BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

THE PUF REPORT: Part 2 of 5

You know, this whole being an author gig is kind of interesting, in a psychological mindf*ck sort of way, if you get my meaning.

Now, if you don’t get my meaning, I hope you will by the end of this blog entry. But – and this is a big but (stop snickering) – before I go any further, I want to point out an important bit of info: I write because I enjoy writing. I sought publication because I enjoy sharing stories, and I’ll admit that it’s nice to get paid to do something you enjoy. (Not that the paycheck is all that big, mind you.) So, writing was pretty much my only choice in the  “professions I truly enjoy” category because I don’t have the necessary endowments to make it big in the adult film industry.

But, be that as it may, what I’m driving at here is the fact that I did NOT go into this profession seeking fame. Really and truly, I didn’t. With fame comes all sorts of responsibility that I really don’t want. Unfortunately, by definition, the whole “branding” and “marketing” thing does tend to make your name known to readers of a particular genre and that sort of thing.  Ergo, while not necessarily what you would call “fame”, there is a certain level of “recognition” that is achieved. It’s actually even somewhat necessary – as I said, “marketing” – in order to have any kind of success in this field.  Yeah, it just sorta comes with the territory, like it or not.

Fortunately for me, I’m a ham and I don’t mind a little bit of attention every now and then. Unfortunately, however, I am afraid I might have become a bit used to it.

Okay, before anyone says anything about that statement above, no, the author thing hasn’t gone to my head. Dorothy Morrison would probably tell you otherwise and that I have to use a pair of scissors to get out of a pullover shirt, but that’s simply not true. (I’ve had all of them altered to include a Velcro quick release a the shoulder seams.) That, and she lies on me all the time. It’s how she is.

Still, with all that said, I have become somewhat used to arriving at an event and having people recognize who I am and be happy to see me.

This is where we segue to Lasagna.

Okay, I’ll sit back for a second and wait for everyone to slip into their neck braces, what with that sudden case of whiplash coming out of nowhere… Everybody ready? Good… Here we go…

At PUF (Pagan Unity Festival) there is a community feast on Saturday night. Everyone brings a dish to share and the event usually preps a major entree like ham and chicken or something of that sort. There’s food for miles, but we are actually going to get to that in a later blog, so I won’t give you all the food details right now. The point behind me telling you this is that some years back everyone donated frozen lasagna. Yeah…everyone… Their dish to share was the old standby, family-sized pan of frozen, layered, Italian-American pasta. PUF literally received something like 40 pans of it. In the wake of this glut of pasta the fest has requested that no one donate lasagna ever again under pain of horrible and terrible, prolonged, agonizing death. Thank you, and go about enjoying yourselves now. Etc.

Well… you know me… I take that as a challenge… Yeah, you guessed it. Every year it is a moral imperative that I and my crew donate a frozen lasagna, if for no other reason than to get a decent laugh. Now, since we do this primarily as a joke, we buy cheap lasagna. And, since it is frozen, we tend to buy it when we get close to the event – as in just a few miles away. The past few years it has been obtained from the Kroger in Dickson, TN since that is right near the park where PUF is held.

So, by now I am sure you are all wondering just exactly what Kroger Frozen Lasagna has to do with this whole authoring thing, fame, and even more so, why this post is titled “Where’s Kat?”. Well, believe it or not, it all fits together.

Seriously. Would I lie about that? (Okay, don’t answer that.)

Ahem… Koff… Koff… Well, let me see if I can tie it all together for you. Obviously, “Kat” is none other than E K. If that wasn’t obvious, it should be now that I have told you (wink wink, nudge nudge). At any rate, after she was through torturing Johnathan… Well… Actually she’s never truly finished torturing anyone… But, moving on… After she was finished torturing Johnathan for the time being, we finally rolled into Montgomery Bell State Park where PUF is held each year. We checked in at the gate, did our annual “Royal Wave” as Johnathan and I rode down to the cabin on the back of the van, and then started to unload. (Note: The only reason E K doesn’t make us ride on the outside of the van during the rest of the trip is because it is illegal on the highway. Although, on numerous occasions she has been known to tie someone up and put them in the car top luggage carrier, but that’s another story.)

As we were unloading the van, I noticed that the Frozen Lasagna was  well on its way to getting melty, so I grabbed it up and headed down the hill to the main hall where the kitchen and fridges are located. It was nice to finally be off the road after a long drive, and I was excited to see all the folks I call my friends, but who I only get to visit with about once per year.

When I reached the bottom of the hill I walked into the dining hall, then through the doors and into the kitchen. There was bustling activity among the crew as they prepared the evening meal. I grinned and tossed the lasagna on the counter as I always do. It felt like I was coming home again. For a brief few seconds, anyway…

You see, usually I am greeted with something along the line of, “Murv’s here!” being shouted with much excitement. This year, however, instead of anything involving my name and happiness over my arrival, what met my ears was, “Where’s Kat?”

Initially I figured this was just an odd anomaly. A one-time occurrence. Nothing that should raise any sort of concern. But then someone came out of the back, rounded the corner, saw me, then smiled and asked, “Where’s Kat?” Then, someone came in through the doors behind me, noticed I was standing there and said, “Oh hi, Murv. Where’s Kat?”

I answered the question two dozen times before I made it out of the dining hall, only to be bombarded with it all the way back up the hill to our cabin. I  finally lost count of how many more times it was asked of me over the weekend. Suffice it to say, it became painfully clear that I had been unceremoniously and completely usurped by the Evil Redhead.  Murv was nobody. All hail E K.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I mean, she’s far prettier than I’ll ever be, and then there’s that whole “hot, sexy, evil without boundaries” thing she has going for her. I suppose it was only a matter of time…

But, you know, that’s not the most troublesome development out of all this… As always, the planning for the following year’s PUF begins approximately 24 hours after the end of the current year’s PUF, so all of that is already in full swing. Not unusual, except that I’ve already been hearing rumors that we author types are being completely cut from the program.

Apparently E K is going to be the 2010 Guest of Honor.

More to come…

Murv

The next installment in THE PUF REPORT: Part 3 of 5 – Dingle? What’s A Dingle?

Kids can flat out scare the crap out of you.

Just so we are on the same page, I’m not just talking about when they run into the street without looking because they are chasing an errant soccer ball, or even when you find them trying to stick a fork in an electrical outlet. Those are definitely heart stoppers, but I’m talking about a different kind of scared. Honestly, maybe scare is too strong a word. Perhaps surprise, flabbergast, or shock might be better choices.

What I am talking about are the things they say that carry connotations that they don’t even understand. And, when you get right down to it, we’re all guilty of it as some point in our lives. I can clearly recall an incident where I said something that caused my father to raise an eyebrow one day. If I am recalling his facial expression correctly, I think it was something along the line of “crap, how do I handle this one?“

In my particular instance, it was during a fairly hot summer when central air was a pipe dream for us poor folk, and the only reason we even had a window unit was due to the fact that my sister had fallen and broken her collarbone. Since she had to wear an itchy, bulky brace, and she was only about 6, we had to keep her cooled down lest she toss and turn, which would only serve to aggravate the fracture. As I recall, that particular summer the entire family pretty much slept in the living room where the window unit was installed.

But, back to my jaw dropper… I was around 10, so I hadn’t quite entered puberty, but was kind of on the edge of that slippery slope, so I suspect my parents were already on high alert and looking for the first signs of pimples, wet dreams, and a sudden lack of “cooties” in the opposite sex. I think that’s probably what made my comment such a shocker for my dad. We were sitting in the living room, watching TV, and out of the clear blue I announced that I felt like I needed to “take a cold shower.”

My father jerked his head toward me and stared like I had just grown antlers. The reality of it is, I was hot and sweaty. I had been outside playing with friends a bit earlier, riding my bike and all that jazz, and unfortunately that window unit simply wasn’t keeping up with the heat that day. Of course, a few years later I came to understand the underlying significance of the “cold shower,” and it suddenly dawned on me why I had damn near given my father a heart attack.

Well, just the other day, I had an opportunity to experience something similar, and if my dad was still with us, I’m sure he would be laughing his a$$ off. Oh, who am I kidding… He’s probably standing behind me right now, doubled over in laughter… I just can’t see him.

So, anyway, on with my bout of heart palpitations… Whenever the weather is nice I walk the offspring to school. It’s a good way to spend some quality time with the kid sans distractions like Nintendo DS, TV, and in recent months her discovery of the telephone. It’s also a good way to get some exercise. A leisurely walk to the school, then after I drop her off I take the long way home and pick up the pace to get the blood flowing and burn some calories.

As it happens, during the week in question the kid was on spring break, so we made it our habit to walk to the post office each morning to check the PO Box, and drop off any mail we might need to get out that day. That way we stayed in the habit of walking and still got some exercise. As usual, we would chit-chat about stuff, most of which I don’t really understand, but I listen anyway – apparently there’s some kid named after a northwestern state who sings on TV, and she’s friends with some guys who are brothers in a band, and some guy in that same band named Rick or Nick or something like that is really cute. Plus, if you log on to something-or-another-giggly-wonky pets dot com, you can have a pet monster and get points or some such.

You know what I’m talking about… The stuff that is important in a 9-year-old kid’s life. And, like a good parent you listen and do your best to interact so that the child understands that they are important.

So… On the day in question, the short person was finished telling me about which of her friends in school was “in love” with which of the brothers in the band that the “state kid” knows. She was quiet for a bit, then moved on to one of her quests for information about the origins of her parents. Kids will do this every now and then… Stuff like, “When did you meet Mommy?” and “Why do you and Mommy do that kissy-kissy thing when she leaves for work?”

Typical kid questions.

Well, this particular quest started innocently enough by her asking how to pronounce the name of a particular local Real Estate firm we happened to pass by during our walk. I told her, then added that her grandmother, (my mother, who unfortunately passed long before the offspring was born), had worked there a long time ago.

This, of course, led to, “When did she work there?”

To which I answered, “Oh, a long time. Probably about 25 years ago.”

“25 years! That’s a really long time ago.”

“Yep. I think it was probably even before I met your mother.”

After a few seconds spent walking along in silence with her pondering the sidewalk ahead of us, she asked, “How old were you when you met Mommy?”

“Well,” I said. “Let me see… I think I was 23.”

“23? How old are you now?”

“Old.”

“Are you 48?”

“I think I’m 47.”

“You don’t know for sure?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s 47.”

“How can you not know for sure how old you are?”

“When you get to be my age, it really isn’t that important. But, yes, I’m 47.”

“Okay, so you were 23 when you met Mommy?”

“I think so,” I told her, then did some quick math aloud. “Let’s see, I’m pretty sure I turned 24 very shortly after we met. Then, we moved in together and a few months later we celebrated my 25th birthday at the little apartment where we lived… I definitely remember that for sure. So, yeah, I had to have been 23 when we first met.”

Kids minds working the way they do, she abandoned the whole age issue itself and asked, “What did Mommy get you for your 25th birthday?”

Now dear readers, please remember that E K and I were relatively poor back then, as I outlined in the “Mahwage” blog entries. So the love of my life made homemade stir-fry – yes, I know, I’ve pointed out that she doesn’t cook. But, when I can convince her to get into the kitchen, she makes the best stir-fry on the planet. Topping off the meal as a centerpiece of the birthday celebration – foodwise, at any rate – was a big, decorated chocolate chip cookie. This was, of course, followed by the crowning jewel, that being “adult activities”. These shall remain unwritten. Suffice it to say, they also remained unspoken, but in that moment were certainly remembered fondly, which I think added to my shock.

I shrugged and answered the offspring’s question. “A big cookie.”

My kid stopped dead in her tracks and yelped, “A Big Pussy?”

I almost dropped the grocery bag of sundries we had picked up from Walgreens a couple of blocks back. My heart jumped into my throat, my eyes bugged, and I spun around to look at her with what I am certain was horrified shock on my face.

“Cookie…” I replied. “She gave me a big chocolate chip cookie that said happy birthday on it.”

“Oh,” the offspring said with a nod. “I thought you said she gave you a pussycat.”

Upon hearing her explanation, I was able to start breathing again.

Like I said, I’m sure the departed souls of my parents are having a good laugh over this one. I think my saving grace in this instance is that we weren’t in the middle of a crowded store with dozens of onlookers.

But, just to be on the safe side, I think maybe I’ll take the kid to have her ears checked before I answer any more questions…

More to come…

Murv