Foibles: Speech, uhm, Impeddlement
Welcome back to Foible Monday!
This one is about a thing I call my “speech impeddlement,” because certain words seem to jump on a bicycle and pedal away whenever I go looking for them. I’ll catch them yet . . . then they’ll be sorry. Oddly, it only seems to happen when I’m speaking–not when I’m writing.
Apparently my fingers are smarter than my mouth (big surprise there . . . not).
Most of my friends already know about this. They laugh and laugh and laugh. Okay, maybe I just imagine they do on the inside. I admit it is pretty weird. I don’t want to talk about it . . . so I’ll type it instead. It’s safer that way . . .
Word Finding D— … uhm
Disorder.
If most human brains resemble a glob of overcooked spaghetti left to drain too long, then mine more resembles swiss cheese: it has big round holes in it that words fall into. There aren’t that many holes, though I’ve never tried to count, but there’s no telling which words will trip and fall into them.
The first holed-word I remember not remembering is “backhoe”. I know right? It’s not like this is a word I use often in daily life, but when I saw one parked in my neighborhood one day, all I could tell you was that it was a big yellow hole digging machine that began with a “B”.
This is another weird side-effect of this phenomenon: I can almost always tell you the first letter and a nice definition of the lost word but, for the life of me, I cannot tell you the word itself.
In programmer-ese: It’s an indexing problem.
The latest victim seems to be “passport.” I only know this from a curious teenaged member of my family–at the time–who periodically quizzed me on the green and blue bird with the amazing tail feathers that begins with a “P”, or the place where they put dead bodies that begins with a “G”, or the sparkly round things sewn on dresses that begin with an “S” … or that thing you need to cross an international border that begins with a “P”, which apparently I have already forgotten.
All this good-natured quizzing actually helped pull an abused word or three out of its hole into the light of day. I can remember that big yellow machine now, sometimes. But I’ve found as soon as I help one distressed word out of its hole, some other poor hapless word will fall into it.
Memories …
If only my brain holes kept themselves to my speech centers. Occasionally an entire memory falls victim to this indexing problem, as well. Take a common, ordinary occurrence we both partook in the other day, such as meeting an interesting person at a local park.
A few days later you may wax poetically about this chance meeting and notice my brow furrowing. You’ve caught me attempting to query my index.
Another memory has gone AWOL.
But if you happen to mention the strange rutabaga earrings she was wearing that day—bing, flop, “index match complete,” bonk, ping!—suddenly it all comes flowing back in HD Technicolor with special features and deleted scenes!
Don’t ask me to explain it, as if it made any sense to me; especially since I’d probably lose a word or two in the process. I’m not terribly motivated to try to fix it anyway, because it keeps my friends amused.
Yet Another Daft Cat Tale
I’m not sure what in my karma has caused me to be host to so many insane felines during this life. But it seems unnatural to be without them. There’s something about a cat that reminds us not to take life too seriously. This little story is set just after I graduated from high school and set out on my own. It goes something like this . . .
Notso
The first roommate I ever had who truly understood me wore a beautiful fur coat every day of the year and owned the two-story townhouse we inhabited in Annapolis, Maryland, although she allowed me to pay the mortgage, since she had not an inkling of how money worked. She had beautiful green eyes and a lovely regal expressiveness. We had special dishes from which only she ate, and did so very deliberately from the kitchen floor. Her name was Marble, after the swirling gray and black coat she wore. She’d known me from kittenhood and thought she pretty much had the entire relationship worked out by the time my first big, human relationship had broken down and we were left to our own devices.
She would keep an eye on the place while I was at work, far above being troubled with doing the dishes or cleaning—she despised the vacuum cleaner. She never cooked a single meal, although she spent a lot of time sitting on the stove; but I was always happy to see her at the end of the day. She seemed likewise as happy to see me, too, as long as I kept up on the state of her food and water dishes.
After a while I began to worry that she might be getting lonely staying home alone so much, so one day I stopped by the pet shelter and surveyed the foster mammals there. A dog was definitely out of the question; both Marble and I were both confirmed cat-people, so it had to be another cat. I’m not usually superstitious, but the last thing I was looking for was a black cat; my vacuum cleaner wasn’t ready for a long-hair; and for reasons of my own, there was no way I wanted a male. How that crazy, jet black, little furry guy talked me into bringing him home is a mystery to this day.
I was immediately informed of my mistake from Marble’s incredulous look and the way she avoided both of us for the next few weeks. He was not worth thinking about and I was clearly in the doghouse. But I stuck it out, thinking she was just being stubborn. She stuck it out, thinking I was just being pigheaded and stupid, even for a human.
In the meantime, the little black hairball began to explore his surroundings, insinuating himself into every fold of both of our lives at home until he could be ignored no longer. At first she considered him to be a nuisance, when at last she tired of hissing at him and only getting a dopey kittenish look back, then something to be discouraged—which was impossible, since discouragement wasn’t in his vocabulary. Finally one day I saw her waking up to find him snuggled up against her. She looked ready to bolt in disgust, but then seemed to say “oh, the hell with it,” and went back to sleep. He’d done the same thing to me and it was surprisingly warm, all that fur.
It was a hard thing at first trying to figure out what to call the little bugger. Hairy, Hairball, Fuzzball and lame attempts to find words that alluded to black or darkness were all too obvious and lacked originality. I was sure that once I witnessed enough of his personality a proper monicker would soon present itself.
And witness I did. I ended up naming him Notso, by how often the term fit him.
Where Marble loved to play with string, laser-dots and play ping-pong with tiny bits of balled up paper, Notso preferred to make up his own toys. I once found him attacking a wooden spoon he had rescued from the kitchen counter, spinning it under furniture and flicking it into the air like a projectile. He also favored dust bunnies, sunbeams, and a few things that seemed not to exist at all. Life was a great adventure to him, instigating yoga poses and attack sequences even Marble found incredible.
Not so normal, this one, although his inventiveness was a privilege to behold. Marble tried her best to feign disinterest as much as possible.
Soon I realized how often I had noticed her staring at her once pristine litter box, deep in thought. Where once she kept a fastidiously managed facility, everything properly covered and regraded, these days there would often be a single deposit in the center—emphatically not her own—perched upon a desert island of litter, while the rest of the litter had been strangely pushed over the edge of the pan and onto my shag carpeting. A challenge my aging vacuum cleaner was growing tired of. No amount of coaxing could get Notso to realize he was burying in the wrong direction. I could almost imagine he was attempting some kind of art. Marble was not impressed.
Where Marble kept her coat perfectly groomed, Notso always had at least two or three nasty snarls of hair protruding from his carcass—not that it seemed to faze him whatsoever. I regularly ended up taking the scissors to him. Not so well-groomed.
On more than one occasion, the three of us would be watching a show on television when Notso would spontaneously invent a game during a commercial break, usually involving attacking something furiously evasive and just as nonexistent running across some vertical part of the sofa. Invariable he would end up pitching off the back unexpectedly and landing with a thump behind. I’d turn to Marble and say, “Not so well coordinated either.” Marble usually returned a look that said, “Ya think?”
Over time Marble and I tallied all the ways he lived up to his name: Not so well coordinated, not so neat, not so predictable, not so dainty, not so normal, not so easy to ignore. While his distractions were often entertaining to me, Marble’s orderly world had become a nightmare, although Notso would try his best to cheer her up or include her in his adventures. After a time, she would finally break down and chase him, which he loved, although I don’t know exactly what her intentions were. I would get used to her looking at me in a “what were you thinking, bringing that thing into the house?” way.
It was just my luck that I tend to fall in love with people who are allergic to cats, and it was a sticking point to the advancing relationship for a while. This happened a couple of years after Notso came on the scene, but halfway through Marbles life. Becoming closer to this person and our respective jobs meant selling the townhouse and moving to an apartment, one that did not allow pets. Although the relationship was long and wonderful, I still regret the necessity of finding new homes for my feline family. One day a man answered my ad and asked to see the cats, showing up with his shy tiny daughter. Marble, the more beautiful of the pair, who now looked at me with disdain, quickly disappeared. But Notso was immediately mesmerized by the little girl, following her everywhere, talking to her in his mysterious cat language, playing and impressing her father with his silliness. It turned out they were only looking for one cat, so Notso found a new, happy home almost immediately.
Marble was more of a challenge. Although she tried to hide it, she moped around the townhouse, revisiting his favorite haunts, his odd toys, barely bothering to arrange the litter box so carefully as she once had. It was obvious I had let her down once more and she almost seemed relieved to be carted off by another family after a few more weeks. A decade later, I still wish I could have kept them together. Although I can only hope they both prospered in their new homes, I’m pretty sure Notso, for one, had no problem keeping himself happy.
Another pair of felines, Bunny and Teddy, adopted me soon after I moved back to Portland. The kitten I sadly left behind in Hawaii (I don’t want to talk about it) must have sent them a text, since I was forced from the beginning to make a pact with them to never ever let another relationship get between me and my furry family.
Falling Off a Bridge
My childhood … I suppose I had to go there. For the sake of my memoir, if nothing else. This one is about one of my earliest memories, and nearly my last: when I had a small misunderstanding with a tall bridge.
This one costars my mother via email — completely without her permission, I’m realizing at this late hour. I don’t know if she wanted me to share our conversation so publicly. Stay tuned for the blog where my mom rakes me over the coals for this.
It also depicts my late father from a less than a happy perspective, although I will vindicate him with realizations in a future piece. We all do our best with what he have to work with.
Meanwhile, my misunderstanding with the forces of gravity began . . .
One of my earliest and fondest memories is the day I almost ended my already short life. As usual, I was trying to catch up with my sisters—a recurring theme in my life that I’m still dealing with today—running after them on a walk in the park with my parents. I realize now that I was too distracted before and after the event to pay the actual tragedy much mind. Nor was I much aware of the minor miracle that helped me survive it.
From my Mother’s email on February 2nd, 2010:
“Great Falls, Maryland – a beautiful park on the edge of the Potomac, near the C. and O. towpath – where there is a large area of rocks and waterfalls. There is a path that leads thru the woods, over some rocky ravines by way of a walking bridge, and on to the rocks that border and overlook the river. We were all there – the [older] girls were running ahead (I don’t think Jim was with us-just a baby) – and you were running, too. When we got to the bridge and started across, you tripped and started to roll. It happened very fast. You were over the edge and hanging on with just your hands. Your Dad moved so fast I was amazed. He was in good shape then and strong. He grabbed your arms and lifted you right up and back on the bridge. I looked down into what looked like 15-20 feet of ravine – rocks below. The fall would have killed you. You were very young – probably around 3-4. The whole thing happened in less than a minute – but it could have been a disaster. Not long after that, and the next time we were there, they had installed wire along the sides of the handrail – it would not have happened if that wire had been in place before. I am sure the memory has triggered some nasty nightmares and a fear of falling. It sure gave me the creeps for a long time.”
I was a child dangling from the edge of a bridge, my tiny, weak three-year-old hands somehow miraculously holding me from certain death, rocks and white water visible miles below my tiny feet. I believe any normal person would have earned a healthy case of acrophobia to share with their therapist from this, but somehow the death-by-great-heights issue fell off the bridge without me.
The truth is that I have had no nightmares at all. I love heights. Tall buildings, cliffs and bridges excite me, while climbing lofty antenna towers and flying tiny airplanes were among my simplest pleasures.
The weirdness doesn’t stop there. Instead of discomfort when I recall my near-death experience, the memory only seems to warm my soul. It only took my father’s premature death and a long spell of tearless mourning on my part to figure out why.
My Mom’s reply email on February 25th, 2010:
“Interesting that you are not afraid of heights – I hate them. Remember when we went up on the cable car in New Mexico? I nearly died of fear that day. I don’t like tall ladders even. Maybe my mother dropped me (or threw me – I wouldn’t have put it past her). I am glad you can do all these things and continue to be active and try new stuff.
“The wire on bridge ??? – I am not sure what made them add that. I imagine your father told someone what happened. He was pretty upset – it was a near thing.”
To think that my father was upset for me… I could sit for hours racking my brain and completely fail to remember a time when my father was ever remotely excited to talk to me, or had a significant conversation with me. It was a habit he completely failed to break himself of the rest of his life. But at that moment in my life, after the wrench in my shoulder as he pulled me up over the lip of that bridge, I saw the look on his face. It was the most emotion I had ever seen in my father’s face.
It was concern. For me.
I’m not sure, but I think I held onto that memory—the look on my father’s face—holding it far above the significance of the near-tragedy, because it was such a rare and awesome thing for me. I’ve held onto that moment the rest of my life, because it was not soon to be repeated. Perhaps I might have gotten used to it, this absence of my father’s attention, except for clues that this was not business as usual for my father.
My mother, once more on the subject, March, 3rd, 2010:
“As for your father, I don’t think his inability to relate was particularly aimed at you. He was not very good at “relating” to anyone, really. He was busy with his own interests and I don’t remember that he was really very fatherly with any of you. He was not at home much and often went out in the evening by himself. Hanging around playing with us was not really his thing. We had Fran for that, thank goodness – he filled many spaces in our lives. I miss him, and Eleanor, too, very much. “
She may have a point. My siblings and I were well into adulthood, sharing fast food in a plastic booth, when the subject of relative age came up. We were all shocked to realize that both of my parents were barely seventeen when they perpetrated there first big “mistake”, culminating in my oldest sister. Neither of them were ready to be parents, especially when three more mistakes happened in the next six years. I guess my father took it the hardest, but he still did the right thing, in practice: he married the first woman he had ever been with, despite his libido, and stuck around.
But did he take out his regrets equally on everyone?
I remember playing in my father’s driveway on one of our post-divorce visits. I was probably eight or nine. My father was happily talking to Russel, the neighbor’s kid, while he had spent the last hour with me without so much as a word. Fast-forward to my adulthood, visiting with my brother or sisters at their homes. When he was there he became easily enthralled with their life, their families, while openly stoic about my own. I envied this attention and acceptance over the interim of years, wondering what I would have to do to earn some for myself one day.
It was not to be.
He died weeks before I had finally planned to talk to him openly about it. I’ve since realized what an anomaly I was on his radar. My shyness around him was not the culprit, as I’d often assumed. That was merely a symptom of the differences he may have gleaned about me, but not understood. How can I blame him if it took so many years to understand my own idiosyncrasies (i.e., my queerness). By that time my father was gone, my original plans to talk to him would have been premature anyway. And would it have made any difference to him?
I’ll never know. I only hope that wherever he is now, understanding went along as part of the package. But in life, my father and I never really knew each other.
My grandfather—my dad’s dad—was another story. He always believed in me, seeing me more for my intelligence and potential in life than the way I looked or acted. He and my grandmother took me in for a year after I graduated high school. He was the one who played chess with me every night, pushed me to find my career during the day, talked to me about my intelligence and potential in life. Like my mother, I remember him as a intensely positive force in my life.
My parents parted ways decades ago. So to hear my mother say she misses her in-laws after all this time is to find out something I never knew about her. It makes me realize that instead of regretting a connection I never made, perhaps I should be getting to know my mother a little better—while she’s still in a talkative mood. =)
We now return you to our regularly scheduled program of silliness and current events. Please exit the memoir to the right after it comes to a full and complete stop. Thank you for riding around in my addled mind. Come back soon!
Penguin Clown Cars
Okay, let’s get serious here. Yeah, you took one look at that title and you knew I was going to get all serious on you. I know, I’m sorry.
The thing is this: Wait . . . I forgot what I was going to talk about. Wouldn’t it be funny if I ended it here? ^_^
Uhm . . . So, the thing is this:
Say you go to the circus and the little car drives up, and the doors open, and suddenly a whole hoard of the most freakishly scary things you can imagine come piling out of it like . . . like cockroaches from wherever cockroaches come from. Yes, I mean clowns.
Raise your hands whoever doesn’t think clowns are scary.
Okay, you and . . . you.
Right. You see, you two are simply abnormal. I mean, look at you, sitting there all by yourself with your hand up in the air — that’s just strange. You’re both a closet clowns, aren’t you? You’re freaking me out here.
So, my serious question is this: Why clowns? Who thought this was a good idea? Clowns simply look far more natural skulking about with sharp butcher knives in dark alleys than crawling out of Mini Coopers. I suppose they could try butcher knives with the Mini Cooper, but it would be hell on the upholstery.
Why couldn’t they just use penguins or something? Penguins are cute. They have that cute walk waddle thing going on. They all come sporting a tux already–they’re practically always dressed for any formal occasion! They live in the coldest friggin’ place in the world, so you know they’re looking for work somewhere warmer. Did I mention they were cute?
But best of all, they have those flightless wing things that are totally unsuited for carrying butcher knives.
I’m just saying, it’s time we started calculating just how many penguins it takes to fill a Mini Cooper. I’m betting a lot more than the clowns can manage. I’m calling my congressman about this in the morning.
We can feed the clowns to the Orcas. Problem solved!
I’m going to earn that Nobel Prize yet!*
[ * Overlooked 889 times for a Nobel already. Grrrr. I don’t want to talk about it. ]
Random Amoebic Fiction
One of the many seemingly random “Bits” I hope to explore in this space–my final frontier . . . is my fiction work. As if reality wasn’t suffering enough here already, hmm?
By fiction I mean both screenplays and novels, perhaps even some short pieces.
Like everything else that spews from my fingers, like Mork from Ork in reverse, my fiction also verges on weirdness . . . or hadn’t you noticed? I kinda like throwing normal present day people in normal settings into something a little unusual and watch what happens.
Kind of like what I do with you here. ~giggle~
Here’s one short example that randomly landed on me in a Creative Writing/Fiction class a few college terms ago. Don’t ask me what I was on at the time . . . I don’t want to talk about it.
It goes something like this . . .
Ms. Amoeba, P.I.
The bullet holes were gone. I felt around my chest and abdomen, but they were nowhere to be found. Maybe I’d imagined the whole thing and simply fainted, like women are always doing in old movies. Twits. But the memory of the bullets tearing into me was painfully clear. The two goons with the semi-automatics had fired at least a dozen rounds into me and left me for dead in this trash-strewn alley.
Or so I thought. Even my dress was unscathed.
I got up, shook it off, and made my way to Tony Desilio’s lounge, determined to find the answers to my first mystery. The second would have to wait, the one with the tiny saucer that had landed in the street in front of me and gone squish. I wasn’t sure I saw that either, especially the weird ooze that leaked out. I know I shouldn’t have touched it. The blur of memories that hit me at that point don’t bear thinking about, at least until I got a drink in me. The thugs dragged me into the alley while I was distracted with that.
Or so they thought.
When I arrived at Tony’s, I expected more trouble, but the goon at the door that looked like a meat locker just gave me the hairy eyeball and let me in. The weasel that shot me first was waiting in the wide foyer. I could tell they both sported big revolvers under sweaty armpits.
“Sid, the broad’s still alive,” said the bouncer .
“Shut up, Dob, and check her for a vest,” said Sid, eyeballing me. He looked less cool than he acted.
The bouncer, as chivalrous as a hockey player, bounced me against the wall—hard—to make me more cooperative, but the effect was anticlimactic. My back seemed to flatten against the cheap paneling, then bounce back.
Weird was not the word.
With his other meaty paw, Dob reached toward my blouse, a flicker of something unsavory in his eyes as his fingers hovered over my cleavage. I felt that helpless thing women hate so much, for about three seconds. This truly pissed me off.
I shifted and something went squish. The arm that was wrenched behind my back melted away–and reconstitute in front of me. I didn’t have time to freak out about it. Maybe later.
All I knew was they were trying to do to me what they already did to my family. I could feel my anger focusing into the clenching of my relatively small fist, becoming a rock-hard ball of hate, a fist-sized boulder of it. Without thinking, I swung it up, striking Dob hard enough to send him flying off his feet. Everyone in the room was shocked, including me.
Sid brought his gun up, but the big one rolled over and jumped me first, pinning me to the floor under 400 pounds of smelly flesh.
The next thing I knew I was on my feet again, slapping away Sid’s pistol, then Sid, who hit the far wall, then folded onto the floor. The bouncer hoisted himself off the floor staring at his hands.
“What the hell are you lady?” he said, “You melted. Slipped away like Jello.”
I stepped toward him and he backed away.
“Shoo!” I said and he disappeared out the front door under his own steam.
I stepped past Sid’s limp form and headed for Tony’s office, my mind reeling with what just happened. Whatever it was, it didn’t stop me from my original goal. Nothing could stop me from that. Tony was going to pay. I entered and closed the door behind me. Tony swiveled his chair toward me and smiled.
“Hey, Babe. Nice to see you. Still looking good despite reports from my guys.” he was a cool customer right to the end. “You’re really starting to annoy me.”
“I’m just getting started.”
He didn’t seem impressed. I’d left my gun back at the office, I wouldn’t have been impressed either. I was about the same shape as a cocktail waitress. A smart one.
Tony stood up from his desk and came toward me. I decide to meet him halfway.
“You killed my family,” I said through my teeth. “Burned them alive in a fireball. Got anything to say for yourself?”
“Only that my boys are getting clumsy. They were just supposed to get you. I don’t like nosy women in my business. Here, let me get the boys in here so we can tie up this loose end.”
He went to whistle and I caught his hand. He looked down, mesmerized as my hand melted and flowed over his. The look of terror came when I pulled him to me and his body became engulfed in parts of me, as well. I didn’t know what I was doing, but my body did. He dissolved quickly, thousands of horrible deeds flashing into my mind as his skull was digested into me. When it was done, there wasn’t a cell of him left and I knew his every secret.
Half disgusted, half vindicated, I dropped into his chair and stared at my hands. They looked completely normal. I had become some kind of human-amoeba thing, and I’d just digested someone alive. How do I deal with that?
I was a PI, not a late night cinema monster. What do I do with this?
The tiny UFO came to mind, squashed under the tire of that checkered cab. The answers had to be there. No sooner had a I thought the thought, than memories flooded in. Memories that weren’t mine.
Frantic fighting to get control of my ship. Strange buildings falshing past, then asphalt racing up. There was an awful crash. Then a close-up of a zigzagged Michelin putting out my lights, before I could react. All I felt then on were memories of memories–also not mine. Seems aliens’ lives flashed in front of them at death, too.
I saw the history of a world far from our own, familiar weirdness filling my human side with awe. This creature was not a monster. It had been an emissary of peace, a critter with an important mission. And as it died it came to a desperate decision. I came to my senses realizing a dead alien emissary somehow passed something of itself into a skirt-wearing P.I., who could suddenly do things to bad guys that would put her off her grain for weeks.
Lucky me.
—Excerpt of Ms. Amoeba, by Miki Marshall
Not my usual cup of bananas, this anti-heroine thing. At the time I thought it might have some promise as a possible prelude to a series of stories. I’m not sure of the gruesome ending though. ~shiver~
I’m kinda wondering what you think. (No, really!) I mean, if you’re weird enough to still be reading my blog, I might as well put you to work. You my kinda people!*
[ * i.e., weird. ]