There are little people in my home. I wonder how they got here.
I can hear them hiding by the stairs, behind that ugly couch near the box fan that’s never worked right. And I hear their little hands clapping and I can hear their little teeth gnawing on their pilfered candy bars.
Ah, there must be hundreds of them running around here these days. Little people are everywhere!
Shhh! There! Just now. Over by the dining room. Did you hear ‘em that time?
The little people. Well, most of them are little, anyway. Some of them are merely very small.
I have a list inside my head of the things I’ve got to do whenever the little people are around. Of the things that must be done and of the things that must never ever be done at all. They’re like rules. Things like DO have food available on a semi-regular basis. Things like DO NOT walk around the house in the nude.
And DO lock the gun away with the alcohol and any dirty pictures that can’t pass as art. But DO NOT leave Enter the Void in the DVD player, because little people are not mentally or emotionally equipped to deal with something like the sight of Paz de la Huerta.
DO. NOT. SHOW. FEAR. The little people can smell fear at fifty paces, just like dogs and like beautiful women and salesmen of used cars can. So do not be afraid of them. If you are afraid, then you’re history, adiĆ³s, you’re kaput.
Listen to me. Now, these little people, when you finally see them, they are going to be wearing mismatched socks and their shoes are going to be on the wrong feet and you might as well go ahead and accept that right here and right now because you’re never going to change it no matter what you do. You think you will. You think, “Oh, left shoe on the left foot, right shoe on the right foot. How hard can that one possibly be?”
It can be very hard. It can be as hard as anything could ever possibly be.
There! Did you hear that? Did something just shatter upstairs?
I told you. I warned you. Little people are here. They are everywhere.
They are coming.
They are coming like they came the other day when my friend, Doctor Belloq, was over. We were sitting on the couch and we were watching “Doctor Who” when, from out the crevices, out from the walls, out from the corners and cracks and the spaces crawled… little people. They came and they surrounded her in a semi-circle, silent and staring.
Silent and staring little, little people!
And I’d warned her, too, like I’m warning you now, but it did not help when it happened.
And they sat and they stared until one of them, who seemed to be their leader, asked, “What does ‘thus’ mean?”
That was all she said. It was so simple that it was hardly even a question at all, really, and yet Doctor Belloq – my over-educated, hyper-intellectual, always-has-the-answer-for-everything Doctor Belloq – she turned about as pale as Webster’s ghost.
Laughed nervously. She said, “I can use it in a sentence…”
The little person repeated, “What does ‘thus’ mean?”
Doctor Belloq said, “Therefore?” Doctor Belloq said, “Proceeding from?”
That little person stood up, wagged her finger in the air and announced (quite sternly!), “I am worried about your thus-lessness!”
Then the little people, they scrambled away all at once, back to wherever they’d been before they’d come. We could hear them scampering around inside the walls, and they were chewing through wires and driving the neighbor’s dog insane.
In the very deadest part of night that night, Doctor Belloq called me on the phone. She sounded bad. She said, “What do I do? I can’t sleep, but I can’t claw through this sense of impending thus-lessness.”
She was a defeated woman. Beaten.
I can still hear them laughing.
The little people, I mean. They’re over there, even now, hiding in the closet with their flashlights and their glow-in-the-dark decals.
They are planning their next move. They are in control. They have had just about enough of me. This is their world; I just live in it.
There... Did you hear that? It is the little people. Here they come!
There... Did you hear that? It is the little people. Here they come!
Ah, the patter of little feet around the house. There's nothing like having a midget for a butler. W. C. Fields
ReplyDeleteI like children - fried. W. C. Fields
Anyone who hates children and animals can't be all bad. W. C. Fields
After raising a bunch of kids; I am tried. However, to avoid the empty nest feeling, five puppy dogs have adopted me
puppies grow up to be dogs
http://theothermccain.com/category/crime/kaitlyn-hunt/
WC Fields should have written parenting books.
DeleteThere's a lot lot be said for pets. In most cases, you don't have to take care of them for 18+ years, and they're more likely than kids to call 9-1-1 if something happens to you.
therefore, Thusness "suchness" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tathat%C4%81
Deleteoops forgot to add the Facebook link
http://tinyurl.com/goodstuff-puppies
OK, I be crazy about the puppies. Kids and puppies
http://pinterest.com/goodstuffsworld/dogs-are-family/
My kid stumbled on a concept from Buddhism. Figures.
DeleteI read those quotes in a W.C. Fields biography or autobiography... I forget which. I read it in 7th or 8th grade. They CAN drive you crazy unless you get your bluff in on them early. The first time they do.something wrong, tell them you're going to count to three and if they don't do or stop doing whatever it is that's upsetting you, you'll give them a spanking. Next start counting aloud to them, one, two, and if they haven't stopped, say three then spank their little bottoms firmly. If you do it right, you'll never have to get to three again.
DeleteTwo out of my three are too old to start training now.
DeleteBut so far so good.
Little people are just differently-sized, that doesn't mean they can't handle Enter the Void. They are capable of great things, just look at Game of Thrones and Peter Dinklage. He would not be pleased with all the booze being locked away, I assure you.
ReplyDeleteThus, I may have missed the point.
You are notably thus-some!
DeleteEverything I know about kids came from Terry Gilliam's "Time Bandits," which has kids AND tiny men in it, so I might have gotten a bad foundation in the difference as well...
What an awesome crazy vortex of words. I am still, delightfully, spinning.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Erica. I had a heck of a time getting into a voice. In the end, I went with "angry" and "a little scared."
DeleteThe young'uns in the forest be mixin' your head 'round them fibs.
ReplyDeleteOh, you mean children? Ah, well I've almost been driven to such insanity after babysitting for an hour. I hope I'm never forced to evaluate impending thus-lessness. Oh...No... Oh, no!
They are actually great fun. I just need to keep reminding myself that I'm supposed to be here to dissuade them from their evil plans, not encourage them and join in...
DeleteIt is wonderful you have little feet and hands getting into things again. Keep up their education. Dr Who is a good place to start. You are on your own dealing with the thus less ness problem. Surely there is a support group or something? TLA - ThusLess Aynamonous
ReplyDeleteI'm starting to fear that the oldest one is smarter than me now.
DeleteI hope she doesn't find this blog and read that...
Smarter, yes. And a little too observant for your own good. Just so you know they get noisier with age too. The subtle noises are replaced by thuds at all hours of the day and night.
DeleteI tried to comment on part 3 of your previous post but Google kept comment blocking me. It was a bad Yahoo flashback.
The secret with this here Google thing is that is that if the background's not green, and if the title of the blog isn't red, then the comments are not going to come up.
DeleteJust now, as I was trying to reply to your comment, I had to hit refresh 3 times.
I bet no one has this sort of problems over on facebook. Plus, over there, you can always ask facebook where you left your keys and there will be a reasonably good chance it will have collected that information on you.
That is good information to know. At least I will try refreshing before going to smash another wireless router. I avoid Facebook best I can. It still seems pointless.and they are way too free with my information.
DeleteMy experience on facebook has been overwhelmingly negative, and I choose to keep negative stuff out of my life.
DeleteOf course, I'm on twitter, so these things are relative.
Google apparently rolled out Hangouts to all Gmail accounts in mid May, and things have been falling apart all over the place ever since. The young hot-shots inside Google designed Hangouts based on the Conversation View interface and behaviors, and never bothered to do regression tests with Conversation View turned off, which is what most people outside of the young and trendy silicon valley use in real life.
DeleteI was annoyed enough by all the problems I have been experiencing yesterday so I looked it up on, you guessed it, Google. And soon I found a ton of similar complaints on productforums.google.com . They say they are aware of the particular problem I first searched on, but they don't know when they will fix it or go back to the perfectly-working way before.
I then rightfully pitched in my two cents, mocking their young but highly paid un-professionalism in the best way I could. Their PR guy designated to monitor that forum replied to me today, where he wanted to make sure that I understood that he did not work for Google.
Wow, Google got groupies! Which is probably why they are young and highly paid while still totally unprofessional and clueless about the real world.
Interesting.
DeleteBut unfortunately, I have yet to find an online place that doesn't come with its own set of (usually self-inflicted) wounds.
The big boys constantly want to get bigger and better, and many of the new ideas fail spectacularly. The little boys disappear entirely.
When this blog is turned into a novel, and that novel is turned into a movie, this will be the way it ends. An achingly beautiful happy ending, with ominous overtones of existential dread.
ReplyDeleteHaha... I am always trying to balance things on this blog. I don't want to be cold and intellectual, but I also don't want it to be a Mom-blog.
DeleteYour description is therefore perfect for me!
Also, it makes for a perfect setup for the sequel.
ReplyDeleteI used to divide the blog up into "seasons."
DeleteThis might be a perfect place to end season 3...
I remember that left shoe-left foot right shoe etc. thing being VERY hard when I was a little kid! I totally did not get the whole left and right concept altogether; I fully did not understand it for a long time and was quite frustrated by it. I was ambidextrous when first learning to draw and write and still am ambi-ish and I think somewhat dyslexic and perhaps those factors made left-vs-right initially a really obscure notion for me.
ReplyDeleteOne time I put my shoes on the wrong feet and my Dad said, "You have your shoes on the wrong feet" and I said, "But Dad, these are the only feet I have!" I genuinely had no idea what he was talking about.
Somehow the first pic here reminds me of ketamine.
I SO love your blog. And your writing. And your life as it's written here. You really am sumthin. <3 <3 <3
Hi, Dan! Your dad could have been correct, though. I have always felt that I had the wrong feet. I wonder where my real ones went!
DeleteThere is an attorney in my office who has to hold the index and thumb of her left hand in an L shape in order to know her left from her right. Someone says, "Yes, that will be first door on your right," and up goes the hand.
Did you know they sell mismatched socks now? They're the new Crocs. Enjoy...and btw..they will call 911 sometimes even when ya don't want them to.
ReplyDeleteThat's thinking one step ahead. The follow-up to mismatched socks should be stained dresses, torn jeans, and your younger sister's blouse.
DeleteHonestly, I'm not totally sure I'm emotionally equipped to deal with the sight of Paz de la Huerta... xx
ReplyDeleteI'm sort of a mess myself, but even I would think twice before bringing her home to meet the family.
DeleteShe's got a sex scene in "Enter the Void" that is filmed from a perspective that I'd hazard a guess is filmed from an angle no sex scene has ever been filmed before...
These little people... they talk weird, and they smell funny, and they always want food. I don't think I'm emotionally, physically, or financially prepared for the miniature version of myself.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but I'm going to need someone to talk to when I'm 80.
Delete