Thursday, December 6, 2012

Would you like whipped cream / sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought?

When I am out and about, I am as often as not listening to an audiobook on one of my vintage mid-aughts mp3 players. At some point I started referring to them as my “stories,” as in “I’ve got my running clothes on, I just need to find my [GPS] gadget and my stories.” They keep me on a steady drip of narrative that is both intellectually rewarding and pleasantly anesthetic.

Often, I turn on the stories as I’m about to leave a public place. There is a slight delay between starting the device and when the audio kicks in at whatever semi-random place it left off, so as I begin to actively listen there is often an abrupt transition from the ambient conversations of people nearby into the recorded text. Naturally, this conjunction is almost always meaningless, ungrammatical, and immediately forgettable, something along the lines of:
“…and so we told her, you need to clear that closet space out, or”/ “shins, the sergeant’s advice had proved to be a blessing.”
or
“…sorry, but we’re all out of the poppyseed, but I could make it on a” / “-udying a small manual of anatomy, and peering occasionally at a bone which lay on the piano.”
So I was startled as I left a coffeeshop a few hours ago to hear an anonymous fellow human and the reader of my current audiobook conspire in a perfectly formed sentence:
“My son had a vasectomy years ago, and they” / “used his perfection as a stick to beat me with.”
Part of my brain doesn’t grasp that this sentence is just a random conjunction, and has been skittering around ever since trying to come up with a plausible backstory. The rest of my brain is finding this all highly entertaining.

7 comments:

Elizabeth said...

A very small stick.

Morgan said...

"upon"

The Calico Cat said...

My poor brain wonders if all mother's know about their son's vasectomies.

(Can I tell my 4 year old now that if he chooses that route, there's no need to inform me...)

Michael5000 said...

E: [redacted]

Morgan: I can't but admire a man who knows his Forster backward and forward!

Calico: Well, it was a MALE voice. And you may not wish to read the next paragraph.

Your question reminds me of how, the day after I had undergone a... certain delicate operation, my father stopped by our house. Surprised to find me at home and keeping to bed, he asked concerned and persistant questions until, eventually, and somewhat comically, it ceased to be possible not to inform him that I had undergone a... certain delicate operation. Whether he told Mom, I do not know.


The Calico Cat said...

Thanks for warning me, now I know too mauch about M5000!

Michael5000 said...

Maybe it was an appendectomy.

Jenners said...

You know, the old ladies call the soap operas on TV their "stories."

I think you have a short story that needs to be written.