since the barf-fest i’ve had trouble eating much. i can eat, but nothing like the normal quantities as before. i guess it will pass but for now i feel off kilter, off balance. eyes a bit blurry. i wandered around like a zombie today, visiting my storage room first to see if it has enouhg space to hold the piles of boxes in my living room. i think it does, but i re-arranged the space to make sure of it. i stashed a bag of old cassettes in the room, cassettes i was surprosed to find i still had at the apartment. i’ve cleared a lot of space at home, making it feel like i just moved in to the place i’ve lived over 12 years. i don’t know if filling that storage room to the rafters is really a sustainable solution to my storage fetishes. someday a house some place would be a better idea, though i have no jones for owning real estate or the responsibility and financial penalties that accompany it.
i have not written for this in a while, for this public Internet thing, and i find i am not as careful as i used to be. i’ve bene writing most days, safely offline where i can say whatever i need about whoever i please. not that i have any trash to talk, but in general i think it’s unsafe to refer to real people. maybe it’s the Stanley effect. this kid in 2nd grade named Stanley used to tell funny jokes and stories, and one time i repeated one of his stories, with full credit to him for having told it the first time. Stanley found out about this and did not appreciate it. He confronted me directly, in front of other kids, telling me not to talk about him like that any more. I didn’t think was “talking about him” and i even thought he might have appreciated knowing that i enjoyed his story enough that i felt it was worth passing on to others. i guess he did not. i’ve never understood that, that guy Stanley. maybe he didn’t receive word of my passing-along in the right spirit, or with enough information. wish i could remember what the story was, but there is no way. that memory is gone. i did something similar in high school, with a kid named Fritz. he, like Stanley, told hilarious stories and made hilarious wisecracks in class. thistime i do remmeber the story: the teacher asked the class, “What is another way of saying ‘volts’?” Fritz raised his hand, was called on by the teacher, and he threw his arms open wide and shouted “VOLTS!” everyone laughed,the teacher laughing the most among us, and there was much laughter for a couple of minutes. i repeated this story, introducing Fritz as the genius of the tale, announcing “VOLTS!” in a manner similar to how he said it. there was laughter from the 3 or 4 people to whom i told this, and i turned to one side to see Fritz staring at me. maybe he thought i stole his joke, or maybe he recognized that i waspassing along his moment of greatness. i don’t know what his stare toward me meant because he never said anything, and i never asked. i don’t think he would have had neg
ativity about it, but hey, Stanley sure did, though Stanley was 2nd grade and I think the Fritz incident, the Fritzident, was in the 12th grade, and without comparing the 2 individuals i imagine that some level of maturity may have kept the situation from turning into a smashmouth brawl. haha. actually, i knew Fritz since the 3rd grade, as school bus buddies from 3rd to maybe 6th grade. or maybe 7th. he was also a frequent seating neighbor in the alphabetical seating of youth. i always thought he was an interesting guy, and some of his hilarious comments, as well as his intelligent insights, surface in my mind at times. not that these are *genius* pearls of wit and whistle but they stood out among my peers. i remember when a notable death row prisoner was scheduled to be executed, and a teacher came into class that day asking if anyone had heard about the execution. Fritz said “I heard it was sold out.” lots of laughter, even from the always-so-serious teacher who asked the question. the question referred to the fact that a stay of execution was still a possibility, but if i remember right that stay was never signed and the dude got zapped. eLECtrified.
that same teacher, though, for his ability to laugh at Fritz’s seemingly impromptu punchllliine zinger, made a comment about electric chair executions that i still introduce into conversation today. he (the teacher) suggested that that image of Christ on the Crucifix so familiar to Catholics as a centerpiece of the chapel would be regarded differently if Christ was sitting in an electric chair, being executed in the 20th century style.
