish self. By that I mean, no polo, no sweater tied around her neck, no pearls, no Star-Make-A-Bucks… Nada… As a matter of fact, she was wearing a baggy t-shirt, her hair was pulled back into a short tail and the rest was covered with a baseball cap. I  studied the uncharacteristic look for a moment, then laid the cell phone back onto the table and nodded toward my newly arrived girlfriend.

“Casual Thursday?” I asked.

She sighed again. “You just wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had.”

I expressed an appropriate modicum of concern. “Anything wrong?”

“Can’t be much,” Karen grunted. “She’s sittin’ in her chair.”

“But look at her…” I replied. “I mean, slum city here…”

“Hey!” Mindy objected.

Karen gave her head a dismissive shake. “Finally dressing normal for a change. Besides, she still doesn’t have a gun. If it was real trouble she’d have a gun.”

Mindy tapped her fingers hard on the table. “Hey! I’m right here you two. I can hear you, you know.”

I turned my attention back to our disheveled cohort. “Yeah, okay, so what gives? Why the bad day?”

She breathed heavily. “Well, you know that blog you wrote?”

“Yeah,” I said with a nod, a bit of concern now creasing my forehead. “I thought you liked it?”

“Oh, I did,” she told me with a typical, animated Mindy nod.

“She still shoulda shot that idiot who was using the expired milk,” Karen mumbled.

“So what’s the problem?” I asked Mindy, leaving Karen to complain to herself.

“Well, I told several of my friends they should read your blog.”

“Okay…” I said, waiting for the other shoe.

“So, two of them emailed me about it,” she explained.

“How many did you tell?”

“Everyone in my email address book.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Roughly how many is that? I’m assuming more than two?”

“Not many,” she told me with a shake of her head. “Only three thousand four hundred and twelve people.”

“I see.” I shrugged. “But only two responded, so that’s your issue?”

“I’m still waiting on the others. The issue is what they said.”

“Okay, so did the two that wrote back to you hate it or something?”

“If they did, just shoot ’em,” Karen offered.

“You know, Karen,  everyone who reads my blog thinks you’re that killer woman on Burn Notice,” I said, glancing over at Big K.

“You mean the hottie with the gun?” she asked.

“I dunno,” I replied. “I’ve never seen it myself.”

Karen nodded and grinned. “I saw a commercial. Yeah. I can be her. I’m good with that.”

“Can we get back to my problem?” Mindy appealed.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said with a nod. “You’re right. So what’s the deal? Whaddid they say?”

“That’s just it. Not much. One of them said, ‘ewwww, what did corporate say?‘ And the other one just said, ‘what did corporate say?‘.”

“No ewwww on the second one?” I asked.

“That’s not my point.”

“Did you…” Karen started.

Mindy cut her off, “No Karen, I didn’t shoot them.”

“You should have.”

I shrugged again. “Okay, so what’s the problem?”

“These are funny people,” she replied. “They both have a great sense of humor. But all they focused on was wanting to know what the Star-Make-A-Buck’s Corporate Office said.”

“Are you sure they’re actually funny?” I asked. “Sometimes it’s easy to mistake an attack of gas for a smile you know. They could just be digesting some serious roughage or something.”

“I was pretty sure they were funny,” Mindy told me with a shrug. “But now I just don’t know. I think maybe they just didn’t get the joke.”

“What is it with you West county people?” Karen asked. “Not getting jokes that even a three year old can understand. Is something in the water out there affecting your brains?”

“Karen!” Mindy admonished.

“Hey, I’m just sayin’,” Karen replied with a shrug. “So… You want me to shoot ’em for you?”

I still don’t know if Mindy has heard back from any more of her friends, and I haven’t seen any news reports featuring Karen barricaded in her chair with a gun, so I’m pretty sure things are okay. Still, I hope Mindy remembers to let me know if she does hear any more from her funny friends.

I suppose it all depends on that West county water.

More to come…

Murv