a hint of light

K-Mac* walks into the room and says to me “I…”

Though brainstorming a foolproof plan for replacing money with macaroni, I magnanimously put a bookmark in my thoughts. I wait. Seemingly, days go by but in reality it’s more like freeze-dried seconds placed in a microwave where they explode into fat, soggy minutes and somehow morph into a mind-numbing vision of endless box cars on a 14-mile freight train rolling through a railroad crossing in Forever, North Dakota at two miles an hour.

Finally, I say “Er, what?”

She stops. Puts a finger to pursed lips, rolls eyes up into her hair and, in an “Aha!” moment look—nearly identical to the “Wow, I could have had a Glock 19” look—she shakes her head and says “Never mind, I answered my own question.” She then turns and walks out of the room.

I chase her with quivering exclamation points. “Wait! Wait! I didn’t hear the answer! I didn’t even hear the question!”

“Never mind,” she sings sweetly.

But I proceed to mind with extreme prejudice. I feel as if a quarter has been dropped into a slot in my ear. Like one of those coin-operated vibrating beds in a cheap motel room, I start to tremble. A tic of despondency starts winking my right eye, which is not my normal despondent-winking eye. Confused, my mental bookmark disappears like a banjo pick dropped into the cheese fondue.

Ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you that you can’t just casually tease someone with the foreplay (and presumption of duringplay and afterplay) of intellectual frenzy and then squirt the cold water of Never Mind on the conversational wildfire hitherto ignited.

You can’t!

So don’t!

But you still do!

Look, I realize that you can’t fight city hall and that the Never Mind community maintains a huge lobby (with that hideous water fountain and the snippy coat check lady). But being never-minded does more to get my undies in a knot than hearing the flossing lecture from the dentist while my mouth is wide open but incapable of saying anything but Grgleglah.

So I am looking for financial backers to start up a system called NMT (Never Mind This). It would take advantage of the same video replay technology now used by MLB, the NFL and NSA. It requires a very modest cash outlay for video cameras, microphones, a booth for examining replays and labor. Let’s say 50k. A mere bag of shells.

Here’s how it would work: each occupant of a home gets one challenge per day upon hearing the words “Never Mind.” Both parties go immediately to the replay booth where the most recent conversation is replayed in high-def, slo-mo, museum-quality Cinerama with ear-wax rattling surrounded-and-doomed-to-deafness sound.

If the video shows the accused never-minder saying something that any reasonable person would agree requires no further explanation (“I wonder if the world will explode today…” or “Do you think this sweater shows too much…”) then the never mind is upheld. (Note: reasonable person availability varies in some midwestern states and Utah.)

However, if four words or fewer have been spoken (i.e., “Where are the bullets…” or “Wanna get lucky…” or “What the…” or “I…”) then the never-minder has to tell the never-mindee what it is that one is supposed to never mind. Has to. Not kidding here.

Fair and reasonable, no? By the way, if you don’t have the 50k, um, well, never mind.

*My love interest, previously known as K*t**r*n* who prefers readers not know it’s her appearing here unwillingly/unpaid/unlawyered-up.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.

You know how you sit there on the edge of the bed in the morning, half awake, pulling on a pair of socks from a laundry basket full of clean clothes? And a voice says, hey, someone should put all those clean clothes away. After all, that’s why God made dressers and closets.

And you agree, of course, because it’s your own voice and it’s too early in the day to start an internal debate over the nature of being and whose job it is to be putting away the laundry.

Naturally, you have your own theory on who beez responsible and that beez the Queen Bee. Mister King Bee, he be fully involved in making sure the sun rises and sets each day. Or practicing important worst-case-scenario commands like “Warp Speed, Mr. Sulu!” Or possibly finding ways to attract a dozen or so new followers to his blog—bringing the total to somewhere around a dozen or so.

Mr. King Bee, he say “Show me one spare moment in my jam-packed day where I have time to deal with the lowly socks and underwear issues of life.”

Unfortunately, sometimes Mr. King Bee, his mind buzzing with important matters, accidentally asks this question in his outside voice. Within the hearing of Mrs. Queen Bee. She quickly points out—with a recently whittled point—the above referenced one spare moment. It even has a name and that name is Now.

You try to man up, thinking it won’t take five minutes. But that isn’t the point. The point is you just don’t feel like doing it. And in the land of freedom it is written somewhere (I’m pretty sure) that Mr. King Bee should only do what he feels like doing.

Which is why you invented a stratagem for threats to your freedom. You keep it under your hat for emergencies. If you don’t have a hat, cut your losses now. Put the laundry away, go to your cave and kick the Legos.

So. First, take each item from the basket and lay it on your side of the bed. If the item belongs to someone else, carefully pick it up between the tip of your thumb and forefinger. Make a face like a man watching a zombie eat his neighbor. Keep the dangling item as far from your face as possible while extending your arm to the other side of the bed. Release.

You end with two piles of clothes. Yours and that other one. Set the empty basket aside, leave the room and move onto really important things.

One of two things will happen.

One, the next time you go into the bedroom—for your nap, let’s say—the clothes on the other side of the bed are gone. Put away by someone other than yourself. Maybe they were put away with a heavy sigh. Maybe grinding teeth. Maybe both. Hey, life is hard. Sweep your clean clothes into the empty basket. Take your nap, get up and head back to world-saving activities.

Two, federal marshals break into your cave and haul you before a kangaroo court presided over by The Queen Bee. Not good, but look at it this way: you’re still alive and tomorrow is another laundry day.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.