FUNNY HUH HUH

The perils inside a writer's brain...

 

Sure, we all like a laugh. YouTube is full of it. As is Social Media and even here, some works plainly make you giggle.

When it comes to laughing at yourself however… that’s a whole other story.

Writers unfortunately (and I may quite justifiably be the only one in this category) live ‘in their heads’ more so than most people. We have this thing constantly fluttering in our brain-matter… maybe a memory, a previously (minutes ago) noted event, a snatch of conversation we overheard, a colour we’ve not seen before - or simply a word, fleeting in and out of our ‘being in the moment’.

I have a lot of ‘fluttering’ going on. I’m here, I’m there, I’m ahead, and more-so these days, I’m ‘behind’. This would be a perfectly acceptable and (in some instances by me) desirable environment. That’s where ‘pieces’ are born and one gets to ‘write’, right?

It gets you into strife a lot though.

… We went on a winter holiday to Tasmania. I left my car at the ‘long term car park’ near the airport. Told the boys to remember where our car was, in this horizontal sea of thousands. Both boys repeated the correct location. There were very clear and ‘color coded’ signs everywhere. I didn’t write ours down. I did not memorize it.

Five days later, 10.00pm on a freezing night, (I know there were cameras - and I have searched YouTube for the video) we stood at the edge of this very vast sea… No color serenaded our senses in the darkness; no yellows and reds and blues and innumerable shades of shimmering silver and gold. We faced a black sea, lit up in a grid pattern of white light.

I looked at the boys. I got shoulder shrugs. Later, I got the “you’re the adult here, and you got us into this mess” look. Much, much later, I heard those words: “Why can’t you ever focus on anything?”

In-between, we began walking the long isles, my hand outstretched, pushing the key button every few seconds, as we communally listened for the familiar ‘here I am you buffoon’ sound; lugging suitcases and backpacks, the wind so cold everything was weeping. Two teenage boys, you’re gonna get snot - and novel ways of disposing it. I witnessed some incredible ones…

Two and a half hours of hell. All because I was thinking as I’d parked the car five days ago of how much this sea of cars reminded me of - see what I mean? I was there, but also following up a ‘flutter’.

Too many similar occasions to list. I will mention a couple, in the spirit of sharing and possibly having at least a single person identifying with this ‘affliction’.

Marcus, when he was a toddler had two loves: Trains and elevators. I was probably the single biggest ‘consumer’ of Thomas the Tank Engine products. My bank statement constantly reminded me of this fact.

Elevators were something else. They weren’t toys.

When he was two and a half, parents, sons and I took a family vacation up North. The Gold Coast is heaven on earth for young kids (kids of all ages really - noted by the number of parents ‘protecting’ their young ones by sharing the thick round tube being bounced around a giant water slide… sporting gleeful grins - myself included).

We were staying on the 38^th floor. Incredible views. Over the years, this place has become like a second home, we’d never now think of staying elsewhere. That first time though… he jumped out of the stroller and raced ahead. He reached the elevator, pushed the up button - miraculously the doors slid open and he was in. He loved pushing buttons. There were forty two floors and myriad possible outcomes flashed before me, like a never-ending film-strip. Every scenario… not good.

I sent my mother up on the other elevator, with instructions to stop on every floor and do a quick look-see either side of the corridor. I contemplated doing the same, eyeing the stairwell for a second. That’s all it took for me to push that thought aside.

I watched the elevator stop on almost every floor (I had this vision of him jumping up to reach the higher buttons and missing a couple) and I grew increasingly worried. My little boy lost, fear setting in, his feeling so small… calling for his mummy… The mummy who’d been too pre-occupied by the couple she’d observed all afternoon; the initial ‘rub my back and I’ll rub yours’ agreeableness changing and over the hours and morphing into the ‘what the hell am I doing here with you?’ scenario captivating me…

Ten minutes later he emerged, a huge grin on his face. A nice elderly lady had pressed the lift button to descend and happened across him. She’d asked him where his mummy was and he’d said, “Mummy is down.”

… Then of course I got the three of us lost in the Blue Mountains. One of those days that starts out well and disintegrates into a disaster, natural and otherwise.

I parked the car in one of the designated parking areas on a bright sunny and warm morning. Notice I said “one of” - at the time the assumption being that I’d parked in the ‘only one’. We set off, following the clearly marked trail. There were many sheer drops and slippery or otherwise potentially hazardous spots, well protected. The boys loved the whole ‘adventure’ thing. I was processing the beauty, the contrast between this beauty and the mortal danger presented by a simple slip of a foot… Much like life, I was musing…

Yeah, somehow we went off the main trail. The helpful signs disappeared as did the steps in slippery or steep areas, as did the handholds and the safety-rails. We began seeing “DANGER” and “FALLING ROCKS” and “BEWARE: MUDSLIDES” and… then the weather turned. A torrent of rain, a river gushing from above, the summer storm pelting raindrops that hurt!

Four hours later, drenched to the bone and shivering, looking more like some mud creatures emerging from the depths of a scripted nightmare, we trudged our way to a clearing. We saw cars! We’d found the car park! Well we’d found a car park at least.

  

 A gentleman in a sedan noticed us, (what gave us away?) and politely asked if we’d become lost.

“No,” I replied (a little too defensively) “We just got caught in the rain-”

He was too clever by far. “This isn’t the main car park. Did you park in the main one?”

I looked at the boys. Their mud-encrusted faces stared back tired and - accusingly?

“Ummm… I think so?” I so prayed so!

“Then you’re about five kilometres from here. Hop in; I’ll give you a lift.”

“No, that’s okay; we can walk there from here if you point out the direction?”

“Mum!” Two now-distressed voices spoke up, heads pointing vigorously to the sedan.

He drove us to the car park and yes we located out rental car. We made a mess of his, but he said not to worry, we weren’t the first he’d rescued’. He laughed!

There was one General Store in what passed for a ‘village’ nearby. I ended up with a singlet saying “Girls get the job done” in a children’s size with lots of stars and glitter and some unisex ‘shorts’… (It was either that outfit or something from the nightwear range) and the boys sported identical batman outfits, equally several sizes too small… they thought it funny that their wedgies and other bits were on show.

Marching through the lobby of the five star hotel… that was not funny.

Nor was losing the flight home from Sydney another time because I’d gotten up extra early and made a coffee and sat out on the balcony musing about how I’d once again failed to connect with an old friend -  till my sons emerged rubbing still-sleepy eyes and saying “Um… shouldn’t we be gone by now?”

It gets worse this one. Sitting in the congested early morning traffic-filled tunnel, I asked them whether they wanted to continue driving home or stay another night and fly out next morning.

(Who asks this?) They chose to drive home.

The first hour wasn’t too bad. By the third, I got “So how long to go now?” By the eighth I’d had various versions of “Why’d you make US decide anyway?” By the time we pulled into our driveway twelve hours after we’d set off, neither of them were taking to me.

Why had I asked them to choose? Because the ‘friend’ I’d missed connecting with again, the one I still carried inside me - along with a conversation festering unshared for some years - had said on the phone, “We could have caught up tomorrow, shame you are going.” When the possibility of said conversation became real however, I was torn between the words it would later produce (yum) and the ‘closure’ needed for these words to emerge which may have involved some measure of pain…. So left it to chance, or in this instance, my sons…

Yeah. Obviously I suffer from severe flutter. My sons have plenty of comedic material to pass on to their own kids about their grandmother’s lack of focus…

Reviews

[Elise Anton]

barleygirl, that's all I got... It was meant to be about 'getting back at cerain someone humour'... Turned out different lol