![]() And everyone needs a glorified taxi now and then.” “Don’t you remember how he tried to kill you?” which is a rarer and more valuable skill. “Being a nerd who can tap on a keyboard or being able to navigate the dark eternities of the Faerie Paths. “Being a glorified taxi does not make you the bigger hero.” “But your computer prowess wouldn’t have mattered if you couldn’t have gotten into the Center in the first place.” “But here would have been no point to you being there if it hadn’t been for my computer prowess.” I walked into the family room to find Arianna and Jack sitting on the couch, arguing. ![]() “Good job! Jack and Arianna got back a couple of minutes ago.” I opened the door and yelled, “Evie alert! Coming into the family room!” She laughed drily, and we walked with our arms around each other to the house. “Well, now that we’re both unemployed fugitives, think of how much time we’ll have to hang out!” She tried to smile, but her eyes filled with tears. With me on your side? Of course things worked out.” “I honestly never thought I would see the light of day again.” He doesn’t give a damn, for the moment, about Getting Ahead or Needs Must Admiring the Best, the two official criteria in adult friendships, and when the boring stranger appears, he puts out his hand and smiles (not really seeing your face) and speaks your name (which doesn’t really belong to your face), saying, “Well, Jack, damned glad you came, come on in, boy! The Friend of Your Youth is the only friend you will ever have, for he hasn’t the slightest concern with calculating his interest or your virtue. It didn’t matter a damn to whom he gave it, for the fact of giving was what mattered, and if you happened to be handy you were automatically endowed with all the appropriate attributes of a friend and forever after your reality is irrelevant. Friendship was something he suddenly discovered and had to give away as a recognition of and payment for the breathlessly opening world which momently divulged itself like a moonflower. What he saw was simply part of the furniture of the wonderful opening world. But he humors the drooling doddering confusion of the universe and continues to address politely that dull stranger by the name which properly belongs to the boy face and to the time when the boy voice called thinly across the late afternoon water or murmured by a campfire at night or in the middle of a crowded street said, “Gee, listen to this–’On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves–’” The Friend of Your Youth is your friend because he does not see you anymore.Īnd perhaps he never saw you. He sees in his mind a face that does not exist anymore, speaks a name – Spike, Bud, Snip, Red, Rusty, Jack, Dave – which belongs to that now nonexistent face but which by some inane doddering confusion of the universe is for the moment attached to a not happily met and boring stranger. Then it wouldn’t seem quite so funny.The Friend of Your Youth is the only friend you will ever have, for he does not really see you. But then I think, what if I was an ant, and she fell on me. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.Īnd my favorite, which I printed and taped to my wall while in middle school: “Whenever I see an old lady slip and fall on a wet sidewalk, my first instinct is to laugh. “Oh, no,” I said, “Disneyland burned down.” He cried and cried, but I think that deep down he thought it was a pretty good joke. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. It’s funny that pirates were always going around searching for treasure, and they never realized that the real treasure was the fond memories they were creating. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it. I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. ![]() If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe you’ll look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because, hey, free dummy. That’s why it makes you feel good when you tell them it was just a joke. Then start an argument with him about who’s going to go get help. Here are a few of my favorites for your enjoyment and/or disapproval.Ī funny thing to do is, if you’re out hiking and your friend gets bitten by a poisonous snake, tell him you’re going to go for help, then go about ten feet and pretend that *you* got bit by a snake. Maybe nothing expresses my interest in low brow dark humor quite so well as Jack Handey and his Deep Thoughts. I like to think of myself as a mixture of high brow and low brow, of deep compassion and dark humor.
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