I’m sorry if my griping irritates you. I’m sorry if you can’t watch TV because I’m always complaining about this bat caught in my hair. I’m sorry if my level of discomfort—my fear of rabies—bores you. I’m sorry you ever met me. Sorry that I was ever born. Sorry that my ancestors stole this land from whoever.
I speak of a rainbow connection. Yes, yes. I see it now: Smiling children with Kool-Aid-stained teeth. Children in need. Children in a world of hurt. Their diversity has not been honored in quite some time. Ages. Their diversity could use a good back rub. Yes. These children are in need of a rainbow connection.
Men wearin’ hats been comin’ out dat door since sun-up. Ain’t seen men wearin’ hats since my grandpa in pictures. And the ‘brellers. Lord—the ‘brellers! Ain’t a rain cloud fur counties but dese folks totin’ ‘em like firewood. One guy was carryin’ four or five of ‘em. Nuttin’ else, just ‘brellers.
Folks ain’t right in the head. Global warmin’ done got folks not right in the head.
This guy who’s following me has got a pad and pencil. Only the pencil doesn’t have an eraser on it. So whatever this guy’s writing about me—it’s not subject to revision.
I generally don’t make a good first impression, even in close-fitting clothes. I know he’s noticed my craving for salt, my excessive yawning, and my dark urine. I should also think that my being prone to easy fractures and bruising between fingers has not escaped his critical eye.
I would remind this guy that still waters run deep, and a diamond in the rough gathers no moss. But somehow I think none of that counts for squat with this guy.
I was blonde for a while in the first grade. I called it my “blonde phase.” You wouldn’t have wanted to know me, then. I was so shallow. I’m embarrassed to remember.
I invented oatmeal. It was December. December the twenty-seventh on a Tuesday. Can’t place the year, but it was before there was oatmeal. By which I mean, before I invented oatmeal. All that maple syrup brown sugar stuff, all that apple and cinnamon business—I had nothing to do with that. That came after oatmeal. Regular old oatmeal is what I invented. And lettuce.
All right, already. One more cigarette trick. But then it’s lights out for you damn kids.
I want my own cable TV show. One so mysterious that people won’t know what it’s about. They’ll keep watching because it’s so mysterious.
The show will have to be taped each week at a different location. Audience members will only get a postcard about where to show up two days before the taping. They’ll call me the Rachael Ray of that mysterious cable TV show. My picture will be everywhere, only nobody will know who I am.
I made you some cookies, but I ate them all on the way over here. You should smell the box though, ‘coz they were really good smelling cookies, and this is a good smelling box.
I’m a carbon-based life form, rite ‘nuff. Double-dipped in sprinkles. I reckon it’s yore lucky day in the lost and found buddy box.
This can only be explained on an etch-a-sketch in your common understanding. This explanation only works in two, eleven, and twenty-six dimensions. This may take a while to draw, but once you see the solution, you will kick yourself.
I, Feet for Ears, son of Ears for Feet, have come to honor an allegiance that once existed between our peoples. We, tender of foot and hard of hearing, once died along side your tribe, and would consider it an honor to once again commingle as fertilizer across your vast and noble land.
Fluoridated water. I’ve seen them with the garden hoses. One end hooked up to the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Fluoride truck—the other gushing unfathomable madness into the municipal waterworks.
Fluoride binds with everything, you see: hydrogen in water, bacteria, friendless, susceptible teenagers… It’s right there on the toothpaste tube at the store, in small print: Proctor and Legalize Gambling. There are thirteen stars for thirteen colonies. Thirteen serpents’ heads for thirteen free masons.
You’ll never see a member of the Trilateral Commission at the dentist. And if you do—that’s the last we’ll see of you!
Tell the gifted children to keep their distance. They can go play Heart and Soul piano duets someplace else. They can finger paint and glue sequins to paper plates all day long if they want—as long as they don’t do it here. No more prodigies who can count to ten backwards. No more papier-mâché cats with popsicle stick legs.
Tell the gifted children to take their business up the street, ‘cause we’ve had our fill of brilliance ‘round here.