Having a bit of a backlog of stuff to post here at heptapod.org after spending the greater part of Friday fussing over the fact that I really had nothing to write. Of course treatises dealing with the subject of writer's block are old hat to the point of being cliché and self-parody.
Being the sole proprietor, editor and contributor of the vaunted and fabled heptapod.org I don't have an assistant who can pull a ramble off the spike and fill up the space usually filled with an average of seven hundred words.
Let it be known to the masses of gentle readers, who would put Mahatman Ghandi to shame with the versimilitudinous compassion and temperate natures, that for the past couple of months there has been hidden text at heptapod.org with the sole purpose of filling up space when I lack dreams or simply have experienced the banality of my humble existence.
"Oyster sauce?" and I wrinkled up my nose.
"No, did you say oyster sauce?"
I thought it was funny. She appears to hear things and understand things in a strange fashion. It was revealed last Thursday that she thought the phrase "might as well" was "minus well" causing much confusion during a managers-only IM chat.
Even more amusing is the fact that she isn't wasn't alone in this case. Delicious malapriapisms, you must suck them.
Sadly the preamble is not necessary and only serves to draw attention to myself which is important since heptapod.org is all about me.
Long ago and about seventeen hundred miles away I was a young lad in a maroon winter coat that was purchased one crowded Sunday afternoon at The Burlington Coat Factory.
Years before they sold shoes and made their advertising noteworthy in northeastern television broadcasts by celebrating the dearth of footwear upon their uncounted shelves and racks. The most awful thing about the purchase wasn't being four foot three and needlessly jostled by strangers and being knocked into forests of clothes. The horror lay in the fact that my mother was present and kept saying "Pick out something you like" and panicking because her statement was translated into "You have to find the coat that I like and if you don't then you're a failure."
Ruddy cheeked and wreathed in the vapor of my breath I stood in the swampy backyard of the home of my youth.
I'm certain this was before the house was renovated into the awesomeness between second and eighth grades. In fact I was always surprised that I had lived someplace else other than this humble yellow house with dark red trim and really didn't believe it. Even more frustrating I don't really remember my first coherent thoughts beyond an incident when I was three years old. My mother had designated a sidewalk near a cul-de-sac as being Daddy's Sidewalk while the sidewalk out in front of the house was Mommy's Sidewalk. She warned me never to go on Daddy's Sidewalk when he wasn't home or he would be plenty sore at me.
At the tender age of three I had rebelled and rode my little red tricycle onto Daddy's Sidewalk and got as far as the big green house next door. Once I reached their driveway and touched the bumper of the Duster, this car fascinated me because of the mascot resembling the Tasmanian Devil, I began to panic because suddenly I had to go to the bathroom. I didn't want Mommy to be mad at me for shitting my pants, going on Daddy's Sidewalk and simply because Mommy being angry was a Bad Thing (tm). Pedalling was too slow so I pressed my little butt down as hard as I could to the seat and pulled with my legs because it was far more expedient. When I had reached the nightmare tree, an elm which had 'eyes' from removed branches, which was the tallest tree on Earth to me nature prevailed and soiled me.
That wintery day I strode through the backyard and decided to draw something in the snow by dragging my feet. Eventually the outline of a giant took form and I ran back inside insisting that my mother come out to look at what I did. Her response was typical and unchanged through my three-cum-four decades.
"Oh."
Come on, I thought, there has to be more of a reaction! There has to be! So I needled her a bit and asked, "Is it bigger than God?" thinking this would give a frame of reference for what constitutes enormity. Thing is that even at that age I didn't believe in the divine or the celestial. I knew it wasn't bigger than the nightmare tree which had a malevolent connection with my father's sinister Jerry Mahoney doll which haunted my childhood's closet.
On the few occasions that I was dragged to church and heard the priest, sometimes CCD teachers, refer to the church as "God's House" I'd look up and see if there was a God looking down on all the people sitting through some boring old guy with a funny name (Coyle rhymes with coil which always became SPROIIII-IIII-IIII-NNNGGGGG in my head just like in cartoons) give a speech that nobody really cared about until everyone woke up to shake hands with strangers followed by ducking out with my parents for some unknown reason when everyone lined up for something that I later learned was the celebration of the Eucharist.
After my first communion I thought, "Oh, the wine sucks and the wafer tastes like shit. That's why they left!"
Without hesitation she replied, "No, God's much bigger" and went back inside leaving me sadly staring at my grand creation which became irrelevant. Thinking back I should've taken a piss around my snowy Cerne Abbas giant's head making it into a halo and telling her to come out and look at her god.
The beating would've been worth it.
