By Ginger Truitt
I sit here ready to write
But the words just won’t come
I want to write something lovely,
But my mind suddenly feels numb.
The rest of this sad excuse for a poem just rambled on into a depressing statement of my view of the world at age 15.
Fortunately, my world view has greatly improved in the last 25 years, even though my poetry-writing skills have not.
It is my current state of writer’s block that brought to mind my poem of teen angst. They say the best cure is to write, write and write some more about whatever pops into your head. Eventually you either snap out of it, or something decent magically appears on the page. So, here’s hoping “they” are right.
You can’t really go wrong with kid quotes, although sometimes explaining the background story can be a bit tedious.
On our recent road trip to D.C., my 17-year-old daughter and I had a good number of conversations. Mostly, I listened and she talked. And talked. And talked. Finally, something she said prompted me to share a story from my own teen years. When I finished she replied, “It’s funny because it’s like you’re me, only you were me first!”
As we were driving around D.C. and I was making conversation with hubby, I asked if he had noticed that the DVD Redbox at our local Walmart is actually blue.
He had not noticed and I told him that I hadn’t either. The kids found this hysterical. They didn’t realize that I had only read about this oddity on a local message board, but had not yet confirmed it with my own eyes.
The following mockery ensued:
Son: “Hey, did you notice that monkey jumping up and down on that car back there?”
Daughter: “No.”
Son: “Me neither!”
My level of exhaustion probably made this much funnier than it actually was, but I could not stop laughing. I laughed until I cried, and then I laughed some more. It reminded me of “pickle loaf” and “warm and distant fruit loops.” I no longer remember why either of those statements is funny, but just the thought of them can send me once again into gales of hysterical laughter.
I am thankful my children have developed keen senses of humor. My own childhood memories are peppered with visions of my mother literally doubled over laughing at some silly thing we’d said. And my father has a penchant for not only telling the corniest jokes, but for recognizing the humor in everyday situations. To this day, my sister and I can wiggle our fingers in a tickling motion and it will send my dad into hysterics, causing his face to turn beet red and the vein in his forehead to pop out. None of us remembers why.
Of course it’s not always important to know the back story in order to find something humorous. Just this morning my 3-year-old informed me, “You can’t move your nipples. God made them stick forever.”
Her observations often leave me pondering as well as laughing. What if God had given us Colorform nipples? It would be very convenient for runners who have chafing issues. I personally have no experience with this problem, but I heard about it on Oprah when she was promoting something called Nipple Ease.
Another benefit to removable nipples would be the ability to keep them in my pocket and completely avoid that embarrassing “headlight” situation. The only problem, as I see it, is that I would end up losing them. I have always had a terrible time keeping track of things. I remember my mom standing in the middle of my messy bedroom and exclaiming, “But your clarinet has to be in here somewhere!”
She wasn’t laughing that day.
Many times my dad told me I’d lose my head if it wasn’t attached. I thought about that for a long time. What if my head really wasn’t attached? Would I lose my head? Or since it is the brain that remembers things, would my head be losing my body?
Well, I’m near my word limit and my writer’s block isn’t cured. I could expound on the nipple subject, but I’m sure someone is already forming a nasty anonymous letter to let me know how inappropriate it is to publicly mention nipples. So, I’ll close with one final effort at poetry.
Nipple talk has been forbidden
Since Eve and Adam started sinnin’
But I can hardly keep from grinnin’
When I see that one picture of ... Jim Morrison.
