I wrote this a couple of months ago. Enjoy!
Derived/de-ranged/de-railed from an actual occurrence in my life. Any similarities to anything that has happened in your life is merely coincidental.
The other day I found myself sitting in the passenger seat of a car staring out the window. Since I’d just found myself sitting there I had to wonder how I got there and how it came about that I managed to find myself. Such a complicated thought process this was that it took me nearly 30 seconds to figure it out. “Oh yeah”, I thought. It was nearly 15 more seconds until the next thought crossed my mind, kind of like a late night train that passes your house as you’re about to fall asleep keeping you awake for two, maybe three more minutes. It’s not until morning you realize that there are no train tracks near your house. Anyway, I’d been sitting there for quite some time. I was there because of a voluntary action on my part to get into the automobile some hours earlier.
We’d been bowling. Not only had we been bowling but I managed to break 100 once out of the two games we played. My amazingly high score was 102. Many of my closest friends encourage me to “never go bowling again”. Although they claim it would not only save my money, but would also be a public service to those bowling around me I believe them to be lying. I think they are just jealous and don’t want me cramping their styles (although I don’t think they have any). Back in the car, I glanced out the window, but I’ll come back to that later. After much thinking and several boxes of ice cream I’ve recently come to the conclusion that guys thought patterns are kind of like the read out on that machine in hospitals that shows the heart beat of a patient. This patient’s heart just flat lined. Guy’s thought patterns are mostly just a flat line, but every once and a while a blip occurs. This is known to professionals with titles such as “support technician”, “consultant”, and (I’m not making this up) “Sumo Wrestler” as “abnormal”. Women’s thought patterns, on the other hand, are kind of like the read out of a large earthquake on that richter scale machine thing. If a Women’s thought pattern flat lines it’s probably because one of two things happened: 1. Her man remembered her birthday. or 2. Her man remembered her birthday. (Richter, by the way, was also a German writer whose humorous and sentimental novels include Titan and Years of Indiscretion)
Anyway, back to the car. As I gazed out the window at the passing landscape… or rather the landscape that seemed to be passing when in reality it was us that was passing it. It’s all about relativity. I believe Einstein once said that if you sit on a hot stove for a minute it feels like an hour and if you sit with a pretty girl for an hour it feels like a minute. That’s relativity. Why on earth that theory of his is so famous when anyone could tell you that it’s much more fun to sit with a pretty girl than on a hot stove is beyond my level of comprehension. One must wonder if he really spent those years sitting with a pretty girl and then on a hot stove and pondering it. Did he try to sit on other hot surfaces such as the sidewalk in Arizona or a TV dinner after it’s been nuked for 3 minutes and determined that a hot stove was the best way to describe his theory? Did he sit with more than one pretty girl? Did he try to sit with old ladies? Dogs? Cats? Snakes? After sitting on a TV dinner would the part of you sitting on the mashed potatoes feel like you’d been sitting for a minute while the part of you sitting on the meat and gravy feel like it’d been there for 3 hours? Why don’t scientists figure out how to heat a TV dinner so the mashed potatoes are warm before the rest of it bursts into flames? So yeah, just remember, it’s all relative. Kind of like Adam and Eve. They’re our common relatives. We are all related to Adam and Eve. I wonder if Einstein considered that in his theory of relatives. I think mother-in-laws everywhere would benefit from such a study.
Anyway… I looked out the window at the city lights and thought. 20 seconds passed. What if thousands and thousand of years from now an archaeologist (17 seconds pass) digs all this up? What if we found something similar? Highways, houses and houses that never seem to end, stuffed elmo dolls, newspapers miraculously preserved with headlines such as “Internet spam wipes out 17 nations in 4 hours”, helicopters, airplanes, the list goes on. I mentioned this brilliant thought to the driver. She acknowledged the thought… just enough to make me think I had actually had a useful thought. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…. the thought process flat lined. Then, a blip. “What are you thinking about?” I asked daringly. 45 minutes later she finished talking. She then turned the question back on me. Oh crud. What was I supposed to say? “Nothing” I ventured carefully. She didn’t buy it. Little did she know that “nothing” was actually a pretty far stretch considering that I wasn’t really thinking the word “nothing”, but was actually thinking of nothing and so coming up with the word nothing to describe the nothingness of my thoughts consumed all available resources and was causing the system to halt. Luckily she interrupted the system halt with another question. “No really, what were you thinking about?” “Helicopters” was my response.
She seemed to believe it. Either that or her silence was from the utter horror that I could pass time thinking of such trivial subjects. I can only imagine that her thought pattern readout in that moment would have been comparable to that of an earthquake registering 6.2 on the richter scale. It was at this point another blip occurred in my thought pattern. Whoa! The doctors and nurses casually glance at the monitor to see if the patient had come to life. Nope. On with the autopsy.
Before I continue I better clear up something here. Even though us guys don’t appear to think much, we actually *are* thinking. I would venture that guys just use their resources better than women do so it doesn’t appear that we are thinking. The purpose for this practice is, of course, for the sole purpose of being able to eat more food. The more food a male can consume the better his ability – or rather his perceived ability to attract a mate. Married men must continue to use their resources wisely so they can, of course, talk about all sorts of cool things like sports, computers, TV dinners, Einstein’s theories, more food, our dislike for questions like “does this make me look fat?”, and the stock market with their daughters suitors. The stock market should not to be confused with the market for livestock. Doing so could cause the young suitor to think you an idiot, which is a very dangerous situation to be in. Once the youngster believes you to be an idiot he will no more respect your opinion as he does the opinion of his least favorite comic book character named “Big bozo”. To save you from such a circumstance I will provide the following explanation: Livestock and stock are two very completely different things. In fact, the only four similarities are that they are both traded/bought, hold value, have the letters s, t, o, c, and k in them, and can crash (if you happen to run one over in your car.. like a cow for example). Differences between livestock and stock are as follows (this list is not comprehensive): stock cannot be physically milked, insider trading with livestock has never been in the news (as far as I am aware), and you cannot ride stock in a rodeo. I feel I should mention one similarity between the rodeo and the stock market. Both have clowns running around trying to distract the big mean bull… or theoretical bull as the case may be. I hope this helps.
Once again, I found myself sitting in the passenger seat of a car staring out the window. We’d been bowling. I broke 100. What can I say? I’ amazing. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee………..
This document may or may not reflect an actual opinion I may or may not have.
The following list is a variety of possibilities that were considered for the above disclaimer:
This document reflects an actual opinion I don’t have. This document reflects an opinion. The author of this document likes donuts. This document reflects nothing. Mirrors do though. This document is an opinion of no one in particular. This is an opinion. Este documento proporciona una mirada profunda en la vida de nadie. This document reflects. This is a document. This opinion reflects no document owned by the Queen of England. The author of this document really like donuts.
Copyright 2004 Ryan Martinsen