DEARMAIZIE

One summer, when I was 10 or 11, my older brother and I “borrowed” our father’s golf cart from the cart shed at the country club¹.  It was my brother’s idea.  I was just along for the ride.  Or not, as it turned out.  (My father was playing golf at the time.  He played golf so much I thought that’s what he did for a living.)

I wanted to drive the cart so I kept trying to grab the steering wheel away from my brother.  We fought, the cart swerved, —  lookout! lookout! — my brother lost control and I went flying off the side, hit my head on the concrete in the parking lot and blacked out.  I don’t remember anything after that.  I’m sure I got in trouble, but I’m also pretty sure I milked it the whole way.

Aside from the dementia I will surely suffer as a result of this wholly avoidable accident and ensuing brain damage, it might also explain my overall quirkiness, which includes a fun talent for making shit up — book titles, colors, songs, character names — that I’m sure will come in handy later on when the dementia hits and my mind is cooked cabbage.  (If cancer doesn’t get me first.  What a fun future:  dementia or cancer.)

As an example, these are book titles I wrote down on the notebook beside my bed.  Tell me you wouldn’t be dying to read these:

Any Number Less Than One

Paltroi

Twilight’s Blessing of Carnage

Vuk Proleo:  The March Backward for Hungary

Zan Coco Sayer:  My Years as a Feather Girl

Don’t ask me what any of them mean.  Have no idea, I just make them up.

I’m guessing they are trapped in that space that was damaged when I blacked out, and they seep into my consciousness periodically, in a pathetic attempt to escape the curcoil of my mind. Maybe. Curcoil, another word I just made up.

Also.  Don’t even challenge me to a game of Balderdash because you’ll end up on the pavement.  I mean it.  Champeen.

¹  Yeah, I spent my childhood as a country club brat.  Until my father left us.  With nothing.  Thankfully, I had a resilient mother and some straight up kick-ass grandparents who together saw to it that we had fine childhood.