Sunday Survey

THIS IS HOW IT WORKS:

An idea flutters around me for a while, for a good solid time, for the time it takes until I can't ignore it and it tells me to write about that time I helped my dad in the hospital.  That time when he was sicker than any person I'd ever seen sick.  He was sicker than I'd thought he deserved.  But the idea tells me to write about that time.  How we both knew, without talking about it, that this was the moment that would change us forever and this was the moment that would forge us together as BRAVE.

This is what the idea does. It sits around like a drooling Labrador.

Go on ahead and write about the way you and Linda used to spend hours taking in your Ditto jeans until they were so tight you doubted you would even be able to step over a small bench on the 9th grade lawn.  Write about that now, regardless.  Regardless of how much you don't want to---especially because of that.  This is the idea's idea of a big joke---

Keeping track of all the stuff I want to say just in case anyone else has ever felt it---this is the idea's gigantic, weird job---filling up notebooks with scribbles like:
CLUTTER KILLS and
Twinkle Toes and Worry Wart and Anxiety Blog and
Don't Do One Thing That Scares You and
Un-Mommy and
What Other People Fight About and
Finding Out Mom Wasn't Crazy But Just Selfish and Lazy and
Oh the Bougainvillea brightens the grimy street gravel and
In the morning the newscasters are dreary serious although their hair is big and real and
That time I saw Ed Begley, Jr. in my rear view mirror screaming at his girlfriend and
I'mNotALoser.com and
How the most nice people are often times the most hateful and
Anger is hurt left unattended and
When In Doubt, Be You and
All these other lives I will never ever know and
The difference between What I Was Thinking and What I Said and
The Big Club of Motherless Children and
They all smoked because they didn't know and
How many others overheard the unhearable and
Those mornings when the light makes things so much more doable and
I AM WORTHY YOU ASSHOLE and
Places Other Than Here and
and, and, and, and, and, and,
and, and, and,

Does that ever happen to you?

Toodles,
Lieutenant Lookaway It Never Stops
Platitude Precinct
Long Winded Division