Brain (s)Craps

And so it came to pass that my friend Chad finally checked his mail and saw what he had wrought. And it was good. As a way of motiviating me further, he suggested I tell...The Roach Story.

One night a few years back when Chad and I were roomies, we were sitting talking about phobias - that's irrational fears for those of you playing the home game. During the conversation, it came out that I have a problem with roaches. No sir, I just don't like 'em. I believe it all stems from a childhood incident when my parents were living in some pretty shoddy apartments. I awoke one night to find myself covered in roaches. They were in my hair, trying to get into my ears, crawling on my face...you get the idea. I was two at the time. I start screaming bloody murder and my mom and dad run in and hit the lights. Mom grabs a pillow and starts knocking roaches off me left and right. That's about all I remember clearly. Pillow were hard in the '70s. Just kidding.

So anyway, I'm telling Chad this story about how the roaches swarmed me when I was two and that was why I hated them so much. He's got this odd look on his face, which is to say a look different from his normal odd looking face. He keeps looking at my left arm. As I continue to tell the story, his gaze slowly roams up to my shoulder. About the time I'm getting to the part about roaches crawling all over me, he finally is unable to control himself any more.

"Jes...uh...there's something..."

And he points at my shoulder.

Many of you may know what is coming, and for those of you who have figured it out, I'd like to preface the upcoming events by saying we did not keep a filthy apartment. There were three guys in the apartment at the time, and we weren't the cleanest of people, but we had never seen any roaches or bugs in the apartment in the two years we were there. Up to the point when I looked down and saw a roach sitting on my shoulder listening intently to the legends of his ancestors.

Now, I haven't shared any photos on this site yet, so those that don't know me will not know that I am a very large man. I stand 6'4" and weigh about 350 pounds. Large. This is quite a bit of mass to move around, so just imagine for a second the physics involved in causing a mass like this to actually leap into the air and engage in actual flight.

"It's easy, Jim, just put a roach on his shoulder."

Thus it was discovered that roaches were the true power behind man's ability to fly. Or at least my ability to fly. I leaped into the air and started frantically waving my arms around like I was trying to bring back disco single handedly. Chad, meanwhile, is having convulsions on the floor. Something about a lack of oxygen because he was laughing so hard. Mr. Roach disappeared and was never heard from again, although he is sometimes spotted with Elvis in shopping malls in the mid-west from time to time. We were in that apartment for another year after that and never saw another roach again. Chad still breaks down into uncontrollable laughter whenever he thinks of this story. The bastard.

"You ever seen a fat man fly?"

-J

Yeah, so I think Blogging is ridiculous. I've told my friend Chad this before. There's nothing as fatuous and tenth-rate as spewing your vitriol onto a weblog that no one reads but you and the two or three other pathetic folks that suckered you into writing the damn thing in the first place.

If I sound angry, well, Kudos to you, Sherlock! I have been dragged kicking and screaming into the world of the Blog and now, much like Randall McMurphy after the lobotomy, I can only sit in stupified wonder and drool, as I watch myself type out...a blog.

It's really not that bad. There's nothing like opening up your private life to any passing motorist. In many ways, it's like walking down a crowded street and asking every tenth person to kick you directly in the bollocks.

I suppose it satisfies the frustrated writer in many people. This of course includes me. When I was younger I could sit down at the old Apple //e and fire up the trusty old Borland word processor and bang out what I thought were fairly good short stories. Most people I showed them to enjoyed them and this was, of course, encouraging. So what happened? Did the well of creativity just dry up? Had I squandered my talents by the tender age of twelve?

Nah.

I went back and read the damn things. I suppose that in some ways, they might have found an audience if ever published. Much the way the old Mack Bolan serial novels used to sell. If you have never heard of or read the Bolan series...well...you're probably better off. Lots of guns, gratuitous violence, hot chicks...hrm...maybe they weren't so bad after all. Anyway, the stories I wrote made Mack Bolan look like masterpiece theatre.

So.

Here I am, 20 years later. Have I learned anything? Probably not. Ask my wife and she'll confirm I still act twelve years old. Now I'm just a married twelve-year-old frustrated writer.

And to Chad for sucking me into the world of Blog...

"Poo to you with knobs on!"

-J