To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography and the dancers hit each other. If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason. I don't think I'm alone when I say I'd like to see more and more planets fall under the ruthless domination of our solar system. If I ever get real rich, I hope I'm not real mean to poor people, like I am now. I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it. If you define cowardice as running away at the first sign of danger, screaming and tripping and begging for mercy, then yes, Mister Brave Man, I guess I am a coward. Sometimes the beauty of the world is so overwhelming, I just want to throw back my head and gargle. Just gargle and gargle, and I don't care who hears me, because I am beautiful. When you're ten years old, and a car drives by and splashes a puddle of water all over you, it's hard to decide if you should go to school like that or try to go home and change and probably be late. So while he was trying to decide, I drove by and splashed him again. Laurie got offended that I used the word "puke." But to me, that's what her dinner tasted like. It's easy to sit there and say you'd like to have more money. And I guess that's what I like about it. It's easy. Just sitting there, rocking back and forth, wanting that money. Martha says the interesting thing about fly-fishing is that it's two lives connected by a thin strand. Come on, Martha. Grow up. One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned- out warehouse. "Oh, no," I said, "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late. To me, clowns aren't funny. In fact, they're kinda scary. I've wondered where this started, and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus and a clown killed my dad. Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis. It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man. We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can't scoff at them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me. It makes me mad when people say I turned and ran like a scared rabbit. Maybe it was like an angry rabbit, who was going to fight in another fight, away from the first fight. If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let 'em go, because, man, they're gone. When I found the skull in the woods, the first thing I did was call the police. But then I got curious about it. I picked it up, and started wondering who this person was, and why he had deer horns. I think a good gift for the President would be a chocolate revolver. And since he's so busy, you'd probably have to run up to him real quick and hand it to him. Sometimes I think you have to march right in and demand your rights, even if you don't know what your rights are, or who the person is you're talking to. Then on the way out, slam the door. One day one of my little nephews came up to me and asked me if the equator was a real line that went around the Earth, or just an imaginary one. I had to laugh. Laugh and laugh. Because I didn't know, and I thought that maybe by laughing he would forget what he asked me. Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself. Mankind. Basically, it's made up of two separate words: "mank" and "ind". What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind. Probably the earliest flyswatters were nothing more than some sort of striking surface attached to the end of a long stick. As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a bunch of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way. If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because, hey, free dummy. Why do the caterpillar and the ant have to be enemies? One eats leaves, and the other eats caterpillars. Oh, I see now. Whenever someone asks me to define love, I usually think for a minute, then I spin around and pin the guy's arm behind his back. NOW who's asking the questions? I remember how my Great Uncle Jerry would sit on the porch and whittle all day long. Once he whittled me a toy boat out of a larger toy boat I had. It was almost as good as the first one, except now it had bumpy whittle marks all over it. And no paint, because he had whittled off the paint. Children need encouragement. So if a kid gets an answer right, tell him it was a lucky guess. That way, he develops a good, lucky feeling. How come the dove gets to be the peace symbol? How about the pillow? It has more feathers than the dove, and it doesn't have that dangerous beak. I hope that after I die, people will say of me: "That guy sure owed me a lot of money." Instead of trying to build newer and bigger weapons of destruction, we should be thinking about getting more use out of the ones we already have. It makes me mad when I go to all the trouble of having Martha cook up about a hundred drumsticks, then the guy at the Marineland says, "You can't throw chicken to the dolphins. They eat fish." Sure they eat fish, if that's all you give them. Man, wise up. Whether they ever find life there or not, I think Jupiter should be considered an enemy planet. Instead of a Seeing Eye dog, what about a gun? It's cheaper than a dog, plus if you walk around shooting all the time people are going to get out of the way. Cars, too! I bet a fun thing would be to go way back in time to where there was going to be an eclipse and tell the cave men, "If I have come to destroy you, may the sun be blotted out from the sky." Just then the eclipse would start, and they'd probably try to kill you or something, but then you could explain about the rotation of the moon and all, and everyone would get a good laugh. I remember when I was in the army, we had the toughest drill sergeant in the world. He'd get right up next to your face and yell, and if you didn't have the right answers, mister, you'd be peeling potatoes or changing the latrine. Hey, wait. I wasn't in the army. Then who WAS that guy?! The wise man can pick up a grain of sand and envision a whole universe. But the stupid man will just lie down on some seaweed and roll around until he's completely draped in it. Then he'll stand up and go, "Hey, I'm Vine Man." Today I accidentally stepped on a snail on the sidewalk in front of our house. And I thought, I too am like that snail. I build a defensive wall around myself, a "shell" if you will. But my shell isn't made out of a hard, protective substance. Mine is made out of tinfoil and paper bags. Even though I was their captive, the Indians allowed me quite a bit of freedom. I could walk about freely, make my own meals, and even hurl large rocks at their heads. It was only later that I discovered they were not Indians at all, but dirty clothes hampers. It's too bad that whole families have to be torn apart by something as simple as wild dogs. I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep both Dracula AND Superman away. Worship the potato? The idea seemed silly to me. But then I thought, what else is more deserving of worship? It's simple, it comes from the earth, and it can kill you if you disobey it. Whenever I see an old lady slip and fall on a wet sidewalk, my first instinct is to laugh. But then I think, what if I was an ant, and she fell on me. Then it wouldn't seem quite so funny. A child's face can say it all. Especially the mouth part of the face. One thing about my Aunt Nadie: She was gruff on the outside, but if you ever needed something, like a spanking or a scolding, she'd give it to you. When you go for a job interview, I think a good thing to ask is if they ever press charges. If you saw two guys named Hambone and Flippy, which one would you think liked dolphins the most? I'd say Flippy, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong though. It's Hambone. As the evening sun faded from a salmon color to a sort of flint gray, I thought back to the salmon I caught that morning, and how gray he was, and how I named him Flint. Broken promises don't upset me. I just think, why did they believe me? Sometimes I think I'd be better off dead. No, wait. Not me, you. Contrary to popular belief, the most dangerous animal is not the lion or tiger or even the elephant. The most dangerous animal is a shark riding on an elephant, just trampling and eating everything they see. We used to laugh at Grandpa when he'd head off to go fishing. But we wouldn't be laughing that evening, when he'd come back with some whore he picked up in town. What am I afraid of? I'll tell you: a feather. that's right, a feather. How could anyone be afraid of a feather, you say. That's an honest question, and I'll try to give it an honest answer. First of all, did I say it was a poison feather? Fear can sometimes be a useful emotion. For instance, let's say you're an astronaut on the moon and you fear that your partner has been turned into Dracula. The next time he goes out for the moon pieces, wham!, you just slam the door behind him and blast off. He might call you on the radio and say he's not Dracula, but you just say, "Think again, bat man." I think in one of my previous lives I was a mighty king, because I like people to do what I say. I think someone should have had the decency to tell me the luncheon was free. To make someone run out with potato salad in his hand, pretending that he's throwing up, is not what I call hospitality. Don't ever get your speedometer confused with your clock, like I did once, because the faster you go, the later you think you are. I don't say that the bird is "good" or the bat is "bad." But I will say this: At least the bird is less nude. It's easy to sit and scoff at an old man's folly. But also, check out his Adam's apple! When Rick told me he was having trouble with his wife, I had to laugh. Not because of what he said, but because of a joke I thought of. I told him the joke, but he didn't laugh very much. Some friend HE is. I guess one of the funniest memories of my grandfather was the time I was at his house and that tied-up man with the gag in his mouth came hopping out of the closet and started yelling that HE was really my grandfather and the other guy was an imposter and to run for help. Who was that guy?! Oh, well, never saw HIM again. Most people don't realize that large pieces of coral, which have been painted brown and attached to the skull by common wood screws, can make a child look like a deer. I think people tend to forget that trees are living creatures. They're sort of like dogs. Huge, quiet, motionless dogs, with bark instead of fur. It's fascinating to think that all around us there's an invisible world we can't even see. I'm speaking, of course, of the World of the Invisible Scary Skeletons. Love can sweep you off your feet and carry you along in a way you've never known before. But the ride always ends, and you end up feeling lonely and bitter. Wait. It's not love I'm describing. I'm thinking of a monorail. I guess more bad things have been done in the name of progress than any other. I myself have been guilty of this. When I was a teen-ager, I stole a car and drove it out into the desert and set it on fire. When the police showed up, I just shrugged and said, "Hey, progress." Boy, did I have a lot to learn. If there was a terrible storm outside, but somehow this dog lived through the storm, and he showed up at your door when the storm was finally over, I think a good name for him would be Carl. Perhaps, if I am very lucky, the feeble efforts of my lifetime will someday be noticed, and maybe, in some small way, they will be acknowledged as the greatest works of genius ever created by Man. Sometimes, when I drive across the desert in the middle of the night, with no other cars around, I start imagining: What if there were no civilization out there? No cities, no factories, no people? And then I think: No people or factories? Then who made this car? And this highway? And I get so confused I have to stick my head out the window into the driving rain---unless there's lightning, because I could get struck on the head by a bolt. Too bad when I was a kid there wasn't a guy in our class that everybody called the "Cricket Boy", because I would have liked to stand up in class and tell everybody, "You can make fun of the Cricket Boy if you want to, but to me he's just like everybody else." Then everybody would leave the Cricket Boy alone, and I'd invite him over to spend the night at my house, but after about five minutes of that loud chirping I'd have to kick him out. Maybe later we could get up a petition to get the Cricket Family run out of town. Bye, Cricket Boy. Many people think that history is a dull subject. Dull? Is it "dull" that Jesse James once got bitten on the forehead by an ant, and at first it didn't seem like anything, but then the bite got worse and worse, so he went to a doctor in town, and the secretary told him to wait, so he sat down and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and then finally he got to see the doctor, and the doctor put some salve on it? You call that dull? The people in the village were real poor, so none of the children had any toys. But this one little boy had gotten an old enema bag and filled it with rocks, and he would go around and whap the other children across the face with it. Man, I think my heart almost broke. Later the boy came up and offered to give me the toy. This was too much! I reached out my hand, but then he ran away. I chased him down and took the enema bag. He cried a little, but that's the way of these people. I remember that one fateful day when Coach took me aside. I knew what was coming. "You don't have to tell me," I said. "I'm off the team, aren't I?" "Well," said Coach, "you never were really ON the team. You made that uniform you're wearing out of rags and towels, and your helmet is a toy space helmet. You show up at practice and then either steal the ball and make us chase you to get it back, or you try to tackle people at inappropriate times." It was all true what he was saying. And yet, I thought something is brewing inside the head of this Coach. He sees something in me, some kind of raw talent that he can mold. But that's when I felt the handcuffs go on. My Big Thick Novel, Chapter 507: By now, the lion was only a few yards behind me, and gaining fast. If I could make it to the cliff, I would jump and hope I landed in the river below. I jumped, and the lion, unable to stop, fell with me. He caught up with me in midair, and began mauling me. We splashed into the foaming river, and the lion swam over and mauled me some more. I heard the sound of the approaching waterfall. If I could only.. no.. too late. Dead. |
| Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey |