Beginnings are always awkward.  Middles I love.  Middles flow, and I don't have to worry about where I am; as long as wherever that is is at least somewhat related to where I've been and where I'll be next.

But, beginnings are confusing.  It's like that chicken or the egg thing. Whether it's a business venture, or simply planning a meal, I'm never sure of exactly the best place to start.

For that reason I've never waded cautiously into the shallow end of a pool.  I leap into the middle and swim in whichever direction I happen to be facing when I surface.  It just so happens, for the purposes of this account, that the occasion of my conversation with the Donald Duck® marionette dangling above the TV falls far enough past the boring preliminaries and sufficiently short of the deep end to qualify as a good jumping off point.





Given my clumsiness with commencement, and the fact that futures are difficult to assess in terms of width, our verbal scrimmages become cyclical and invariably veer toward the concept of rebirth.  An abstraction not lost on Donald.  Since his first Disney® appearance each successive incarnation has been, literally, “re”.

Theoretically, for a human to achieve the same effect, according to the duck, you would have to have yourself placed, naked, in an inflated weather balloon full of Big Mac’s and chocolate shakes.  After a predetermined gestation someone will have been instructed to puncture a small hole in the balloon and hook up the Electrolux®.  With the material deflated snugly around you try and make your way to the opening originally used to inflate the balloon and attempt to squeeze yourself through.  Once you manage to pop your head through the valve have a close friend, we’ll call him Kirby, waiting with the tongs you normally keep hanging on the side of the Weber® kettle on the patio.

Now, here’s where it gets tricky.

While one friend is running a lawn roller up and down the length of your body and another is standing by shouting incoherent instructions; at the very moment Kirby applies the tongs to the sides of your head have his wife scream directly in your face at the top of her lungs.  After several hours of struggle you finally lay whimpering on the cold stones in your own chocolate mucous.

Or, you could simply go through a divorce. That’s the suggestion of the parrot on the mantle.  But I wouldn’t listen to him.  He just sits there all day repeating the lyrics to “Back to Black”.  (We both find Amy Winehouse hypnotic.)





The mere thought of either alternative left Gwendolyn gasping in the corner.

I’ve thought of seeking “Earl?’s” advice, but more pressing matters are at hand.

Does anyone know how in the world to wipe a look like that off of a cat’s face before the neighbor’s come by?

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