The Brave Girl Who Asked for Help

Children need role models, I am told, and this is why I am always telling my own kids so many stories. All of the time, in fact. You know: Myths, fables, fairy tales, with characters that embody some personal characteristic I’d like my kids to see and to emulate, maybe.

So someday – not today, but someday! – I will tell them a story about my old friend, Michelle. I will tell them about a time when Michelle was very scared but also very brave and knew to go and to ask others for help.

I will tell my kids the Story of the Brave Girl Who Asked for Help.

Michelle was brave because she knocked on my door without calling ahead. She was brave because, when I answered the door, she just pushed her way on in.

What is in Your Head? (Part 2)

These are Aesop’s eyes:

 This is Aesop’s brain:

Aesop’s eyes are connected to Aesop’s brain by two cords called “optic nerves.” This is a good set-up and it works pretty well for the most part, all things considered, except that at the place where the optic nerves connect to each eye, Aesop cannot see.

Don’t feel too bad for Aesop, though. At the place where each of your optic nerves connects to your eyes, you cannot see, either. And Abraham Lincoln could not see anything at those places on his eyes. And neither Leonardo da Vinci. Why, even Kanye West himself cannot see anything at that place at the back of each eye where his optic nerves connect.

Kanye West! (Please do not tell him I told you this.)

What is in Your Head? (Part 1)

I know we all know more than we know we know.

I know that it is just a matter of hauling it up. Bringing it out. Of getting it to the surface somehow.

Like an expecting mother is rarely wrong when she dreams of the sex of her unborn child. Did you know about this? She knows… but she could never explain how she knows if she tried.

How the hell does she know?

And like somewhere way down inside the sticky folds of your brain lives the combination to the lock on your locker from when you were in sixth grade. You could find it if only you knew how. Maybe with drugs. Maybe hypnosis. Maybe with electric prods poking directly into your skull.

It’s in there.

But be careful. You can’t just go around getting stuff out of your brain the way you get oil out of the ground. Popping holes. Drilling down. Washing the remnants out with high pressure injections.

Believe me: I have tried all that, and all it got me was these weird eye twitches and I can’t ever make right-hand turns anymore.

Best Foot Forward

I’m gonna put my best foot forward this year.

Not like last year. Not like them other years. This year’s gonna be all about my best foot.

The very best foot. Not that other foot. You know which foot I’m talking about. My not-so-good foot. My not-the-best foot. The Foot Which Shall Not Be Named. The one that’s dragged me here, kicking and screaming, into this old dead-end alley where I lie.

I have looked on down my leg from this horizontal position way, way back down in this old alleyway. I’ve said, “How is it that I got here? How is it that this situation I am in has come to pass?”

And that’s when I seen it. I saw my good foot. Not that other foot. My best foot.