Never Getting Through This

Well, then. I have officially been locked in the new and improved man cave for the last hour doing absolutely nothing about the homework I have to do for "professional responsibility" class tomorrow. To remedy this, I include a picture of an image from page 14 of a Google search for "random insensitive funny."

I chose this one (and went through 13 pages of weird images that are guaranteed to make some happy, some horribly offended, and some wonder why man ass is allowed through Google's safe search features) because I have had this plaguing memory that has been poking through from my subconscious and into my waking general malaise of college life as a 30+ year-old, totally entitled, white guy.

Anyhoo, on to the memory. I am not sure exactly how old I was, or even the year, but I know that I was too young to spell (because at the time, Papa and Neenee thought it was cute to spell things out instead of just saying the word in front of a precocious child with no concept of spelling but a vast vocabulary filled with gems like "poopy" and "existential fingerbang") and it was probably sometime during the Carter administration.

It was sometime at night and I was piled into the back of the parents' harvest gold Country Squire station wagon:

Oh the awesome power.

My parents were chatting idly about something or other, spelling words out whenever I piped up in the back, probably in an effort to piss me off and then send me into a quiet, brooding mood reminiscent of that kid from the Shining whenever he let his stink finger do the talking (I had the same haircut at the time). In what seemed like the eternal ride home up Route 45 from my grandparent's house, I laid my head back and contemplated opening the car door and flinging myself out into the weeds speeding by. I touched the door handle and then became preoccupied with how the handle actually opened the door (hey, I was probably younger than 2 years-old and hadn't yet discovered fire, so shit like that was fascinating). I followed the handle into the door with my tiny hand and pressed on the foam insulation where handle met the inside of the door.

I then had a memory inside of this one, that of the urgency of finding food without teeth. I don't know why, but for some reason, that soft, pliant insulation reminded me of pressing harder on a surface for a little more sustenance. Lest this memory fade forever, replaced by black letter rules that all essentially tell me not to have sex with a client, I submit it, humbly, to this digital ether, in a little tiny corner much like my mind, that no one reads and few intentionally stumble upon.

Back to it, then. May Tom Waits play me out to a better understanding of ethical behavior....