Fodder for Stories

Last week I went a little crazy, as I think you may remember, so I have been a little cautious about getting myself into anything new.  Each morning Mom pops her head into my office and asks me “have you bought another house” and John comes by for coffee and asks “is everything normal today”?  It’s so easy to have one’s reputation as being down to earth ruined.

I am relishing the mundane, the pedestrian, the vanilla kind of life.  I laugh when I recall John’s simpler life.  It can be uncomfortable thinking about one’s ridiculous exploits except through the lens of 20 years or so; when it happens as a weekly memory it’s not so fun to laugh over.  Unless you have that absurd sense of humour where you can laugh at yourself unconditionally.  But right now, I am going for a very quiet life.

Some people wake up every morning without even thinking about having a quiet life although it is their silent hope. And almost every day they encounter something weird or unfortunate which ruins their day.  I happen to know someone like that.  The oddest things seem to happen either to him or around him and we wonder what sort of magnet draws this to him.  Sure people who rent homes may also experience a grow op in their basement but how many people have the tables turned on them when the police are looking at you for “unlawfully” entering your own property rather than busting the grow op people?  How many people go fishing and catch a seagull on their line rather than a fish?  When they take a fall they don’t just twist their ankle, they also get weird infections. 

Old novels call these people hapless, current books call them marginalized people.  Yet these anecdotes are fodder for stories, wonderful and entertaining once they have been lived through to tell the tale.  Unfortunate incidents help to build character they tell us but it would be nice if they could be spread farther apart for some of us poor folk!