I have been asked to say a few words about all the insanity that’s happening around the world and in our own country and state and city and village and street and backyard and dining room and the little room off the dining room where the china and wine and liquor is kept in an antique glass cabinet that happens right now to be an upside down cabinet full of broken china and bottles and glasses and leaking like Bonnie and Clyde on the morning in ’34 when the feds drilled them so full of holes that the undertaker had to crochet them back together like a sweater but at the moment there is a size 11-wide brown wingtip protruding toe first from one of the smashed glass cabinet doors and balanced precariously against an unopened, unbroken bottle of Beaujolais that I purchased 18 years ago for our 35^th wedding anniversary which may not have been the smartest thing to do because we didn’t have a corkscrew and, well, we never quite got around to getting one, but we really meant to and so we just stuck the Beaujolais in the cabinet which belonged to my wife’s grandmother who made it with her husband’s own two hands and as they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions which is what my intention was when I removed one of my wingtips and climbed up on the window sill thinking I could whack that spider good, the one that crawled up the front of the cabinet when it was still upright and then snuck around the back and when I leaned over with the wingtip poised in bug slamming mode I suddenly realized I was slipping and my stocking foot needed purchase or I would fall off the window sill, so I grabbed hold of the top of the cabinet and that’s when the doorbell rang and I hollered out “Somebody get the doorbell,” and the cabinet began to tip and I said “Ahhhhhh” because the spider had jumped onto my arm and was heading up toward my face and I could see his teeth and he looked really pissed and the doorbell rang again and I hollered “Get him off me,” and I heard the front door opening just as the cabinet went over and the way I was gripping it, well, the thing came right down on top of me with a terrible crash and I think I broke something other than crockery and I shouted “Ahhhhh, he’s wrapping me in a cocoon,”  then I recognized the voice of the guy next door telling my wife he wants me to be the guest speaker at his service club luncheon, and according to what she told me in the emergency room I have been asked to say a few words about all the insanity that’s…

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013, all rights reserved.