SubTropical Brainfreeze

The Perplexing Absence of Logic

"Get that out of your mouth!" my wife ordered, "You don't put that in your mouth." She was in the other room, so I couldn't tell exactly what was happening, but since my son had been putting things in his mouth lately, I knew what the problem was. He seldom put anything in his mouth when he was a baby; why he's started at five I don't understand.

"But it's supposed..." he began his defense.

"No," the judge overruled, "That's Chinese plastic. It's not safe. Don't put anything in your mouth." I wonder how much Chinese plastic I chewed on, drank from, ate with when I was a kid. How are any of us still alive?

He sputtered a couple more times but was shut down quickly. It was well past his bedtime and I could tell by his lack of articulation that he was falling apart and needed a recess, but instead, he shot into my office... appealing to a higher court. He stood in the doorway, bleary-eyed and wobbly, a Halloween novelty straw in his hand. A black straw passed through a grinning orange jack-o-lantern; he was impaled... I don't know what he was grinning about.

"Papa," my son opened.

"Yeah, Bud?"

He gestured at the straw. "It's... a straw!" he undulated.

"Yes," I answered, "You are correct."

"It's... made of Chinese plastic."

"Apparently."

I could tell he was maneuvering for the kill. "Why would anyone... make a STRAW... out of Chinese plastic?" He vibrated with bewildered fury. I couldn't help him.

"Your logic is sound, Bud," I quietly assured him,"But I don't know the answer."

He glared, slack-jawed, at the poisonous drinking straw, then back at me. With his free hand he gestured feebly, as if hoping, with the last of his strength, he could catch a gossamer fleck of rationale drifting in the air.

I admired his ability to think with the sleep-deprived soup that was his brain at that moment, but I found no way to solve his dilemma. "I'm sorry, Bud," I lamented, "but, please, don't put it in your mouth, okay?"

Defeated, he slowly careened from the room.

Supper was ready and salad was on the table. I chopped up my son's lettuce. "Would you like some salad dressing?" I asked him.

"I'm going to have some of my Super Secret Salad Dressing," he answered. He propped a foot up on his chair cushion and made an R2D2 chirp as he pushed an unseen button on the side of his little hiking boot. "There is a refrigerator hidden in my shoe."

He used to pull his Super Secret Salad Dressings out of his shorts. This new shoe fridge was a huge improvement.

"Well, that's mighty handy," I complemented him, "You could get a pair of those big Elton John platforms; no telling what you could stash in those." He stared at me blankly as he shook the imaginary bottle, then lowered the fridge foot and lifted the other. He fumbled about with the air and pushed another noisy button on that shoe.

"What are you doing now?" I inquired.

"The instructions say to microwave it for fifteen seconds."

Hair Today...

My son cut his own hair last night. His strawberry blond bangs were almost getting in his eyes so he thought he needed a trim. With his little orange-handled safety scissors he snipped a long clump out of the front. I found him sweeping hair off the floor. Saying "No! No! No! No!" repeatedly does not restore severed hair follicles, by the way.

He has been denied scissor privileges for the foreseeable future.

I am his barber, mostly because I am too cheap to pay someone $10 to do what I can do in 5 minutes. I frantically combed the remaining bangs over the mangled area, hoping to hide it, camouflage it, make him look less like a melon-headed mutant living in a hidden room in the attic, eating bugs, plotting revenge. I combed, was marginally satisfied, then the coiffure of silken strands slowly slipped and... bug-eater!

Ah, the joys of being a parent.

"Let's plant a flower garden."

It's so easy to say, but when's the last time you dug up two hundred square feet of Saint Augustine sod?

On my day off I stomped a shovel through perfectly good grass to make two flower beds in our yard for my wife and son. My 4-year-old son "helped" me, thus making the job take roughly twice as long as it would have. With a small garden spade he would relocate dirt from one place to another [my sock and shoe were often his targets] and he would weed out bits of grass and roots from the dirt bed. He enjoyed himself far more than I, stating that this was the best job ever... that he wanted to do it when he was all grown up.

As he returned from dumping some lawn scraps, he enthusiastically declared, "I am in a plummering wulsh!"

"A plummering wulsh?" I asked. "Are you sure?"

"Yep, I am in a plummering wulsh!"

I am used to my son's invented words and phrases - they were usually manglings of preexisting terms - but this one I couldn't figure out.

"OK, I'm game, bud," I said, "What is a 'plummering wulsh'?"

"A plummering wulsh," he described, arms spread for dramatic effect, "Is the kind of mood where you can do anything!"

I must admit, I don't experience a plummering wulsh often. Maybe it's my middle-aged mindset, or that deeply ingrained defeatist attitude that often drags me down, but plummering wulshes are a rarity.

I want one, and wish plummering wulshes were more infectious than they are.

"Maybe you can give some of that to me," I suggested.

"You can use mine!" he insisted as he filled my shoe with dirt.

"I drawed you a map," my four-year-old son declared.

"Good," I answered. I pecked away at the keyboard desperately, but the thought path I was on only seconds ago was becoming blurry... a little boy stirring up a cloud of dirt and colorful leaves over its cold surface.

"Where does your map lead me to?" I asked, hoping to disrupt the unending line of verys.

I've created a comic strip and have sent it off to the syndicates for approval. With several weeks written and drawn, I'm starting to slip into the mindset that this small town I've invented and the people within are real, at least on some level... are entitled to be viewed thus. They mean something to me, these folks - they have different personalities and react to life's complexities in different ways.

I like Tolkien's perspective on creative artists: with regard to writers of imaginative fiction specifically, he called them "subcreators". By this he meant that they borrow from THE Creator the physics and mechanics needed to invent another world that does not and never with exist... made purely from borrowed concepts and a God-breathed imagination. And it becomes real in the minds of others. The reader [the one willing to suspend disbelief, anyway] piggybacks a ride into the writer's imagined world.

My little comic strip is hardly on a level with such works of wonder, and is not the stuff of wide-eyed piggybacking... it's just for laughs... but I have a deeper appreciation for JRR Tolkien's concept all the time.

And I have a few piggyback-worthy tales in me, as well... some day.

Sunday afternoon I saw Superman in Leesburg, Florida, shuffling up 12th Street toward downtown. He looked a bit jaundice in complexion, the hairline was receded and frazzled, and a prominent beer gut hung over his belt. He plodded along, flatfooted and completely unflightworthy. His appearance was shocking.

I don't think I would have recognized him at all if he hadn't had the big "S" on his shirt!

It's traumatic when your heroes prove to be disappointments.