Tuesday, December 24, 2013

5 Little Words: My Cousin

*Author's note: A random word generator gave me cousin, satire, umbrella, medicine, and shadow. I am challenging myself to write short, creative pieces using the five words given to me.

I left the house early on a Saturday morning. Today was going to be a good day, or at least I was hoping that could be possible for a change. I have experienced quite a run of mediocre ones, which, while fun at first, had become a bit mundane. I stood on the corner of my block and remembered that I had initially planned on making my day into a satire akin to Gulliver's Travels or A Charlie Brown Christmas, but I had needed the sleep after staying up all night knitting myself decorative leg warmers. Satires involve a lot of front-end planning and some biting humour is necessary as well. I was amazingly proficient at biting and was named "Most Likely to Be Humourous (or at least provide humour for others often in embarrassing or accidental circumstances)" by the yearbook staff back in grade 12. Regardless of all of my efforts, I was never able to put the two together. Once I came close - I made my cousin, Helen, very uncomfortable when I gave a 25 minute speech at her engagement party comparing her pact with Dietrich to the Visigoths sacking of Rome in 410. I stood there feeling triumphant, the crowd was stunned (most likely because I had just followed her mother who wept uncontrollably for 5 minutes and then broke into an incredible rendition of the national anthem and a rare uncle who had a talking parrot that was able to read fortunes but only of fellow parrots), Dietrich clapped a little too vigorously (I later learned that he hated ancient Rome) and Helen, poor cousin Helen, how I had wanted to treat her with some appropriate satire at her engagement party as she had requested of me. I had failed once again.

While I was remembering Helen it started to sprinkle with rain and I wished I had brought my umbrella. Often my umbrella seemed to provide me with much more then just shelter - I would be whisked away to a fantasy land full of fairies and elves where candy grew on the trees and big barking dogs tried to chase me until I gave them the dog food I was hiding in my trousers. Sometimes I looked up at the rainbow of colours on my umbrella and I imagined that each was a little less colourful - I sort of felt inadequate while seen with my umbrella, as others seemed a little more interested in what it had to add to the occasion. I subconsciously tried to add colour and flare and roundness to my life, but was totally unable to do this. After years of searching for a reason why it hit me when I experienced a wave of deja vu during the extraction of my wisdom tooth. I remember sitting in my room as a ten-year old watching in horror as my older brother dressed as a particularly friendly clown painted over everything that was colourful making them different shades of brown - my walls, my bed, my toys, my heart. The smell of the paint mixed with the popcorn my parents had made downstairs led me to draw pictures of stick people that had very proper relationships with each other. I decided to retrieve my umbrella before the rain ruined my new perm.

It hit me - I knew what I had to do today! Umbrella in hand, Helen on my mind and satire coursing through my veins (my arteries were coursing with newly oxygenated blood as usual) I went to my pharmacy to retrieve some medicine for my horrible and amazingly hairy back. I often felt that I was predestined to be covered with hair and one day possibly look like a dog show contestant or some sort of extra terrestrial looking to unload some hair samples. In a moment of reckless abandonment after a particularly successful game of Yahtzee, I had accidentally mixed up my protein shake for my roommates' natural scalp elixir (not surprisingly his elixir tasted far better than my drink, but then again I am a big fan of the flavour of castor oil). My hair was plentiful! The first signs of change were seen on my head where my afro dropped towards the ground as a result of gravity and now looked less like a hairdo and more like an auburn artificial putting green. Then it spread to my back and I was worried as I was planning on going speed dating that evening and I fairly certain that the last hairy guy snatched up the only woman who preferred her men to have a touch of Sasquatch in them. My doctor said he had an experimental medicine that he wanted to try and if that failed he had some industrial strength tar and a huge bag of feathers. I was intrigued and excited by those, but had no clue how that would help with my hairiness except to distract others from it.

While walking to the doctor for my medicine, the rain stopped and the sun came out. I became focused on my shadow. Taller than me and walking ahead almost as if it was flaunting its ability to exist in two-dimensions. Dark and mysterious, I became quite impressed with my shadow - sort of like how a father or a trainer of homing pigeons must feel. I felt a twang of guilt as I remember how I crossed the line with my first girlfriend insisting on interacting with her solely as a shadow projection on the wall. She had asked me and pleaded with me to stop while vividly remembering how she had experienced multiple traumatic events involving shadows as a child raised by the two top sock puppet artists this side of the Mississippi ("they insisted on shining a spotlight on the wall of my bedroom 24 hours a day even when I had nose bleeds"). I stopped outside the doctor's office and leaned against the wall of the building gazing up at the sky. A particularly wispy cloud momentarily passed in front of the sun lightly covering me and the surrounding area with a shadow. I wished the shadow was like a large comfortable duvet that could cover me and keep me warm in these nefarious times in which I live.

The door was locked.





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