-attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed
I despise blogs, articles, speeches, or conversations that start off with definitions, don't you?
It's such a giveaway that the writer is about to contradict that definition, offering something new and enlightening.
Or perhaps, sometimes—maybe more often, maybe less (how should I know, right?)—the aforementioned writer will instead use the definition as a launching point to jump into their persuasive (or not) presentation. It's like they've got one "fact" set up right for the thesis paragraph.
Open strong, right? And it's just like oh great, he must've used that New Oxford American Dictionary built into his lappy tappy computer gizmo.
Well, you're right. I did.
I'm not one to throw the word fascist around—everyone knows it's a melee weapon best for close combat—but certain current events have me wondering at exactly what point I need to digitize my favorite books and maybe build a secret room in the attic.
Having spent the past weekend stocking shelves at local grocery stores for a certain snack food company—let's call them Neato-Yay—I can say with an anecdotal certainty usually reserved for panel shows that there is enough food in south eastern Massachusetts to feed exactly four gazillion people, if their diet mainly consists of bowl-shaped corn chips. I know this because just trying to keep up with Hurricane preparedness levels of consumerism has left me physically and emotionally shredded. Much of the physical shredding is due to having lost the oversized work gloves I'd bought at 7-11 the night before for a buck-fitty because they got too sweaty so I put them in my pockets but how in the world are you supposed to fit keys, phone, notebook, pen, timesheets, instructions, and gloves too big for my apparently trumpian-sized hands in freakin' khaki pants, huh? Answer that one.
I'll give it to Carlito's Way though, they sure do have seventy billion four hundred and twenty-six different sizes of the same generic, over-priced, addictive...cheesy...salty...crunchy...
Wait, where was I going with that?
So this one time, I was maybe nine or ten, right? You ever been there? Yeah? Cool.
In this particular bit of recollection, all the church people got onto this kinda fancy ferry boat sorta like the ones in The Dark Knight with the detonators and the prisoners and the not-prisoners etc...except this one had less explosive barrels on it (i assume). I guess this happened annually, but I was only seven or eight, so what do I know? The captain and his brave crew of hunky polo shirts took the boat and its occupants out on a nice little loop around the Hahbah, and there was food and drinks and dancing (except minus the drinks and dancing but plus a lot more food because well, you can figure it out...)
Afterwards, the flocking mass (or massive flock, idk) disembarked on a gangplank with real nautical-looking rope railings. I myself, being an eager-to-please young lad of maybe five or six, personally volunteered to stand on the dock, just to the side of the intersection where plank-ramp met pier-dock. There I stood, hat in hand (here meaning "holding a plastic bucket which had likely once contained popcorn or disappointing off-brand candy"). As the pooped-out parishioners were pooped off the poop deck (I know it's not the poop deck, okay? I've watched Muppet Treasure Island like 30 times a month since I was about three or four years old), I would be there to hold the makeshift coffer before them and passive-aggressively insinuate that God may have made the sea but he didn't pay for you to gorge yourself on fried chicken while riding around in a loud eyesore fueled by dead dinosaurs on it.
So while I stood there, an infant of one or maybe two years old at most, implying with a practiced smile that the family who prays together sure better pay together, I noticed the descending crowd swelling beyond what the allotted wooden plank space could comfortably contain. What a predicament, my probably fetal brain thought. What shall I do to accommodate these restless worshipers' transition from seaworthy shuttle back to good ol' terrarium firma?
Of course, in my single-celled yet somehow sentient mind, I pulled a very practiced move known well by anyone of the introvert persuasion. I got out of the way. I removed myself from the equation. I vanished into the background. Already, I'd become simply the basket, but now I would also be the opening up. Space was now available where before it had been absent. The place which had been empty of emptiness was now emptier and thus less empty of emptiness in its newfound emptiness.
And me? Well, in that next instant, this little Punnet Square learned a very important lesson. A very wet, very cold, very sudden lesson.
Strange isn't it, how we could make a buoyant, butter-battered bucket into a box for bucks but not a huge building with more rooms and far more space than most motels into somewhere safe and warm on a cold night for someone who might have nowhere else to go?
Weird. I guess it's a good thing I live in a country that's founded upon the principles of neighborliness and welcoming in strangers and immigrants with love and generosity, building a collection of diverse and multi-layered generations of cultures and persuasions of humanity in order to form a more beautiful and more perfect union.
Oh well, where was I? Ah, yes.
Picture a child's windbreaker jacket, good for late summer/early fall in 90's New England but not so much for the frigid winds just along the coast. Imagine, if you will, the accordion-esque elastic strap at the bottom of said jacket which held the space-age membrane around the child's waist in just such a way as to pull up at the worst times, bringing with it the bottom of his shirt and surely frost bite to his pudgy little tummy. Imagine what happens when a significant patch of air surges right up under the waist band and into the jacket. Normally, this air would disperse through the neck hole, sleeve holes, or back out the way it came. In this purely hypothetical case, however, the airflow is momentarily halted inside the jacket by an opposing force.
This patch of air cannot escape upward as is the natural want when in a drop of a meter and a half-ish. The naive bit of protogenic sludge wearing the jacket has foolishly zipped it all the way up to his chin in a failed attempt to stave off the chill. The sleeves, surely? But alas, they soon are weighed down by the great equalizer. After all, water always wins.
From waist band to collar, this polyester parachute of public punitivity has popped, pillowed, and plumed into a sphere most sardonic. Like some gum-chewing pre-adolescent in a confectionary manufacturing establishment, I blue up.
Ballooned as such, I bobbed like a buoy between the boat and the dock. The positioning of both, along with the tide, could likely have caused an unfortunate collision to crush my cranium, but enough alliteration already, are we agreed?
From up in the night sky, the stars twinkled with exasperation. The city lights echoed their chorus all to serve as backdrop for the moment. Yes, it had finally come. With the flame of purpose burning in his proud chest, a lone crewman saw his chance. Vaulting o'er the rope's cautious arm, he spun into a gold-medal-worthy dive and plunged his chiseled magnificence deep beneath the salty swell. Like Namor the Sub-Mariner himself, this marvel burst forth from the waves only at most ten or twenty seconds later. He swam like mermen might someday swim, perhaps when hipster culture reaches Altantica. Wrapping his own railing-worthy nautical ropes around me in an embrace so fierce it forced all the air out of my jacket-bubble, he scrambled to hold on as I rocketed several feet into the air. Not having yet developed the kind of gravity-defying acrobatic skills I would later come to give up on ever developing, I fell back into the water, submerging once again into the dank depths. Thus, with my daring rescuers herculean strength to assist, I hopped on the deck and flopped like a fish.
Those in the crowd could later be heard gossiping about who occasionally likes a glass of wine with dinner and saying, "how'd you get all wet?", "whose kid is this?", and "oh, don't let him drip on me!"
IF there is a moral to any of this, I guess it's maybe don't be so consumed with trying to get out of everyone else's way that you forget you deserve a spot on dry land just as much as they do.
And the money?
It all washed away.
Thanks for reading,
Odist
p.s. - CLICK HERE FOR THE TOP TEN CUTEST PUPPY MOMENTS YOU WON'T BELIEVE
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