Anchors

The Anchors I’m writing about are the Anchors that help hold you in place when the forces of the world try to blow you around and away  like so much garbage in the wind.

This is based on a writing exercise at the Soul Food Cafe – the train wrecks called ‘responses’ are mine.

 

 PEZ – they’ve given my life meaning and purpose. Plus they were the only food I felt good about eating on the job. I worked in a Funeral Home. You’d have to have spent time working in an embalming room to understand.

One day it’s my dream to visit Area 51 and have my picture taken next to a bunch of inflatable aliens wearing sombreros. I want to wave around a fifth of Tequila and shout in Spanish, ” What do we want? The Truth! When Do We Want It? Now! ”

That way I can tick off Homeland Security and stick it to the Science Guys who suck the joy of wondering about the Universe straight out of our lungs.

I think it’ll be a rush- the same kind you get you drive up to a McDonalds and buy a Happy Meal For Kids so you can get the toy-and the thrill you get as you pull away because you know darn well you’re keeping that toy and the food for yourself.

It’ll feel just like that- I know it.

When I was about 9 I got sent to the library to do some ‘thinking time’. This kid named Jeff poured glue on my chair and when I realized he had gathered a small audience of jerks to watch me sit in that puddle of goo- in a new pair of cool purple bell bottoms to boot-I smacked him for it.

I got busted for ‘starting a fight’ I kid you not, the teacher said I had no reason to be mad because I hadn’t sat in the mess.

Anyway- there was a bright side two this- actually there were two.

The first was I felt really, really good when I popped the little bastard in the nose and the second good side was that the librarian made me sit in the corner where there was this stack of books a class had used for a project they had worked on about the Ancient Egyptians and Archeology.

With nothing else to do but gloat- which I did for part of the morning I spent the rest of the day reading.

On that day I learned that violence may not solve anything but it has it’s own rewards and that you can really learn things from books.

Before he was turned into a rock star I learned about King Tutankhamun  and  I also learned about a woman named  Hatshepsut who, despite some serious effort on the ‘powers that be’ was not wiped from history.

A woman.

Cool.

 I saved the Very Best for the Very Last.

My ” Monsters”.

They’ve made me less afraid, they’ve given me things to write about and their creators have inspired me to be more then the Anita I designed to be by doing hard time in the Suburbs with a bunch of narrow minded bigots on one side of me and scads of  Latte Liberals on the other.

See, when things started to feel a little shaky and I was feeling like that maybe this time I wasn’t going to be able to hang on- you know I was forgetting who I was and what I was about- I had my anchors…Aliens, Pez Candy, Ancient Egyptians and Monsters.

You should be so lucky.

amm