What I Really Need Is A Good Operatic Soundtrack

Well! So I can write Poignant and Painful! Isn’t that just made of awesome? But! There’s more than one way to skin a cat, which means, well, ew. What do you do with a cat skin anyway? It’s far too small to make anything useful out of. A hat, maybe? A cat hat would be sort of cool. Here, pussy! As long as it’s not the skin of a cat you actually know. That would just be sort of wrong, except maybe as a tribute. You could keep your cat’s head on the skin and wear the hat so it looks like there’s your head, and then there’s your dead cat’s head perched right on top of yours. Freak. People. Out.

So, what people don’t know about me is that there’s a cartoon world inside me that’s been waiting a long time to come out. It surfaces at odd times. Like when Matthew and I were in Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver, walking over some stepping stones that were thoughtfully and artfully placed over a wee artful stream, dodging the Japanese tourists wanting to cross from the other side, and I burst out laughing at the thought of pushing the tourists in, one quick shove and there they go, cameras and all! I also think about knocking people’s canes out from under them. Or dropping water balloons on them from the 4th floor of a building. We even had a conversation about this.

I think it would be great to drop water balloons on people from tall buildings.

Water balloons? That would hurt.

No, no, not from the top of the building. The third or fourth floor.

Go with the fourth. Fourth is funnier. But getting hit from the fourth floor would still hurt.

Oh, no. I wouldn’t hit people directly. Just throw it near them. It would splat on their feet. And on hot days only. Otherwise it’s just mean.

Yeah, you wouldn’t want to be mean.

And this from a person who can’t bear to walk on someone’s grass instead of the sidewalk. After all! Someone’s grass! That’s like part of their person, their space. The sidewalk is safe and avoids breaking rules.

Oo, rules. That’s changing too, the rule thing.

The other day I bought something that had one of those little magnetic don’t-steal-me tags on the box. You know, the tags that set off an alarm when you walk out of the store with it, unless the cashier remembers to disarm it when you’re paying. I used a self-checkout, paid for the item, and walked out of the store. When I passed the you’re-stealing-something alarm monitor things at the exit, the alarm went off. WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP! STEALING ALERT! STEALING ALERT!

Old me:  Stop! Dead in my tracks! I’m not stealing anything, see? Here, I’ll hold up my receipt to the hidden cameras so you can see I AM NOT STEALING ANYTHING. And then! Let me find someone with a red smock or whatever and a name badge with little stars glued onto it, and tell them! I am not stealing! See! My receipt! I am not stealing this! I AM A GOOD PERSON!

New me:  Keep walking. I know I paid for it, WTF. It’s their problem. If they want to send someone after me, fine. But no one even notices when the alarm goes off. So whatever. Keep walking.

I am pretty sure that 99.8% of the population thinks like this “new me,” and that it’s only .02% who are actually concerned with what other people think of them. So glad to have jumped groups, that other thing was exhausting.