 |
Editor's ViewpointMeditations Of A Minnesota Mossback |
Real Life Zany Plots … Facing Life’s Underbelly … And How To Turn Orange
Here I am again, sitting in front of a flatscreen monitor— the day before we go to press— hoping something comes to me. I realize now that I’ve been doing this for years.
At the tender age of 10, I sat in front of my grandmother’s electric Smith Corona, waiting for a flash of inspiration, the sheet of typing paper waiting blankly. At the time, I was under the impression that real writers wrote fiction. But for the life of me, I just couldn’t envision any other story than the one I was living in.
What I know now—40 years later—is that given a little time, that would probably have been sufficient. Real life has enough zany tales in it to satisfy.
There was the Easter chick my parents bought for my little sister, for example. Some irrational soul had dyed the whole batch of them “spring green,” but my folks were quite sure the green fluff would disappear when the thing finally molted.
Everything went according to plan, except the white chicken retained the green beneath its wings for the rest of its days. Every time that chicken would get to flapping, we’d enjoy a flash of green armpits. (Do chickens have armpits?)
Or the time on a dark Halloween night when, on our way home to pick up my youngest sister to take her trick-or-treating, we found a straw-stuffed, fully-dressed dummy—complete with knife and fake blood—in the middle of the street. In order to forestall an accident, we collected the dummy, chucked it into the back seat, and promptly forgot about it. Enter little sister in the darkened car, candy-collection pillowcase at the ready.
I’ll never forget the screams! Why would anybody want to write fiction? Non-fiction is pretty interesting.
I collect snippets of the things that make me laugh. A recent headline proclaimed, “Global Warming Protest Frozen Out By Massive Snowfall.” Out came the virtual scissors; that headline was snipped and saved in my “Mossback” ideas file.
And then, of course, there are The Citizen’s Police Reports. Adored by many, disparaged by some, it’s possible that their ongoing popularity illustrates a fundamental need of humans to face the underbelly of real life with a speck of humor.
I get occasional requests to abandon The Citizen’s quirky presentation of the misdeeds of the few. But then I get impassioned e-mailed pleas like this one, which happens to be from Oregon:
The police log is always the highlight of our week on Wednesdays. We generally try to read the police log at dinner. I can’t imagine the paper without it. The classic has been the person who called the police to report having been kidnapped and forced to drive 70 miles to the 7 Feathers Casino and put $575 in the slots. He was then told to drive back home and not tell anyone for two weeks. Naturally, after intensive interrogation, it was determined the story was false. We were laughing so hard one of my nephews fell off his chair and got carrots up his nose. I recall one episode I was reading out loud, and, naturally, exclaimed, “What on earth? Listen to this, whose kids would do something this stupid?” about a tribe of teenagers who got wild and liberated a small logging train engine from the local yard and drove it 12 miles down to Drain and back in one night. I didn’t notice one of the “wild youth” quietly trying to sidle out of the room…so you can’t allow it to lapse in your paper. The town would be in an uproar! J.L.
I think Son No. 1 learned early on that it’s difficult to improve on reality.
In school studying engineering like his parents before him, he recently celebrated his own collection of weird and wonderful real-life tales when he was nominated for “IT King” (that’s “Institute of Technology” for those who don’t know) for the U of M’s IT Week, coming up next month.
(Son No. 1 holds the dubious distinction of being born on Albert Einstein’s birthday, which is also known to nerds as “Pi Day”—3.14).
When asked in his application what is most interesting about him, Son No. 1 responded:
“Seriously? Umm … Jesse Ventura once almost hit me with his Hummer. I turned orange because I ate too many carrots as a kid. I can clap with one hand. I once ate 40 oatmeal cream pies in one sitting. My first and middle name both have “Nathan” in them. I do not know the way to San Jose, nor can I feel the love tonight. But I do know how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. Pick one.”
It’s really hard to improve on a life story like that.