Tag Archives: normal

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The Moving Hand

The moving hand writes, and having writ, moves on.

I was born in the front bedroom of my family home because, in 1944 small-town Ontario, that’s what happened.  Diagonally across the intersection stood a vacation lodge.  Already financially struggling, the Second World War guaranteed its demise.

After things returned to “Normal,” the town seized it for unpaid taxes, and converted it into a hospital, becoming the first, and only, Ontario small town with one.  Across the street stood a fire hydrant.  The only other fire hydrant that I remember in my entire town, was one on main street, not in the middle of the block, or in front of the bank or post office, but the movie theater.  Things that make you go, Hmmmm…

On the other side of our house, was the home of a man who owned and ran a machine/fabricating shop, located in the upper, slightly less commercial block of the main street.  He wore in his shirt pocket, a hearing aid pickup and battery pack, about the size of two decks of cards, for hearing loss caused by years of screeching metal lathes.

He made a fairly good living, fabricating braces and racks, and machining repair parts for three small local furniture factories, and a plywood plant.  On into the 1950s, as he was considering retiring, Globalization began to rear its ugly head.  One by one, the furniture plants closed.  The plywood plant went bankrupt, re-opened under new management, and finally merged its production with the large, economic parent plant near Toronto.  His wooden building is now part of an IGA store parking lot, and the four, small, locally-owned grocery stores are mere memories in my mind.

Thomas Wolfe said, “You can’t go home again.”  I wouldn’t want to.  Gertrude Stein opined that “There’s no there, there.”  There’s no industry – no life – no raison d’être.  It’s Ontario’s biggest retirement home.

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’24 A To Z Challenge – L

Here’s another, number 17-5/9, in a Long List of interesting, pretentious, but Largely useless words.

Littérateur

As you can see
By the tail on the é

It’s a word which is barely normalized into English, from French.  It means a literary person, especially a writer of literary works – someone who enjoys, or produces literature- a man of letters.

I am definitely a man of letters.  I often use all 26 of them in various combinations, occasionally to good effect.  This is a pre-Woke word.  It refers to men only.  There is “no woman of letters.”  If there were, his wife would be a “Littérateuse.”  When the French invented this word, the only letters allowed to women were the likes of tbsp., or PMS.

My baby, she wrote me a letter  It was a Q, in purple crayon.  They don’t allow sharp objects at ‘The Home.’  😮 

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Flash Fiction #232

dolphin

PHOTO PROMPT © Jean L. Hays

JUMPING FOR JOY

They’d done it!  They’d outlasted and outlived COVID19.   The world was back to as normal as it would get.

At last the borders were open.  They could finally re-visit Charleston.  They’d been three previous times, each visit finding something interesting in Old Town – The Market, haunted houses, Churches, and toured a submarine and an aircraft carrier, over at Patriots Point.  Twice they’d taken the boat to Fort Sumter.

Living near the Great Lakes, they were used to expanses of open water, but a lake trout breaking the surface did not compare to the joy of watching dolphins chasing the tour-boat.

***

Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

friday-fictioneers-badge-web

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30-Day Challenge To Like

Another Challenge

The challenge list composer has committed double jeopardy, so I’m going to join #3, and #6 together.

#3  What kind of person attracts you?
#6  The person you like, and why you like them.

It seems to me that, the kind of person who attracts me, would also be the kind of person that I like.  The wording of #6 also confuses me.  Does the list compiler feel that I can only “like” one person at a time, or is this question supposed to be cumulative, like #3, and better worded as, The kind of person you like?

A lecturer at a company seminar explained about ‘the range’ of people that we can reach and get along with.  He had us imagine a peg-board with one peg in it.  Over the peg was a loop of string.  You could put your finger inside the loop, and swirl it around the peg.  You would only reach a limited number of other peg-holes.

You could move the peg, but you would only reach the same number of other holes, and they would be a completely different set from the first lot.  The most successful salesman types were the ones who could make their personality like a large elastic, and stretch to reach the entire board.

Like Mary’s little lamb, the kind of person that I like, is one who likes me.  I am not much interested in turning my personality into a rubber band.  Too soon, my scope would include Kardashians, Bible-thumpers, and penis-envy jerks who drive Hummers while wearing civilian clothes.

I like folks who like me for me, psychoses, warts and all.  I am what I am.  In a conversation with my son recently, he said, “I wonder what normal people are like?”  Those who I like, and would want to like me, would have to be intelligent, independent, free-thinking, educated, open-minded, and capable of handling the English language like a fidget-spinner.

I have been so fortunate with this blog site to, at least virtually, attract a considerable number of people like that.  I’ve had the good fortune, to travel and meet a couple of fellow-bloggers in person, and I’m whirling like that fidget spinner myself, at the thought of meeting another Dynamic Duo of them.  I only hope that, having attracted them, they will not find me a challenge to like in person, the way they did through the filter of the internet.  I’ll keep you posted.  😀

 

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30 Day Challenge – A Day At A Time

Another Challenge

Four Fun Facts – 50 Things About Me/My Blog – Reading Challenge – 30 Day Challenge There are all kinds of memes out there that bloggers are seizing, to both give them a blog-theme, and to connect with their readers.  Sometimes the challenge reveals more about the person who compiled it than it does about those who choose to use it.

I’m surprised that the person who drew up the above list was able to finish it before they were arrested outside someone’s bedroom window, or had to rush off to their weekly psychotherapy appointment. So, with appropriate trigger-warnings, and suitably evasive diplomatic wording, I plan to work my way down the list, a couple of items at a time.

#1 – Weird things you do when you’re alone – Which is tied to
#14 – Something disgusting you do

Politically Incorrect

The compiler of this list really needs some mental health aid. “Oh no you don’t!!  Just because I keep my curtains drawn, you don’t get to ask shit like that.”  The first question is about weird things – ‘things’ – plural, as if we all have a list of questionable personal activities.  He sneaks back in at #14, by upping the ante to ‘something disgusting.’

I have a note here “Suffrage = Power” which, at this long-forgotten date, I take to mean more than merely the right to vote. I believe that I meant more like Christ’s quote, “Suffer the little children to come unto me.”  I think I want to be allowed (suffered) to do whatever I want in the privacy of my own home/life, as long as I actively harm no-one else.

Then the English Nazi/amateur psychologist takes over, and asks who gets to decide what I, or anyone else, do, that can be considered ‘weird’ or ‘disgusting.’ Some people consider the word ‘moist’, disgusting.  Compared to that, I’m normal.  I march to the beat of a different flautist, because I feel that much of mankind is weird.

I’m never ‘alone’, to do anything weird. All the voices in my head see to that.  ‘Does your brother talk to himself when he’s alone?? I don’t know.  I’ve never been with him when he was alone.’  If I were, I would not be judgemental.  I think that expecting others to bare their soul, and openly admit their peccadilloes, is both weird, and a bit disgusting.  I’m saving my weird and disgusting revelations for my upcoming autobiography, the one that Steven King is ghost-writing.

Stop back again, perhaps next month, when I insult crazy people again, and answer another prompt or two. 😛

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A To Z Challenge D

Challenge2017

I have some alien DNA in me, though I think many of you have suspected that for some time.

For the letter

Letter D

I think I’ll write about DNA

DNA

I woke up the other day. (And congratulated myself for doing it.) I crawled out of bed, threw on a grubby tee-shirt and a pair of track pants, went downstairs and began the ‘feed and water the animals’ routine, including me.  I walked into the living room. I sat down in my big easy chair.  I picked up the day’s newspaper – and absently scratched my right leg.

WOW indeed!  Just from gently touching it, it was now intensely itchy – and a burning kind of sore.  A spot about the size of a silver dollar, 6 inches above my knee was hard, hot, red, swollen and inflamed.

When I complained, the wife told me to come over to her chair and pull my pants down. There were times in the past that that could have led to something interesting.  The only way I know that is because I have it written down.  I can’t remember.

This thing had an even redder spot in the center. What the Hell was it?  Necrotizing fasciitis – that ‘flesh-eating disease’?  Better not be.  I’m so chubby that it could die of indigestion.  A cat scratch?  There would have been more than one, and a scratch, not a single point.  An insect bite?  I seldom go outside, and when I do, I wear heavy jeans and boots.  A bedbug bite?  There’d be more than one, and the sheets are clean.

In my It’s In The Jeans post, I already showed how much alien human DNA I have in me.  I don’t need any non-human DNA.  I don’t want to be like that guy in the Alien movies, and have a mouthful of fangs erupt from my chest.

When I mentioned it to the wife’s podiatrist a couple of days later, he suggested it might be a boil. I still have a scar on my right forearm from a teenage boil.  This ain’t growing, and it’s no boil.  When the wife looked at it, her best guess was an ingrown hair, and she promptly proceeded to do exactly what we tell teenagers not to do with a zit.  She applied two thumbnails, and popped it.

SDC11029

SDC11030

Like teenaged zits, she forced some of the poisons back into the surrounding flesh, making it look almost like a bruise. I spent the next week, slathering antiseptic cream on it, trying not to scratch like a kid with chicken pox, and hoping that my DNA was stronger than any old alien DNA.  I’m back to what passes for normal, but perhaps only because the alien broke his lease, and abandoned this condemned structure.   😉

Oops! Was I supposed to put a medical warning at the top??  Sorry about those photos.  Eye and brain bleach is available in the lobby at reasonable prices.