What happens when a man bearing gifts walks into a horse trailer? Why would I even ask a question like that? These are the kinds of things that keep me up nights, that and wondering if the cat has managed to gnaw a hole in the screen and leap to freedom. Not that leaping to freedom would do her any good, dependent as she is upon us for sustenance and grooming, but I have no doubt that this is the kind of thing she would try. She has been practicing, working on her skills, honing her technique, all in the hopes that some day she’ll be able to achieve her dream.
Assuming, of course, that cats can dream, which is not a given. But, getting back to that horse trailer, why would a man walk into a horse trailer? And what if the trailer had been capable of speech but, following a particularly raucous concert or sporting event, had lost its voice? Would it then be a hoarse trailer?
Again, these are the kinds of things that keep me up at night. Well, that and the chili and the aforementioned cat, but I don’t think anybody cares about that, other than the people who hound me for the chili recipe. Which, by the way, I don’t have. I make these things up as I go along and I rarely remember them. One of the by-products of my advanced age, or maybe just a by-product of the fact that I have always suffered from CRS. And if I have to tell you what that is… well… I actually don’t remember. And that’s the problem.
I think — no, I strongly suspect — that it is this very flaw, the lapses in my memory, that led me to walk into a horse trailer. Or, rather, led my alter ego — the person I was writing about — to walk into a horse trailer, bearing a gift. Or baring a gift, although that opens up an additional can of worms, and the last thing that we want at this point would be cans of any kind, especially cans with worms. And why on earth would anyone can worms? Or is this just something that people say, much like “Bob’s your uncle!” even though there is nobody in my family named Bob?
These are the things that keep me up at night when I’m not already busy worrying about the cat or trying to digest the chili or trying to remember what that third thing was. Sure, I could just scroll up the page and find out, but that would remove all the suspense. You could do that for me, but you don’t actually exist at the moment, the moment of creation, and — by some theories, anyway — if you don’t exist, then this piece doesn’t exist, so we might as well stop wondering what that third thing was anyway. We’re all doomed, no doubt, doomed to suffer a horrible and excruciating end. Unless we don’t.
And the fact that we might not has been keeping me up at nights. If we don’t, then what will we? Will we do? And if we do, how long will we?
Actually, these thoughts are all far too weighty for me, and I don’t give them a second thought, at least I don’t when I’m busy thinking about the cat and the hole in the screen. Why would a cat do that? What is it about the screen, or the other side of a screen, that drives the poor cat to chew and scratch so?
I don’t know, and thinking about it keeps me up nights. Worse, it makes me hungry, and gives me a craving for chili. Not that stuff people make out of ground beef. No, I like the kind of chili that’s made with whole chunks of meat — pork and beef and veal, kind of like a Bolognese — that’s simmered all day long in a tomato-based sauce until the meat disintegrates and melts in your mouth. That’s the kind of chili I like, topped with a healthy sprinkle of cheese and a dollop of sour cream and chased with a nice Mexican beer — Dos Equis comes to mind — and maybe accompanied by a nice corn bread. I do like corn bread, fresh out of the oven, slathered with butter, especially when I’m having it with chili. Funny, though, that the cat doesn’t like it. She prefers melon, orange melon, and will frequently beg until I give her some. She does things like that.
And it keeps me up at night.
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