BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

So, it’s no secret that this time of year is my writing time. Between January and July is when I toss words at the page as fast as I can, in order to meet manuscript deadlines and all that jazz…All you have to do is look at my tour schedule and see that it is blocked out and labeled as such. There was actually a time in my life when I used a Day Planner and knew where I was supposed to be and when. These days it’s a webpage and Outlook, and I  have no idea what’s going on. How times have changed…

But I digress, as usual…

Obviously, the “job” of tossing words at the page cuts into my “fun” of tossing words at the page, i.e. blogging time.

Well… That is kind of what I am here to warn you about.

By now, most of you should be well aware of the major move Brainpan Leakage made from Myspace to its current local WordPress platform. As I said in an earlier blog, I am pretty much having an illicit affair with this software because of its flexibility (different kind of flexible, kids… Minds up here out of the gutter please…)

Since I am able to write offline blog entries pretty much anywhere now, import them into the software, then schedule them to appear at some point in the future… Well, let’s just say I’m kind of oogly all over because of that. Therefore, I am taking advantage of the feature in spades.

Over the next days and weeks, you are going to be subjected to a blog “mini series”. Basically, a whole raft of consecutive blog entries entitled Mahwage, (yeah, Marriage but with the Princess Bride twist to it)… Each has its own subtitle that will hopefully make some manner of sense as you read along.

Basically, this mini series is the tale of how I came to be married to my lovely bride of 21+ years. I will forego further explanation at this point, because the first entry goes into more detail as to the why’s and wherefore’s of this story being told.

At any rate, it is my sincere hope that it will entertain you to some degree. I am more than willing to admit that not all of it is “laugh out loud” funny. Some of it is serious, some of it is sappy and sentimental.  Well, probably a lot of it is sappy and sentimental… But, yes, some of it is  definitely amusing… hopefully in not too much of a “had to be there” fashion if I have translated the events to the page correctly…

I’ve endeavored to leave out the drudgery, and definitely the stuff too personal for public consumption at all.

So, hopefully it will be worth the read…

Hey, it worked for Nicholas Sparks, so why shouldn’t I give it a try? With my own particular style, and a good bit of humor, of course…

More to come…

Murv

I need one of these BBC’s…

Well, not really. They’d probably just censor me left and right, and we can’t have that.  It would make for some blog posts that look like a government document released under the Freedom of Information Act. 27 conjunctions, 12 verbs, and 1 pronoun spread out across 53 pages and situated in between long, black marks blocking out everything else in the whole document.

Oh yeah… downright riveting…

No, I think what I need is a bureau full of content to put in my blogs. Yeah… That would be helpful. Provided it has some good stuff in there, not just underwear and socks…And, by bureaus in this case, obviously I am talking about a chest of drawers.

Speaking of bureaus filled with good stuff, sometimes the good stuff is sitting on top of them instead of in them… Or, so it seems.

I suppose it is all a matter of perspective. To adults, the top of a bureau can be a catch all. A place for combs, brushes, your wallet, your watch. Maybe a plant that you forget to water. 58 cents in change. A stick of chewing gum you’ve been carrying around for 2 years. A monkey… wait… not a monkey… Well, you get the idea.

To a married couple it’s a bit different. It becomes a no-man’s land…in my case anyway… And, by no-man’s land I mean there’s no room at all for me to put anything there because it is covered with my wife’s stuff…And, y’all know how EK is. You don’t mess with her stuff or she goes all redhead on you, and well… it ain’t pretty. She is… Pretty, I mean. In fact, she’s downright hot, even when she’s pissed off… but, she can be just plain evil, which is why we call her Satan in high heels… Hence why you don’t mess with her stuff. You following me on that one? Good.

But see, now you’ve gone and gotten me off track again. Shame on you…

Back to that matter of perspective thing. To children, the top of a bureau isn’t as much a no-man’s land, as it is a treasure trove of all things sparkly and out of reach. Probably because they are so short. (that last part is just a guess on my part.) The first part of the statement, however, I know to be fact… How? That’s easy, from experience.

You see, when I was but a wee author type person – 3 1/2 years old in fact – I stood before a four drawer bureau, staring up at the trinket covered summit, and in that moment it became my Mount Everest. My K2. My mountain to conquer.

Literally…

Yeah, I climbed the damn thing. And, to prove how tough I was, I scaled the face of this mountain by free-climbing. No pitons, carabiners, or ropes, and definitely without the benefit of Sherpas or even base camps. I’m telling you, I was a regular action hero…

…right up until the damn thing toppled over on top of me.

The edge of the top put a crease in my forehead, and who knows, I may have actually lost consciousness. Like most folks nearing the half century mark, for me most of those memories are a blur, and the blurs are surrounded by huge gaps of absolutely nothing. The remaining vivid recollections I have from that incident are few…in fact, really only two. One is the fact that my father was working the night shift at McDonnell Aircraft Corporation and we only had one car, so my mother and I waited for a cab to take us to the hospital. I remember that because we sat by the open door of our ground floor apartment, watching out the window for it to arrive. The other was the X-Ray technician wheeling me in to “take a picture of my head”…

Hmmm… A chest of drawers fell on my head, then they beamed radiation at it… Maybe that’s why I turned out all “whimsical in the brainpan.”

Anyhow, I was okay. No fracture, no major problems. Just a very minor concussion. Good thing little kids have elastic skulls. I heard stories for most of my life about how my father rushed home from work and fussed over me. I always heard that from my mother, because my father was a man of few words and it wasn’t like him to be overly forthcoming with his emotions. I suspect his reaction might have embarrassed him a bit, or maybe he was simply trying to be an example of a “man” so that I would know how to act when I grew up. (He was a bit old-school… I suppose I am too in many ways, as since his death in 2003, I find myself virtually channeling him on a regular basis…)

Anyhow, back to bureaus – doesn’t matter what kind really. You see, it seems my most popular blogs are the one’s where I tell stories about the ridiculous  – and sometimes humorous – things that happen in my life. So, my guess is this recent clacking of dominos in my head is just my subconscious telling me what should be leaking out of my brainpan, so to speak.

All good… I’m listening.

Now, this is not to say there won’t be other types of things popping up here. I’m sure there will. In fact, there are a few of us author types right in the middle of planning a “blog tour” whereby we guest post on one another’s blogs. They’ll probably kick me out of the tour after a couple of my posts… won’t THEIR readers be surprised, eh?

But, the long and short of it is this: The stories of silliness in my life will continue. Just like Dave Barry, the late Erma Bombeck, and a whole host of other writers… Who knows? Maybe someday I will get a column somewhere too… It’ll probably on the back of an envelope, written in pencil,  and discarded in the recycle bin, but hey… A column is a column.

Won’t my journalism teachers be so proud.

More to come…

Murv