Aunt Kate

Here’s another story I can’t seem to finish. Maybe that’s all there is.

Aunt Kate

by Headley Hauser

I've always adored my Aunt Kate. She was my Mom’s youngest sibling – the youngest are usually the most fun. When Mom told me that she couldn’t drive me down to Stephenson College, I asked her if Aunt Kate could.

Mom hesitated and I pretended that I didn’t know why.

Stephenson was a Christian school – my parents insisted. Both my folks and the school were stuck in the nineteen-fifties – or maybe it was the eighteen-fifties – I’ve never been that good in history.

Aunt Kate drove us up to the brick arch at the entrance and two upperclassmen girls stopped us. They motioned for us to roll down the window.

“Are you a new student?” asked the blonde.

“Yes,” I answered tentatively.

“Welcome to Stephenson freshman orientation week!” she bubbled. She handed me a packet of papers with a map of the school on top. It wasn’t a very complicated map – Stephenson had less than a thousand students.

“May I get your name?” asked the blonde.

“Charles Manson,” I responded. The blond looked at her three page print-out and frowned.

“Brenda,” she asked the brunette, “do you have a C. Manson on your print-out?”

“No,” said the brunette who may, or may not have been named Brenda. She didn’t elaborate.

“That’s my nickname,” I said. “My legal name is Dylan Fogler.”

The blonde jumped happily. “Yes, I have you here, Dylan – or Charles. You’re in Shepherd house, third floor.” She pointed to a small rectangle on my map labeled, Shepherd House. “Dinner is in Serenity.” she pointed to another rectangle. “You’ll meet your orientation leaders there. Your mother is welcome to eat with us tonight.”

“Thank you,” said Aunt Kate, jumping in her seat in an excellent imitation of the blonde who still had not given us her name.

“Brenda,” said the blonde, holding out her hand. Brenda placed into the blonde’s hand a garish short-billed baseball cap, orange, blue, purple, and yellow, with the pink letters, SC sewn on the front.

“Here is your dink,” said the blonde.

“My what?”

“Your dink.”

“No,” said Aunt Kate, “I haven’t seen it since he was potty-trained, but I’m pretty certain that’s not his dink.”

The brunette smirked. The blonde looked puzzled.

“Where I come from,” I explained, “a dink is a part of the male anatomy.”

“And not part of the female,” Aunt Kate elaborated.

I handed the hat back to the blonde. “I’ll pass.”

“Oh, no – you can’t!” exclaimed the blonde. “All the freshmen wear them for the first week.”

“All the female freshmen must wear a dink their first week?” my Aunt asked.

“Yes,” said the blonde.

“Kinky school.”

“No!” said the blonde, blushing. “I mean this kind of dink – not… the other kind.”

“I think,” said Aunt Kate, “You should let Charlie Manson be exempt from wearing a second dink. You wouldn’t want an incident.”

“What?” sputtered the blonde.

“Mom,” I said to Aunt Kate. “You know I promised not to do anything like that here.”

“But last time you weren’t provoked nearly so badly – funny hats?”

“I was never convicted!”

“That’s true, Dear. Your Uncle Carl is an excellent attorney. And of course all the witnesses were unable to testify.”

I turned to the blonde and watched as a fly flew into her open mouth. “I’ll pass on the second dink.”

“It’s for the best, blonde co-ed without a name,” said Aunt Kate. “His Uncle Carl is in the Bahamas right now avoiding extradition.”

Shepherd House might just as well be called Generic House. The walls were beige cinder block, and all the furniture was made of the same bland wood you see in every dormitory. Except for the lack of crushed beer cans and the complementary bible with the cheery note, “Don’t forget your sword!” I might have been at State.

“Have a blessed year,” said the head resident as he poked his head in each room.

“Cheer up,” said Aunt Kate, reading my mood. “Maybe you can get time off for bad behavior.”

Here's a vid of our favorite left-handed, evangelical, animated character.

Apply Yourself!

I smelled a rat.

Of course you don't tell your mother you smell a rat when she tells you to do something. I was in sixth grade; I had an English composition due. Mom had cleared the dining room table where I wouldn't be disturbed. She'd laid out a blotter, my composition paper and a pen. She sat me down in front of that scariest of inanimate objects - the blank page, and said.

"Now just apply yourself. Get something down on paper."

She left me alone in that room, renowned for Thanksgiving dinners and birthday cakes. It was a happy room - until it became a prison.

I grabbed the pen and stared at the paper. My brother was upstairs listening to the Moody Blues. I waved the pen, directing the orchestra bits.

"No," I said. "I have to apply myself!"

I started wondering where that phrase came from. Did it have anything to do with job applications?

"No!" I said audibly. "I have to apply myself."

The chair wobbled. I got up to look at it. The little nub on the bottom of one of the legs was missing. I checked all the other chairs in the room. Each one had all its nubs. How do you lose a chair nub? Did the factory forget to put it on, or were there insects that ate chair nubs? Maybe chair nubs were actually tiny space ships that docked on the bottom of dining room chairs because they knew they wouldn't be noticed coming or going... except on Thanksgiving or birthdays.

"What are you doing?"

"Huh?"

Mom stood there holding a glass of Hi C, a drink I couldn't stand, but it was what I was supposed to like, so I drank it.

"Why are you looking under the table?"

I considered answering, but I didn't think that alien chair nubs was going to sound like I was working on my school essay.

"Let's see what you have," said Mom. She stepped over to my paper. "Headley! You haven't even started!"

"I was thinking."

"Think on paper," said Mom. "Sit down. Don't move until you have half a page. Apply yourself!"

I sat down. Mom put the Hi C on a coaster next to me and kissed the top of my head.

And I sat there, tapping my pen on the blotter and drinking a fruit drink that tasted like plastic sweetened by salty beet juice.

My essay was supposed to be 100 words. It ended up being 78, including the title: I Really, Really, Really, Really Have Nothing To Write About, by Headley Hauser.

The teacher gave me a D. At least it didn't hurt my average.

Now I write all the time. I might write about Thanksgiving dinners and birthday cakes, conducting the Moody Blues with a ball point pen, the origins of the word, 'apply yourself,' insects that eat furniture, tiny aliens that fly around in the nubs of dining room chairs, or crappy foods that Madison Avenue convinces kids they should like.

When I get stuck, I stand up. I wander around the room. I listen to what's going on around me, and I look at stuff.

If anyone asks me what I'm doing, I tell them I'm writing.

But I never, never, never, never say that I'm applying myself.

This would have worked much better on my last post

Domestic Animals Are Not So Scary

But they can be funny too.

On Friday I did the first of two posts to clear out animal pictures from my 'borrowed from others' file. Friday's post was Wild Animals, and of course there was some contriversy. I included among my wild animals a hen, a chick and some other beast they domesticate in South America, South Asia, or South Alabama.

Yes, chickens are farm animals, and I guess the strange looking southern fella is too, but to the best of my knowledge, chickens are rarely fond of humans. Chickens stick around for the food, not the company. Dogs, cats, horses, and stuffed animals usually have an attachment to their people. But the terms Wild and Domestic are more easily understood than Misanthropic and Philanthropic so I used them.

This blog is called, Just Plain Stupid, you know. Roll with it!

Let's start with Dogs.

Dogs are loving and sharing

.Always happy to play along

They're motivated

Willing to make sacrifices

And Never ask for anything in return

Cats

Cats are patient

Long-suffering even

Sometimes really long-suffering

But mostly they are cute

But they'd never use that against you

But sometimes it's their best defense.

Equines

Equines don't judge

Even when cows laugh at them

They just want to be cared for

How can we get that guy's stall?

You want more equines?  Here's a video.

Wild Animals are Scary

   But sometimes they're funny too.  I get so many stealible photos on FB with animals in them that this week I decided to break them down to wild and domesticated.
   There are the big scary ones:

They search for a meal

 Track it down

And then sit down to feast

There are the big not-so-scary ones

That have bad hair days

Bad antler days

And some times just sit around looking sexy

Then there are the little guys, who make up for their lack of stature with:

Bravado

Religion

Or the common sense to run away

Some try to adapt to humankind

Accepting treats

Or staying on their diet

Or even sharing what they have

It's true that technology can make things difficult

And sometimes the best policy is to avoid humans completely

But wild animals know what humans sometimes miss - the most important thing:

Is just to be themselves

   Here's a wild beast from Burbank.

Tab - or the post that wrote itself.

Tab

                          by Headley Hauser

The highlighter lay near the stove. The stove was energized by electricity and the bottom right element was on - the one nearest the highlighter. Atop the bottom right element was a pot of water, with a teaspoon of slightly rancid corn oil and three sprinkles of salt.

Above the highlighter lay one hundred and eighty-three foot-long strands of raw pasta.

The only animate being in the tableau (now that the bacteria in the formally rancid oil had been boiled to death) was a patch of e-coli that had been growing since dinner preparations the night before.

The stove, while not alive, pulsed with energy like a live thing. Had it volition, it might seek to selectively heat the pot without damaging the highlighter. Having no will due to lack of sentience made it both easier and more difficult for the stove to do its proper work.

The non-living energy flowed into the stove through a cord coming out of the wall.

Though the highlighter lacked volition, it maintained its shape in spite of the growing heat. It might have said, "This would be uncomfortable, and even scary if I were sentient, or even alive."

But it was neither sentient nor alive and so the highlighter made no comment. It inclined neither toward the heat, nor toward the safety of the pasta and e-coli. The e-coli might have called to the highlighter, but it neither cared, nor had the vocal apparatus to accomplish a call if it did.

Indeed, the only things that might have taken offense in this heated situation were the words neither and nor which had been employed three times in as many sentences.

But neither did nor care, nor did neither.

The water and the formally rancid corn oil began making motions within the pot, though this was an effect of heat and not of life. It certainly was not of sentience, for no known sentient lifeforms were sufficiently thermoduric to survive in an environment sufficiently heated to boil water.

The three shakes of salt, though never sentient, nor alive had long since ceased to exist in solid form, and were now fully suspended in the water and oil.

Were the word neither sentient, it might have resented being replaced by never in the last paragraph, allowing nor one extra use. Should there ever be a place where words become both alive and sentient, writers and gossip-mongers would find their existence more complicated. Perhaps in such a world, both writers and gossip-mongers would be nonsentient - like the highlighter.

Some might think that the case in this existence, except the highlighter in addition to being nonsentient, is also non-living.

A non-living writer or gossip-monger is called the random motions of stain and sound over infinite time.

But back to stove. The electrons in the highlighter were now highly agitated by the heat from the proximate burner. The highlighter's apparent solid state, which was actually a rigid gelatinous one, was transforming into a less rigid gelatinous state and the shape of the highlighter was changing on a microscopic level.

An appendage of a sentient lifeform appeared within the tableau. Vivo ex machina. The appendage gathered the pasta and placed it into the boiling water and formally rancid corn oil. Some of the e-coli came with the pasta, part dying a swift death in the water, part attaching itself the sentient lifeform's integument.

The appendage picked up the highlighter. "Damn, it's hot," said a vocal apparatus incorporated within the overall integument that included the appendage. The appendage ejected the highlighter into the sink,

accomplishing four tasks in the process. The first task was that as the highlighter's highly energized molecules contacted the sink surface with a velocity uncommon to highlighter behavior. An impression, barely perceptible to the visual acuity of a common earth lifeform formed on the outer surface of the highlighter. The second task was that the heat/energy level of the highlighter began to diminish. The third task was that the liquefied dye within the highlighter escaped its seal creating a passage that would later out the highlighter to leave a neon stain on a pair of cargo pants that were not in the present tableau. The fourth task was that e-coli attached itself to the highlighter, and found the environs of the sink a more practical place for procreation and growth.

In a related event days later, a supposedly sentient lifeform, under care at a local emergency medical facility insisted that its bacterial infection came from eating well-cooked pasta.

Here's something else I don't understand.