April 20, 2013
Saturday, 1:31 PM
771 Dimwits and counting…
Mother,
I didn’t know which of the 16 email accounts of yours to send this to, so I decided to post it here. Hopefully it finds you, and hopefully it’s during a time when you just got back in from the warm sunshine and time spent admiring your flowers that you enjoy more than anything.
750 new followers in just over a week. This is crazy, huh? I’ve got wives reading my stories to husbands, and mothers reading my stories to daughters. Stories about wieners and Sally Jessy Ralphael’s feathered hair. Can you believe it? It’s wild. I don’t know what’s happening, but of course what’s new. I never know what’s happening, and that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.
You know how your free spirited, kind hearted, adventurous, and yes, your rather mischievous son of yours just seems to go along with life. It’s gotten me this far, so there’s no use in changing it now. Well, remember that time you and Dad sat me down right after I graduated college? You might not remember it, but I do. It was in the living room, and it was quiet. If I didn’t know any better, it might’ve been my own funeral that I was attending.
You and Dad wore somber, stern faces. You told me to sit down, so I did. On the couch directly across the room, not far away from your somber, stern faces. I had an idea of what was coming, some sort of boring lecture with me having to say a lot of uh-huhs in between. I’ve gotten my fair share of lectures from you, and from others, so I kinda get a sense of when they’re coming.
It was a lecture all right. I know you meant well, and I’m not here to put you down or anything like that. Mothers do the best they can – well hopefully. The good ones do anyways, and you’re a good one. But here’s what you told me. You and Dad told me to cage my free spirit. You didn’t say those words exactly, but what you meant was to put my free spirit inside a box, and put him up in the attic with all the other dusty toys. I was to be a man now. Stop playing games and get some direction in life. Some goals, a job, a career, maybe a wife, some kids, and all that other sorta stuff.
Well, I didn’t want to be a man. From all I saw at the time, being a man meant cheating husbands, divorced dads, drunks, liars, punchers, spitters, and those that like to give lectures about how I’m to play life by the rules, and become a man.
I was 21. I knew more about being a man than the asshole telling me I had better be a man, after I knew flat out that he had just beat his wife senseless a few nights ago. My friend told me. He was in tears. And now that man had the gull to tell me I had better become a man. Well, I had the gull to shut my mouth and say “uh-huh.” I knew more about being a man than him, and sometimes as a man you gotta know when to shut your mouth and say uh-huh, because it’s not worth the fight at the time. There are other ways to go about winning a fight without shouting, and cursing, and more fighting. So I left it at that: Uh-huh.
I guess this is my usual, long-winded, rambling just to tell you this, and then to follow it up with a little more rambling to wrap things up. I never put that free spirit in a cage. I never boxed him up. I kept him free, and I guess that’s why people like my stories about wieners and Franzia boxed wine, and all that other stuff.
They’re free spirits too. They’re dimwits. There’s a whole mess of us out there, and they enjoy someone who can spin a good tale, tell a whopper of a story filled with craziness and madness, but also full of love and hope. Those are the two most important ingredients to a story, because without love and hope, you might as well just read from the dictionary. The thing with telling a good story is you gotta have a free spirit to be able to tell it, so that’s why I kept him free. That and it just never made all that much sense to me why anyone should keep anything in a cage.
Thanks for being a good mom. I usually never tell you that, maybe even never. Probably because I’m too busy telling tall tales instead, but I was just thinking it’s probably nice and important for a mother to hear that from her son. It’s a lot of hard work raising kids. Not a lot of credit, late nights, no sleep, and lousy sons who make you cry when they send you letters.
I know you’re crying right now. Just like when I can sense a lecture, I can usually sense when someone’s gonna cry, too. I can sense a lot of things. Some say it’s a gift, but sometimes it’s a curse too. It can take a lot out of you with all the sensing going on all the time, and no way to turn it off. Rather than whine about a gift that others would kill to have, it feels nice to make good use of it finally. Wieners! HA.
So stay tuned. Your son is going places that only a free spirit can lead a person, and he’s taking a TON of dimwits along with him! It’s going to be a fun ride. It will be interesting at the very least.
Love,
Your son. The dimmest of all the dimwits. The dunce. The doofus.
Chris
PS. Sorry to include this photo of you with a scrunchy face, that looks like you just caught a whiff of a dog turd, but you didn’t really think the Dimwit was gonna end without a good laugh, did you? Toodles.
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