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
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