Meandering Thoughts

Meandering Thoughts

I love to write, sometimes I don’t write so well, but that doesn’t stop me from writing. It’s kind of like golf, I guess. Some people like to play golf regardless of how poorly they play.

Writing essays is one of the kinds of writing I like best – much to the dismay of some.

But be thankful all ye who find my essays boring, badly written, or lacking! I used to love writing poetry, so it could be even worse.

I wrote poetry long ago when I was an idealist and I really believed I could do incredible things and change the world. Most college kids think that way and thinking that way is fertile soil for poetry.

I said to the sun, you are no fool,
As he danced in the glimmering, shimmering pool.
You play while it’s warm,
And you hide from the storm,
And run quickly away when it’s cool.

Cute huh? Ah, the foibles of youth – so much stuff springs forth from the fecund soil of youth. But that soil loses its nutrients quickly. Once you get a job, join the workforce, and start paying your own bills…that fertile soil of youth turns stony and barren.

Alas, times change, people change, and now apparently poetry changed too.  I have no idea what separates today’s ‘free form’ poetry from prose. Perhaps if you’re an English teacher you’ll enlighten me. And I know if you can you will because not much has stopped you from enlightening me about my misuse and abuse of the English language.

While trying to develop an idea for an essay today, I found my thoughts meandering. This happens more and more often as I get older. It’s hard to focus on stuff. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve put water in the coffee maker and forgot to put the coffee in – or how many times I’ve put the water in and forgotten the coffee. Meandering thoughts interfere with those mundane rituals in our lives.

Anyway, today, much to your chagrin, I’m going to let all my meandering thoughts loose and just write whatever meanders into my quickly aging brain. Lucky you.

Conspiracy Theories

From flat-earthers to the lizard people – there is a conspiracy theory for everyone What? You have never heard of the lizard people conspiracy theory? Here, let me enlighten you.

My late friend David and I developed a conspiracy theory of our own but never published it. But had we published it, I’m pretty sure we’d have had a million whackos joining us in our Alien Oil Conspiracy, AOC as we called it. NO! Not that AOC! 

The Alien Oil Conspiracy was developed after hours of conversation and literally no research – or about as much research as the flat-earthers have done.

The AOC and the end of the world

According to science, all the oil we use to fuel our planes, cars, buses, trains, etc. comes from dead animals and plants that have been squished under billions of tons of pressure and billions of years.  Sure, science can say that. They can say that an infinite number of monkeys, given an infinite amount of time, could write any of Shakespeare’s classic works. Who can argue? Do you have an infinite number of monkeys? 

No, folks, the Alien Oil Conspiracy does not buy into the science. Every year we humans use  1,511,682,564,000 gallons of oil. And we’ve been using oil for a long, long time. I’ve been alive a long time. I remember when gasoline cost 22 cents a gallon. According to the Alien Oil Conspiracy, there could not be enough dead animals and plants or time to make all this oil. 

So, we figure that aliens from another constellation sailed here millions of years ago and built immense oil tanks under the ground.  They landed their huge space tankers and pumped trillions of oil into gigantic deep underground and undersea oil storage tanks for safekeeping.  

The end of the world comes when these aliens return to find we’ve used up all their oil. They are going to be really angry. And there’s nothing worse than a really angry alien. With unimaginable power and weapons beyond our imagination, they will teach us a lesson we’ll never forget.

Toilet Paper

Last March (that would be March in the unforgettable year 2020). Life was humming along. News of a new virus spreading around the world was just reaching me here in my little town, I really didn’t take much notice of it until mid-March when people in my state started getting sick and dying from Covid-19. 

It was about that time when I decided to go the grocery store and stock up on some items, you know, just in case this pandemic got out of control. Much to my dismay, when I got to the toilet paper aisle, it was empty! Not a roll of toilet paper in sight. Not even the commercial stuff – you know the toilet paper that’s so thin your fingers punch right through it. Yuck!

What a scary thought. No toilet paper.  I searched for days (all masked up) to find toilet paper. At 6:00 AM one morning, during Walmart’s Senior Citizens “Safe Shopping Hour” I was lucky enough to lay my paws upon two 12-packs of “Angel Soft” toilet paper.  There was a limit of two. Normally, I would never buy Angel Soft, but on that day, any toilet paper was a blessing – I would have even bought the gas-station-commercial-thin-kind.

Fast forward ten months. The stores now have lots of toilet paper. Good brands too – like the thick finger-proof “Charmin”. We are no longer in danger of running out of toilet paper. But you know what, every time I go to the store, I check the toilet paper aisle just to make sure.

Seriously, I’ll be doing this the rest of my life – I’ll always check the toilet paper aisle every time I go to the grocery store. The pandemic has changed the way I shop and the way I look at toilet paper.

And those are my meandering thoughts for today

Maybe these meandering thoughts will inspire some meandering thoughts for you. Sail along with your meandering thoughts… you’ll never know where they will lead.