Tuesday, April 3, 2018

HOW THE BLOG STARTS - THE ORIGIN STORY


Do you feel it? That spinning sensation? It's the director taking us through space and time to the place in this movie called the "Origin Story." Most lives go on just fine never knowing about one or even thinking about their own. But this is a blog and I "blog" so to explain how I rate such hogging of your attention; I must have an origin story. 

As was said in legend, I was born to a woman in Squalid Patch, PA. She was sweet and made the best cabbage rolls. They still looked like human waste, as cabbage rolls do, but they tasted of love and simple living. Her house in the woods wasn't near anything so I was confused when I found myself lost in foliage without end. 

I was adopted by a pack of wolves that quickly abandoned me because I ran too slowly and were clever and sensed an origin story about to progress. Wolves hate origin stories about as much as they hate Sarah Palin hunting from a helicopter. Besides, in all the stories they starred in, they never got paid and never mind residuals. They were outta here.

They left me near a place that was covered in coal dust and steel-town waste and smelled like rotten eggs. That's where the Swedish acrobatic team, the Practical-And-Useful-Petersons taught me the secrets of smelt juggling. (They tried the name, the "Amazing Petersons," but they though the words "Amazing" and "Peter" next to each other was just bragging and probably impolite.)

The Practical-And-Useful-Petersons taught me basics in house building and polite uses of beige. They brought me to Erie, Pennsylvania so I could blend in with humankind, certain I had some useful gift to offer humanity. They had their doubts when they discovered I couldn't stop laughing every time I walked past the "Erie Cemetery." I was certain there was some buried irony involved in that name.

They soon found out I was a "wise guy" and reeled in horror. I was always "smart" and had some kind of "attitude." They knew I was making nothing up and usually repeating back to them exactly what they said to me, but found my way of saying it somehow "forward" and "clipped" and other euphemisms for outright mockery. 

I realized I needed to go to college. When I arrived, I was happy to find that I landed among my kind, the men and women of letters, beer, and 8 ball. I found my way to whisky, kinky sex, and creative blasphemy. I was fun at parties, but terrible at funerals. The Avon ladies had a watch list and I was on it. So did the mailmen.


After time and during spring break, I was overcome by a strange vision and sold all my earthly belongings and moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, a place where no one can hear you scream or at least they pretend convincingly they didn't hear you. My life was nothing but sunshine and Weird Al and Bugs Bunny jokes. 

I found an angel that made corsets and a devil that did massage, and we live in curious union to this very day. I think up stories and tell them in the plainness of day and share them with women and men weary of the normality's of life. I think of Pennsylvania. From time to time I find smelt to avoid.
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danerickson
amazon.com/author/ericksondan  
https://www.patreon.com/danerickson

No comments:

Post a Comment