BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

I’m a big fan of Twinkies. I actually consider them comfort food, even though I’m not entirely certain that they qualify as actual food. Odds are they are more along the lines of chemicals bonded together by other chemicals filled with more chemicals, none of which are actually compounds that we were meant to put into our bodies…But they taste so good. Truth is, I don’t get to have Twinkies very often, which is a good thing. If I had them on a regular basis I’d be even fatter than I am right now, and let’s face it, I’m a fat guy.

But, as usual, this blog really isn’t about Twinkies, nor is it about raccoons. It’s actually about walnuts and coffee. However, there really is a Twinkie – Raccoon connection, believe it or not.

I don’t actually watch that much TV (Got subject whiplash yet? Good… Just put on this neck brace and sit back…)

Like I said, I don’t watch much TV, but I do turn on the idiot box from time to time in order to catch the news, and a couple of programs that we regularly watch. Of course, whenever positioned in front of the glowing toob you will be bombarded by radiation, but that is beside the point. You will also be bombarded by commercials. Some of them funny, some of them not, some of them that just plain resonate with certain individuals. Case in point, the Twinkie commercial with the raccoon that sees a snack cake falling out of the sky toward him – in the end it’s actually a snowboard, and that leads us into the line “where’s the cream filling?”

But back to the walnuts…

There I was at Meeman-Shelby State Park in Tennessee. I was a guest speaker at FoS (Festival of Souls). I had showered (so that I wouldn’t stink) and made myself relatively pretty (so that I wouldn’t scare children and small animals) and then made my way up to the dining hall for a cup of coffee. Breakfast proper was still an hour or so off yet, so I sat out on the back “patio area” with the other early risers. We drank our coffee, grunted at one another, told stories that none of us can remember now (it was early), and just generally did the morning thing. All around us, Autumn was happening – and when I say happening, I mean it was in full swing. Now, one would think I mean leaves turning, leaves falling, chill in the air, all that sort of stuff, and actually, I do. However, there was more. You see, that area is populated by a large number of Oak and Walnut trees, therefore we were surrounded by the constant – and I do mean constant – clatter, rattle, thud, and thump of falling acorns and walnuts. So much so, that it went on all day and all night. Around the clock. And, it made walking the paths to the cabins an exercise in dodging nature’s attempt at carpet bombing the invaders (the invaders being us).

As we sat swilling caffeinated brew, a distant thunk, clatter, tink, clomp, ping, thud sort of noise met our ears. This was followed by a skitter that grew louder with each passing millisecond. Now, something I should probably mention is that the dining hall has a vaulted ceiling, which means that the roof is EXTREMELY high. Moreover, this expanse of asphalt shingles is sloped at a pitch resembling an Alpine Ski Jump ramp. No, I am not exaggerating (this time).

At any rate, I was downing some coffee as the skittery noise echoed louder and louder. Suddenly, it ended with a sort of “tick, thunk, swoosh” all mashed together. The bizarre noise was followed by a voice next to me that calmly stated, “Incoming…”

I looked up in time to see a walnut. At first it was sort of walnut sized, maybe even a little smaller, however the problem with it seemed to be that it was growing in size at an alarming rate. Initially I had one of those Sheriff Carter (Eureka) moments, wondering what manner of Global Dynamics experiment had gone awry and was causing this walnut to grow – or perhaps the rest of us to shrink. Fortunately, my first cup of coffee for the morning elected to kick in at right about that very moment. I ducked as much as a fat guy straddling the bench of a picnic table can duck in the split second I had left. The walnut, that at this point had blotted out the sun, parted my hair.

Yes… It grazed right across my scalp with plastic comb-like precision. In less time than it took for me to blink, it hit the bench immediately to my rear with a loud crack-thump! But it wasn’t finished yet. Ricocheting at warp speed, the new trajectory launched nature’s smart bomb back into the air. A sonic boom exploded behind us as it broke the sound barrier, and that was followed by the clang, clatter, and crash of a #10 can –  that had heretofore been used as an ashtray – being picked off the back picnic table.

And, much like the raccoon from the commercial, I didn’t even get a Twinkie for breakfast.

More to come…

Murv

Honestly, this is probably one of those “had to be there” sorts of stories… Be that as it may, I’m going to go ahead and tell it. Why? Because I was there. I can’t help it if the rest of you didn’t check your schedules and missed it… So, anyway…

I’m getting up there in years. I’m not what you’d call old, although most of the O-spring’s friends think I am. I’m actually right there at middle age. Just a couple of months shy of that half-century mark, where life really begins. However, as we age, even if we are simply reaching our prime, other bullshit goes on inside us. Things like our immune systems getting tired a little more easily. So, to boost things, we do silly stuff like get flu shots. I know some folks out there who REALLY think it’s silly and refuse to get flu shots at all. More power to them. They just need to stay away from me with their germs, because the simple truth is, nobody is really as immune to common illnesses as they think they are. I guess the long and short of what I am prattling about is this: I get a flu shot every year, and 2011 is no different – especially since I am about to go out of town to a gathering of bunches of people where I will be signing books, shaking hands, and being exposed to all manner of bacterioviralmorphingpowerranger pathogens.

As it happens, the insurance that covers our family is of the sort that covers such immunizations 100%, so I recently headed out to the post office, dropped off some stuff, then continued up the block to the local Walgreen’s and got myself into the queue for a flu shot. As I waited, an older lady possessed of a white cane arrived with a friend, and they got themselves into the queue as well. While we sat waiting – it was a hell of a busy day at the Walgreen’s – I couldn’t help but overhear the older woman talking about how nervous she was, and how she was going to scream when they gave her the shot.

Eventually the pharmacist came out, packing a gihugic hypodermic that looked like a hunk of telephone pole with a sword sticking out of the end… Okay… not really. But I’m pretty sure that’s what the blind lady was imagining. As it happens, I was first up, and it had taken quite a while before the pharmacist had been able to come out to the “inoculation area,” so she was a bit harried about finding a place to give me the injection. You see, oddly enough the blind lady and her friend were sitting behind the blind where they normally do this sort of thing. I told the poor gal to just, “Grab, Stab, and Plunge,” adding. “It’s just a shot, not surgery.”

This elicited a ton of laughs from people who were in line for various things, up to and including more flu shots. However, it’s not the part you had to be there to appreciate.

Upon hearing my comment, the blind lady called out from behind the blind, “I don’t know how you can do it. I’m going to scream like a little girl.”

I replied with a serious question, “Would it help you to feel better if I screamed, too?”

“Maybe,” she said with a nervous chuckle.

Moments later the pharmacist had, in point of fact, Grabbed, Stabbed, and Plunged. Me, not really seeing shots as that big a deal, I didn’t even realize she had done so until she was sticking a band-aid to my arm. I asked, “Oh, so you’re done?”

“Sure am,” she replied.

Not wanting to disappoint the lady on the other side of the blind I said, “Hang on a sec…”

Then I screamed.

Yes.

In the middle of Walgreen’s.

Employees came running, shoppers peeked around the endcaps of nearby aisles, and everyone in the immediate vicinity who had been “in on the joke” burst out laughing – especially the blind lady behind the blind.

On my way out I wished her and her friend a good day. She chuckled and said, “You, too… And thanks for the entertainment…”

Another satisfied customer.

More to come…

Murv