Banana in Costume

"Look out the left window." On a flight, 5 seats per row, that's not a phrase one often hears. Smaller flights maybe, bus tours sure. But on a "get-me-there-now" kind of thing, it was the first time I'd heard that phrase uttered.

"Look out the left window," the captain said, but half of the passengers were unable to really do so. A quick glance here and there maybe, but not an honest-to-goodness look. But a quick glance was enough.

"See that airplane?" Even with my quick glances, I was able to see it. It loomed relatively large in the view. Relatively, but then relativity is pretty much everything. Yes, I saw the plane..I'm not sure I really needed to, though.

"We see it too." Isn't that reassuring? But not a thing was said about if that airplane saw us. Of course, we did manage to land safely, so I'll assume that either the plane did see us, or our pilot use to fly fighter planes.

Or maybe it was just a quantum tunneling banana..in disguise.

Ack! The Phone!

I got an email today. It's not often that I get email from a girl saying that if I want to hang out with her I need to give her a call. And even less often that in that email she gives me her phone number so I can call her. But I believe that of all the times that these have both happened, that a girl tells me to call her so we can hang out and gives me her number so I can, of all of these times I believe the email has never been directed to me.

This time, at least, I know it wasn't. Several months ago, I had another email from the same girl trying to determine if I was this guy she knows that works in a fast food establishment. Well, I neither know her nor work in a fast food establishment, so sadly I had to say no. Well, I guess I could have said yes, but the chances that she lives anywhere near are low.

So I got an email today which had the potential to be very happy. But instead it just ended up being amusing. So it all worked out. For me, at least; I don't know if she's going to manage to find this other guy now.

And, to top it all off, I don't have to use the phone!

The Sticker Fairy

She came! She really, really came! I was certain of it, I knew that she had been there last night. The sticker fairy had come!

I was so excited that morning when I woke up. I bounded off the bottom bunk before my brother, in the top bunk, was coherent and threw open the drawer. Sure, I knew that this was his drawer, I knew that it was his stuff in there, but I also knew that the sticker fairy had visited. She couldn't have left the stickers just for him, right?

I don't remember anymore what the sticker fairy looked like. I don't even know that that's the name she had, I just know that that morning I was certain that someone had come and left some stickers in that drawer. And wherever there're stickers, there's the chance for fun! So that morning, I threw open the drawer and grabbed the stickers and started sticking them everywhere I could.

I don't remember what my brother did or what my parents did. I don't even remember where the stickers came from, although I have some fairly good guesses. And I'm pretty certain that there really was never a sticker fairy, that that part at least had just been a dream.

But at night, I'll lay awake and wish I could see her again. At night I lay awake and long for the days where there was magic in the world.

And maybe next time I won't get in trouble, next time I know better than to apply stickers to the furniture.

A Minor Mathematical Miscalculation

I woke up early that day, which was simply unheard of. Mom had to wake me up three or four times before school, but that day I was too excited to sleep. It was time for the math competition!

Our math teacher had been giving us sheets and sheets of math problems for months then, and I knew that I could do most of the. The real question was, could I do them well enough. Finally, I was going to find out. Finally I was going to be timed, graded, ranked, and I'd know if I was good enough or if I should start with my future in underwater basket weaving. I hoped not...darn it, math was fun!

I got up early that morning, but that just made it all the more grueling of a day. 6 hours of math with a break for lunch; after about three and a half my brain was mush. So I was pretty sad when I didn't place at the end of the day, but I wasn't too surprized.

I wasn't too surprized, but my teacher was. So we had to wait, and wait, and wait while she talked to the judges, while she went through the scores, examined the answers. We had to wait while she found the math error that caused me to fail to place.

The math error which wasn't mine. I added, subtracted, multiplied and logicked my way fine through the day. The judge, however, should have known that scores are added, not subtracted.

A single line of difference, but oh what a sad day. Until I learned I didn't have to take up underwater basket weaving...quite yet.

Rain

It rained today. It does that occasionally. Sometimes much too frequently, sometimes it's much too rare. Seldom is it just right, but living inside anymore seldom does it truly matter.

It rained today. The plants were all thirsty, the ground was dry. And getting into my car, the covered parking spot leaked a drop onto my head.

It rained today. And I'm glad I'm not a chia pet. I had a chia pet once, but it never got rained on. I think that if it would have, it would have actually grown and been interesting to look at. It might have also helped if I used the seeds, but I think that the lack of rain is the bigger culprit.

It rained today. It was a good morning. But now the clouds are gone and I have to live without.

But that's ok, I love the sun too! I want another rainbow though.

Fire? Or Just an Excuse?

There are some things that every kid learns in school, it seems. Or at least teaching is attempted, they may have just skipped class that day. But every kid is taught things like "2+2=4", the government has three branches (sounds like an unhealthy tree to me), and the capital of Montana is the 'M'. But one thing that is taught, not just once but over and over and over again is "Stop. Drop. And Roll".

I wonder, though, how many kids caught fire and tried to put it out by jumping into the pool or actually (*gasp*) removing their clothes before it was deemed necessary that everyone should know the one true and proper way to put out the fire is to stop, drop, and roll. I'm not saying that it shouldn't be taught, or that there are better ways of taking care of this obvious deficiency in the human facination with burning things, I'm just wondering how many people had to show this to be important before we started to have it added to the collective conciousness.

It could have been that there was a freak accident in some town, where all of the children came home one day soaking wet and when their parents asked them why they said that they all got struck by lightning which set their clothes on fire so they had to jump into the lake, and could they help it that once they were already there they might as well play around? Or maybe there were too many people caught with sufficiently much clothing missing, whom when questioned responded that they had to remove their clothing because it started to spontaneously combust and they couldn't help it that both of them had to remove their clothes at the same time, could they?

So maybe all these parents decided that they had to get rid of this silly excuse, they had to be lied to convincingly if they were going to be lied to at all. Maybe these parents banded together and came up with a way to remove the fire without removing clothing, without getting wet.

Or maybe there's a teacher out there somewhere that woke up late one morning and realized that the lesson for the day had yet to be planned, and now all teachers continue the tradition, giving themselves a secret holiday every year as their students spend the whole time learning to stop, drop and roll.

But, hey, if that's the reason, they deserve it. It's a tough job. I just think that they should make it a known holiday so they don't even have to come in. I think we need a national "Stop, Drop, and Roll" day!

Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are

I have decided that I'm a big fan of the sun today. It's often not true that I'm a big fan of the sun, sometimes it's too bright, sometimes it's not bright enough, sometimes it's too warm or too cold. But today, I'm a big fan of the sun. It's fun, watching the shadows creeping across the ground, stretching and growing and making really odd shapes when they hit the hill across the street and make it look like the building's even odder in construction than I initially believed.

But mostly, today I found out about the Digital Sundial. Ok, so it can be argued that it's still not really digital, as it isn't a discrete transition from one time to another, but I don't care. I still think it's really neat, and firmly believe that we should be able to find one of these when we're excavating some ancient Mayan ruins.

But even if not, sometime after our civilization has fallen into ruins and our descendants are trying to learn about us from the litter they find piled high beside the road, they'll one day find one of these.

The digital sundial all by itself is going to completely wreck all future theories of the 21st-and-a-half century, as if those were being used then, we've obviously not yet discovered electricity and therefore are even more ignorant savages than believed so it's unsurprizing that we were ruled by the evil shoe corporations.

Yes, I'm a big fan of the sun, for the more advanced we become the more we hide from and ignore it. But that's ok, it hides from us pretty early thesedays.

Frosty the Sockman

Every year my mother asks me what I want for Christmas. Being December now (whoops, I need to get around to updating the date on my watch!), it's probably time for me to make sure she's got that list. Otherwise I may just end up with a couple hundred socks. Which itself wouldn't be bad, 'cause I'm sure there are lots of fun things that one could do with a couple hundred socks. Even if they're all the plain ol' boring white tube socks, although I've a friend that tells me pink bunny socks are much, much better.

I tend to not believe her.

But even if they were plain ol' boring white tube socks, or actually especially if they were such, I can think of a few good uses for them. The first and most obvious one being a snowball fight. Given the distinct lack of snow, a sock rolled up in a ball makes a good snowball, without all the wet coldness.

These do, of course, have some slight drawbacks, I suppose. Snowballs tend to refrain from gathering holes when you wear them for extended periods of time (I have yet to see a snowball with a hole in it). And socks are missing that wet coldness when you throw them at someone else. Snow doesn't cause as much lint-dust. And socks have to actually be cleaned up after. When's the last time the sun melted away a sock-man?