Tag Archives: monster

Crossed Eyes

Crossed eyes: (n) a condition in which one or both eyes turn inward.

Today’s essay is very simple.

Wordings that grownups find clever often terrify children.

Let’s start with:

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

Or:

“I’ll leave the light on in the hallway so the monsters will be scared away.” (What if the bulb burns out?)

Or the one I always hated:

“Don’t cross your eyes like that or make that look. Your face might freeze.”

At this point, the grownup turns his head and giggles.

But terror fills the soul of the young child.

Face freezing—a whole new idea.

Is it possible that this respectable adult is sharing a truth which needs to be harkened to, or one might find oneself going through life becoming the frozen-faced monster, with crossed eyes, that children fear coming in the middle of the night to torture them?

 

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

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Crawdad

funny wisdom on words that begin with a CCrawdad: (idiom) crayfish

If you run across a situation which is odd, or a group of people who seem a bit bizarre, always remember the power of the word “colorful.”

In other words, “these circumstances are not dangerous or bewildering—they’re just colorful.”

It’s a word I learned when I lived four years in Louisiana. Being raised in the Midwest, I found the folks of the Bayou to have many traditions I thought were challenging.

Chief among them was the eating of crawdads.

I had seen these creatures as a little boy. My parents even referred to them as the “poor man’s lobster.”

But I had never observed them regarded with such relish as in Louisiana. (Actually, relish is one of the few things they don’t eat crawfish with.)

I was frustrated. There is so little meat on the crawdad that it is an exhausting chore to get two tablespoon’s worth of fishy flesh. The natives, of course, laughed at me. They explained that the great taste of the little varmints lay in “sucking their heads.”

Yes. I’m talking about taking that tiny crusty head which looks like it came off the monster in “Alien,” and putting it up to your mouth and sucking in. They explained that many folks who tried it for the first time compared it to eating raw oysters.

Excellent. May I point out that to me, eating raw oysters is like being forced to slurp up one’s own snot?

I’m usually not this picky. After all, my entire life I have eaten hotdogs with no fear of gristle and bone fragments. But there is something so ugly about the crawdad. The little booger just gives me the creeps.

I tried. But even after four years, whenever they walked over to a table covered with newspaper and dumped a big pan of them onto the table, my first instinct was to scream like a little girl and run down to McDonald’s and order a Happy Meal.


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Consume

Consume: (v) to eat, drink, or ingest food or drink

Last night, in the spirit of the holidays and expressing great affection, one of my sons made me a huge shrimp cocktail and regally paraded it to the table and set it down in front of me as if I were Henry VIII himself.

It was a beautiful sight. It took time to put together. It was gorgeous (if can bestow such a title upon impaled shrimp).

Yet less than ten minutes later it was consumed. The little fellows had departed, and all that was left behind were little tiny pieces of tail.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

I was not sad. Matter of fact, I was quite satisfied with the offering and how it landed deep within my innards.

But it was gone.

I began to look around to see if there were friends of the shrimp which might be available for further consuming.

There were.

I soon forgot the sacrifice of the initial “little swimmers,” as I consumed more and more of their family members.

I felt no guilt whatsoever at destroying a whole generation of crustacea. Appalling.

Certainly to them, I must seem a monster, invading their safe place in the bay, lodging right next door to their pals, the scallops.

But one thing was sure–after my second, and even third, pursuit…

They were gone.

Consumed.

The only thing I took from that experience is that even though shrimp probably do not have souls (at least I hope not), I do have to be careful not to consume people–human brothers and sisters–who do possess such a gift from God.

We are all consumers.

But every once in a while, we need to realize what we’re consuming–and try to put a little back into the sea.

 

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Mr. Kringle's Tales...26 Stories 'Til Christmas

(click the elephant to see what he’s reading!)

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Click

Click: (n) a short, sharp sound as of a switch being operated

If the entirety of the stupid things I’ve done in my life could be written down, all the books in the world would not contain it. (Well, perhaps
a bit overstated.)

But I’ve never met a stupid idea I wasn’t willing to consider if I thought it advanced my cause or gave me a shortcut.

Many years ago, when my children were younger, we traveled the country as a family band. It was like the Partridge Family without the cuteness, obvious talent and painted bus. Instead we had a car, and found an old trailer, which had sat in a farmer’s field for two years–abandoned.

Not knowing anything at all about such matters, we liked the look of the trailer on the outside, so we bought it for $350.

It probably was not worth $3.50.

Not only had it been unused for two years, but it was also twenty-five years since its manufacturing. The wood was rotten, the tires completely dry-rotted, and all the wiring shot to hell.

But we hooked it up anyway.

Amazingly, much of the time it functioned–awkwardly. It looked horrible, but it carried things and limped along behind our car.

That is, until one night, in the mountains of California, the electrical system decided to have a nervous breakdown.

We did not know what to do. It was pitch black outside, there were coyotes everywhere and I had a fourteen-year-old son with me–the only one awake–to try to crawl back in the trailer and fix the lights.

After fiddling with the wiring, we got back into the car and they worked for about twenty minutes.

Then, all at once, we heard this clicking sound. Rapid. Almost like someone was sending Morse Code. And along with the clicking, the tail lights joined in, blinking.

We kept tinkering with it, trying to make it work. There was even one interlude when it stopped clicking for about thirty minutes. We were so relieved that my son actually went to sleep. To this day, he tells the story of nightmares of being chased by a “clicking monster,” and the horror of awakening once again to the same sound.

Mile by mile we held our breath–fearful of the dreaded click.

It wasn’t until the next day, when we reached a town and pulled into a repair shop, that we discovered there was nothing wrong with the trailer or the wiring. It was the switch on our car’s headlights, which decided to take this particularly bleak evening in the California hills to become temperamental.

Every once in a while I’ll hear a sound which ever-so-slightly resembles that clicking.

Losing control, I pee my pants a little.

 

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Afraid

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

 

Afraid: (adj.) feeling fear or anxiety; frightened.

 It was my favorite shirt.

I was nineteen years old and it was during the era of the counter-culture—hippies, rock and roll … well, you know the groove.

It was gray and had embroidered white velvet flowers on it.

I loved it.

It was almost too small for me, so depending on whether I was in one of my puffy weeks or thinning days, I could sit down wearing it with spreading buttons or with more comfort.

I didn’t care. I worshipped it.

I wore it at least five times a week. My criterion for deciding whether to don it in the morning was sniffing under the armpits to ascertain the intensity of its lethal nature.

One day I noticed that some of the threads on the bottom of the shirt had come loose. I didn’t think much about it. I just pulled on them and tore them off. After about two weeks of doing this, I realized that my shirt was no longer shedding threads, but had actually torn and was practically ruined.

At that juncture, somebody pointed out that if I had sewn up the bottom of the shirt instead of pulling on the threads, the problem would have been solved and I would still have my garment. (I continued to wear it in its dilapidated condition until one day I was walking down the street and a guy handed me two dollars, thinking I was homeless…)

The reason I share this story is that being afraid is a lot like being a-frayed.

Our threads come loose and we yank on them, pull at them, deny our feelings and pretend everything is all right until we have no opportunities left and we stand, clothed in unrighteousness.

Yes, afraid is when we refuse to sow up our fears and tie up our worries and instead, allow them to destroy everything we like. And even when we use noble words like “responsibility,” “concern,” “involvement,” “anxious,” or in some cases, even “wondering”—we’re just masking the monster.

I lost the shirt off my back because it was “a-frayed.”

If I become too afraid—well … I can lose my own soul.

 

ABM

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

ABM: abbr. anti-ballistic missile.

I’m in favor of that.

Normally, I wouldn’t call myself an “anti” person. But if we were taking a vote on ballistic missiles, I would have no trouble in joining the camp of those who would be against them.

There’s nothing positive about a ballistic missile. If you fired one at someone else, even the most hard-hearted individual would have to consider that human life was being destroyed–not even to mention tainting the land, which you would soon occupy through your conquering.

On the other hand, if someone’s fired a ballistic missile YOUR way, reasons for regret and dismay may be obvious.

One would think that the natural inclination would be to fall into the category of ant- ballistic missile. Isn’t it interesting, though, that the only way we have found to overcome the stupidity of creating a ballistic missile is by inventing another missile, which is shot into the air to prevent the first missile from hitting its target–by making the missile shot off first a new target?

Wouldn’t it just be easier to get RID of the ballistic missiles, instead of spending millions and millions of dollars to come up with a way to inhibit the dastardly original monster?

So let me get this straight–if someone shoots a ballistic missile at me, I now have a missile which I call an ABM, to shoot at their missile. Doesn’t that just open the door for an AABM? An anti-anti-ballistic missile, which is shot off simultaneously WITH the ballistic missile, to hit the anti-ballistic missile, so that the ballistic missile can pursue its mission of destruction?

And we wonder why politics and governments are constantly in turmoil of meaningless and confusing rhetoric. After all, if you are not willing to admit that the original idea of a ballistic missile needs to be eliminated, then you will spend your time constantly coming up with new “anti” plans to outdo your previous “anti” efforts.

Back to the original thought: if  we’re taking a vote–I’m anti-ballistic missile.