I’ve always been around

I’ve always been around. Well, not always. Mostly always. I wasn’t around for the Big Bang. Nor a little while after that. But then I was. And I found myself naturally wandering around the planet every day. When it got dark, I’d sit and wait for the lights to come back on so I could see the things.

There were no other people, or animals yet. I did however talk with mountains, trees, and rocks. When I say talk, it wasn’t like this. It was grunts, tones, and hums. They were an expression of my emotions in the moment.

I was naked. I didn’t wear shoes. The bottoms of my feet were like rawhide. I never got sick. Except occasionally I’d get a headache. But even that was another thing to talk to. I assumed that the pain in my head was a visitor.

I’ve been asked if I had a mom or dad. Not in the traditional sense. I think I might have previously been split off an amoeba, and then developed into bacteria, and then some other things until I became the person. This is conjecture because I have no memories of the befores.

Way back when, it was easy to walk over the land of the Earth because there was only one continent. They hadn’t split off yet. The thing is, I didn’t know the Earth was round. I thought it was one continuous plain that never ended.

I had no concept of time. There was dark then light then back to dark again, and so on. But I didn’t think of minutes burning off of my life till it was used up. It guess you could say it seemed like always.

I remember when I first saw a reptile. It was tiny. I thought it was a rock that was being blown by the wind. But then I noticed it wasn’t windy. I got curious and lay down on the ground to watch it more closely. I saw that it had orbs on its face that moved around a lot like mine. I got so close that it bit my nose.

Eventually the lizards got really big. I remember one of the big lizards ran up to me and tried to eat my foot. That hurt a lot and I ran away. A bunch of lizards ran after me. I climbed a tree and waited a long time. That was a shitty period. Until the asteroid hit and things got easier again.

Good vibes?

I woke up in the middle of the night to vibrations in the air. I know, that sounds weird. The air around me was warbling. I must have picked up the sensations on my skin. Since I didn’t know what it was, I couldn’t do anything about it, and got up and went to the living room. I lay down on the couch and fell asleep.

I woke up again to the vibrations. They had followed me. I don’t like to be followed. I feel like prey.

Since I didn’t know what it was, I spoke to it. I said things like, “Why are you here? What do you want from me?” Maybe that sounds dumb, talking to a quiver. I do a lot of what are probably dumb things. The soap I use when taking a shower, I use it until there’s nothing left. Towards the end, I wash my body with a transparent sliver of soap. I apply it until it disappears into my skin. It’s frustrating. It doubles my time in the shower, time I can’t spare.

So, I was half certain the air-borne pulse would talk back to me. Maybe because it was late at night and I was frazzled. Or maybe because I’m lonely and crave connection with things not human because it seems like it would be so much simpler. Or I am cursed with a child’s reasoning. The other half of me was embarrassed with certainty that someone would see me talking with nothing. Who? I figured a neighbor looking from outside through a slit in the blinds.

The shaking air continued without a vocal response. But it seemed there were fluctuations in its oscillations. I tried to interpret them. I got the feeling the space waves were saying, “Would you please pet my unders?” So I held my right hand palm up under the reverberations and lightly stroked in circles.

The air tremblings got thicker and I thought…”Oh, my God, I’m having sex with a current.” And then with a wave of shame I thought, “It knows what you just thought, and is repulsed because what’s happening is no where near the vicinity of sex.”

So I picked up the remote and turned on the TV, my turn to balm for anything uncomfortable. My Favorite Martian was on. I was happy because I like that show. It was the episode where Uncle Martin, the Martian, has a malfunction and becomes a baby. His human friend Tim has to bathe, feed, and diaper him. Tim is terrible in his attempts. It’s funny because it supports my great fears of ever being a dad.

I realized the vibrations were watching along with me. Whenever there were some crazy antics on the show, the vibrations got bigger. It was laughing. It turned out we were in the middle of a My Favorite Martian marathon. We watched back-to-back episodes till noon!

Mumble Hum

Frax the armadillo and I took the red eye to Paris. We arrived early in the morning. We hadn’t slept on the flight because we played Monopoly the whole way and still hadn’t finished. We were tired and distracted. We attempted to carry the Monopoly board and all the pieces intact through the airport and in the cab. When we got out, we walked around the city in an attempt to find a place to set the board down and finish the game. We found an outdoor cafe with plenty of tables. We sat at one and continued to play.

The waiter came up and we think he asked what we would like to order. Neither of us speak French, so we ignored him. But if you ignore people in France, they get upset, because it’s what they are supposed to be good at. The waiter kept talking, so we mumble hummed and kept playing. Mumble humming is a great way to cover for not being able to speak a person’s language because they feel embarrassed that they don’t know what you are saying and they leave you alone. This waiter though must have known what we were doing and kept trying to get our order. We figured this was because he’d read our book, The Power of Mumble Humming: Bmbmdombm Mmmmemm Wmmommmom, (There’s a French translation.)

The waiter continued asking for our order, while we ignored him, mumble hummed, and played for another two hours. By this time, sleep deprivation collided with my manic need to defeat Frax the Armadillo, and I began to hallucinate. I thought the game pieces were candy pieces on a cake. I ate Frax’s top hat, and he reacted by starting to spit chew. Spit chewing is an armadillo’s precursor expression of anger. Once they begin, you better start running, because they’re about to unfurl their claws, and make you their scratching post.

I picked up the game board and began to sprint down Avenue Victor Hugo. Mere steps away were the waiter still asking, and Frax with the spitting. My hallucinations had now become characters from Lewis Carroll’s poem, The Hunting of the Snark. There were the nine tradesmen and the beaver, cheering me on, “Boojum, boojum, boojum, hiding, hid, found!!” And then I fell into a mound of whipped cream, which was real. I had run into a bakery, and then into a vat of crème fraiche.

The game and all the pieces rested properly boat like on the whipped buttermilk sea. I was saved a tearing from Frax due to his phobia of any form of cream. Meanwhile the waiter continued with the asking as I rolled the dice. I moved the boot and landed on Broadway and Frax’s two hotels. Frax let out a holler since I only had $50 and no more property’s to mortgage.

I got out of the vat, put myself through a cycle in the bakery’s dishwasher, folded up the game, and put away the pieces. I ended up unscathed from Frax because he’d forgiven me since I’d lost. We went to our hotel and room. We lay in the bed, wearing matching eye pillows, as the waiter continued. When I awoke that night, the waiter lay sleeping between us, still holding his order pad, pencil point on the paper.

The surprise guest

I got in my spaceship and took off into space. I didn’t have a destination in mind this time. I just went.

The thing about shooting through space is you don’t feel like you’re going anywhere. You don’t pass things that let you know you’re moving. So there I was, traveling at 5,000 miles per hour, feeling like I was still in the middle of nowhere, and liking it. Perhaps my destination was not to have one.

That’s when I noticed a tapping at the spaceship’s door. I got up from my driver’s seat, went to the door, and looked through the peep hole. I didn’t see anyone or thing. I figured it was pebble meteor and went back to my seat. The tapping returned. I got up and looked through the peep hole. Again, nothing.

I turned to head back when the tapping repeated. I looked through the peep hole, saw nothing again, and this time shouted through the door, “Who is it?”

A weak sounding voice from outside my spaceship said, “Can I come in, please?”

To be on the safe side, I said, “Who are you?”

The voice said, “What? I can’t hear you.”

I said, “Who are you?”

The voice said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell what you are saying.”

I went back to the driver’s seat and put on the breaks. I got dressed in my spacesuit and helmet. I cautiously opened the door. Gripping onto the outside door handle was a mouse.

The mouse said, “I’m sorry to interrupt your travels. I’ve actually been tapping for a while. I happened upon your vehicle before you left and decided to see if you had any cheese. I tried the door handle, but it was locked, and then you took off. A few times I almost fell off, but managed to hold on.”

I said, “But I don’t have any cheese.”

The mouse looked at me.

I said, “Okay, I have some. You can have a little, but no more.”

I invited the mouse in and closed the door. I took off my spacesuit and helmet, and got the cheese from the refrigerator. I cut off a tiny piece for the mouse and a much larger one for myself. We sat down at the dining table and began to eat.

The mouse said, “This is delicious.”

I said, “Thanks, but that’s all you’re getting.”

The mouse said, “That’s okay. Your cheese, your rules.”

I said, “That’s right.”

The mouse finished its cheese and watched me eat. I was self-conscious because my jaw moves from side-to-side when I chew. I’ve been to chewologists in order to learn to chew up and down, but couldn’t make it stick.

 

Everesting

I took a helicopter ride to the top of Mt. Everest. I got out and looked around. I took a photo with my phone.

My fingers got cold and I quickly got back in the helicopter and was flown down to the Holiday Inn in Lukla, a town a mile away. I got a room and spent a good deal of time in front of the fireplace. My fingers soon warmed up.

I guess I’ll visit Benjamin Franklin

I finally got around to a time travel visit with Benjamin Franklin. I went to June 15th, 1752, and a field in Philadelphia. There was a thunderstorm. Franklin was standing underneath a small portable roof on stilts. He was holding onto a string that was attached to a kite in the sky. Franklin spotted me and motioned me to come over and stand safely under the roof. I did. The first thing I noticed was the tremendous warmth coming off of him. I’ve discovered in my travels that people of great creativity and invention are warmer than others. I’ve deduced that it takes a lot of juice to run these kind of people.

Franklin didn’t mind that I was standing so close. Back then physical closeness wasn’t a problem. Actually if you stood more than six inches from somebody, they would take it as a great offense. I stood closely to him because I wanted to avoid being struck by lightening, otherwise I would have stood a comfortable twenty-foot shouting distance away.

The famous Benjamin asked me a non-stop barrage of questions. It wasn’t assaulting. He was curious. Everything seemed new and interesting to him, like a infant awe struck by anything. He wanted to know about my clothing, my strange way of talking, and why I didn’t reek. I was honest and told him I came from 2018. He accepted it as truth and wanted to know about all the great technological discoveries. I showed him my cell phone. Franklin rumpled his face, saying, “Ah, to be at the tethered end of any jowl bog with an ardor my attention.”