eThoughts : Divergence: Stream of Consciousness as Short Stories, Part I

A Shorter Than Short Story, Part I (© 2004, all rights reserved).

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As I approached the entrance to the store, a lady beckoned to me from her perch atop a stool. She was a big lady, a budding Jabbarina the Hut. And I wouldn’t say she was exactly perched, now that I think about it, it was more like she was smothering the stool. Now I have nothing to say about obesity in this case, she was that way and so be it, it doesn’t make her less of a person. But it was the circumstances that made her obesity one of the players in this unintended sitcom.

She was collecting money for starving children, at least that is what I surmised from the crude sign, not being at all able to understand her as she was forcing words through a mouthful of popcorn—and I mean a mouthful. And it was not only that bit of weirdness, but the fact that the popcorn was strewn about her body as well as the area around her, a lot of popcorn—enough, I was guessing, to feed a couple of starving children for a day. And though I was able to read the sign on her little collecting pot that pronounced the need for donations for hungry children, there was nothing official about it at all.

I muttered “no thanks,” to which she paid no attention, going back instead to eating popcorn. I wondered where the donations, if any, were actually going.

My trip to this variety store was for picture frames. This whole picture business was an appropriate metaphor for our memories and our emotions I thought. Take a snapshot, capture a moment in time, frame it and then display it. Then look at it every once in awhile and “remember” the moment, warmed by the emotions of that memory. At least this is the probability for displayed pictures—others, hidden in the recesses of our drawers or trunks are more like unconscious memories.

In any case, I suspect these memories are more constructed than recalled, and there’s research to support that suspicion. Mostly the pictures serve that construction process, rather than serve our memories of a moment in time. Yep, framing pictures was an appropriate term.

I found the right frames, undeterred by my philosophical digression. Metaphor or not, those family pictures waiting at home were going to be framed. And, like it or not, they were going to be enjoyed, whether that enjoyment was constructed or remembered.

She banged into the side of my leg with her cart with enough force to almost knock me down. Coming around a corner, hell bent for some destiny or the other, she had not mastered the cart as an extension of her body. Besides, she just wasn’t paying any attention—apparently whatever destiny was filling her moment mattered much more than her momentum with the cart. But she was good looking, and she seemed somewhat contrite by her blunder. Or maybe that’s what I wanted her to be. So, I figured I might as well see what else this collision might become, other than tomorrow’s bruise. It was true that I would not likely be thinking this way if I had perceived her as ugly—attractive people do get a different attention, but I had already spent enough time on philosophy.

As the injured party and now one with an agenda, I figured I would invite her to speak first by giving her ample non-verbal communication—with a face that announced my surprise and my injury at her hands, yet a face without indignation. After all, that would not help my cause.

Attractive or not, formerly contrite or not, she had apparently recovered enough to look at me like I was a problem. She uttered a sorry, but cocked her head as though to ask “anything else?” In other words, I was in the way. Sorry was good, I was not broken, why don’t I move?

Amazing. I don’t know what magnetic pull her destiny had, but it sure won out. No time for the present.

I paid for the frames and walked out, wanting to favor my leg, but admitting that it would have been a bit of acting. Wronged, but unassuaged, I exited past the popcorn-eating, money-collecting-for-starving-children lady, still stuffing her face with popcorn, the mess around her growing like a nurtured weed. She stopped her forced spiel through the popcorn membrane that filled her mouth when she saw it was me. But this time her look lingered upon me. I swear she was wondering what my problem was.

After all of that, now I had to drive home on a road filled with these people’s relatives, Pleistocene-era organisms riding in cars.

Oh well, I had things to do, frames to fill, memories to honor. It wouldn’t occur to me until the following morning, after some troubling dreams I couldn’t recall, that perhaps I was stuffing my life down my throat, while undertaking a mission grown heavy with debris and irony, all the while ramming into my own presence and leaving only bruises and smothered places where I landed. But it was a brief border crossing, the immigrant thoughts being rounded up by my internal version of Homeland Security and quickly deported by the call of so much to do and the anguish of being surrounded by so much stupidity.

If I could just get a break, all of this would be so much easier—at least I’d have time to figure out what the real solution was. Or was it the real problem that needed figuring? Well, it would come eventually.

Disclaimer: Though parts of A Shorter Than Short Story, Part I, were inspired by real events, all characters are fictional and no reference to any person, living or deceased, is intended or should be inferred.