Pocket Full of Rocks

I ran into a former schoolmate of mine who, when we played together, always had off-the-wall comments to make. I never knew what he was going to say and I'm not really sure if he did, too. Time has been friendly to us, keeping us relatively healthy for two people who haven't been Charles Atlas or Jack LaLanne types our whole lives.

Although we were both upstanding young citizens of our community, we also had fake IDs that let us buy beer when we were underage. We knew it was okay to sneak a beer or two into a movie theatre or other venue without getting drunk and drawing attention. Other schoolmates were not able to control their behaviour and would often get caught inebriated because of their non-normal conditions, not having learned to experiment and set limits on what you consume in public situations.

Thus, I married a woman who is rational, kind, loving and every superlative I wanted in a lifelong mate. I married her in part because of who I am and in part because of who my friends are, reflecting each other.

I have started writing a new story. Don't know if it'll be book-sized but as usual I'll work out the ideas in this blog. Small details of my life will soak these electronic pages. I've already got a few characters sketched in my thoughts, some with a piece or two of people I know but whose actions do not correlate with the actions of those people I know. Some writers create complete fantasies (there's a word or phrase for what I'm about to describe - what is it?) that have no connection with their lives. In fact, some authors abhor the use of real life in their stories. I am not one of those authors. I like to write text-based caricatures. So if you think you see yourself in these words, you are more wrong than right. Every psychology student and every astute person knows that our species contains a limited number of archetypes. When I use particular quirks and phrases in my stories, they reflect my observation of the archetypes and not a specific person. Your behaviour may have stood out enough to catch my attention but your behaviour belongs to a generic class of others like you (just as mine does).

In other words, if you want to feel complimented or insulted by my writing, I won't stop you. I have a pocket full of rocks that I pull out and look at their unique flaws. Their shiny faces show a distorted view of my face back to me. That zit that looms so large in a regular mirror is hardly a drop of sweat on the back of a gnat when I look at the rocks. Think of my writing the same way.

Now, back to drawing my caricatures. Let's see...where was I...what if the unemployed of the world decided to stand behind a charismatic leader whose ideas were so out-of-line with reality, a normal person couldn't help but laugh?