I had a serious column about education all written and ready to go yesterday (which was Sunday, June 21), but a lot of things suddenly changed, and I suddenly hated what I had produced. So, I wound up writing what is known in this business as a “personal column,” which sometimes seems like a pejorative assessment.
It’s as if personal columns are less worthy than well-reasoned argumentative essays about taxes or zoning issues. I don’t believe that’s true. I grow weary of the same old debates, the same old talking points. I’d rather have a bit of fun.
So, let’s talk about fun. Several days ago, I was surprised to find myself in the middle of a shootout at Publix. Two preteen boys armed with bananas were firing at each other in the produce section.
The choreography of the scene was rather impressive, I thought, and each boy knew how to handle himself in a gunfight. One rose above the tomatoes to take a shot, and the other ducked behind a rack of sunflower seeds for cover. The boys were just trying to have fun.
I thought about camouflaging myself with broccoli, commando crawling past the bags of salad, and tossing potato grenades at the boys.
But I’m sure Publix management doesn’t like it when customers use produce as props or army crawl down the aisles.
So, I just picked up some mushrooms and cauliflower and headed for the cheese aisle.
Now, this banana battle took place prior to the Trump assassination attempt, so I didn’t think much about it at the time. I mean, pretending to shoot somebody with a banana in a grocery store isn’t thought of as subversive behavior under normal circumstances. Still, I realized many would consider this pretend violence a dress rehearsal for a future mass shooting. That’s not likely, in my opinion. Little boys have been playing cops and robbers or army since the Chinese invented gunpowder in the ninth century.
But I encourage such creative play.
One of my old girlfriends once told a mutual friend that I lived in a fantasy world most of the time.
I took the criticism as a compliment. The truth is that I probably still live in that fantasy world whenever I can.
To wit: Not long ago it occurred to me that my coffee table looks like NASCAR’s Worldwide Technology Raceway in Madison, Illinois, so I decided to build a diorama on it. I bought some Hot Wheels cars and placed them on the banked track surface as if they were racing. Ken Miles, driving the Ford GT, currently leads the race and has been in front for about six weeks. I’m a slow diorama builder.
At this point, I no longer have anywhere to put a coffee cup on my coffee table, much less a coffee table book.
And let’s be clear about one thing: electric vehicles are not permitted anywhere on my diorama: not on the infield and especially not the track itself. I wouldn’t want people in Rutledge to find out I have a Hot Wheels Rivian SUV and get beat up the next time I go to Hard Labor Creek State Park.
Anyway, I bought a plastic miniature car wash at Dollar Tree along with some Legos for a cinder block bathroom, some pompoms for bushes, and poster board for the infield surface. Then I bought a tyrannosaur at Dollar General and went to Walmart looking for Army men to fight the big lizard. But since I couldn’t find any, I just bought an Elastigirl figure (from the Incredibles movie) and put her between the dinosaur and the entrance to Lake Oconee Motor Speedway.
I figured Elastigirl could placate feminists who might otherwise condemn my diorama as being a product of the patriarchy or some such thing.
I bought some miniature people online, and one is already in the dinosaur’s mouth. I might use the rest for a pile of dead bodies. This idea is easy to pull off.
Thinking of that pile of bodies reminds me of the time I went to a seminar conducted by an expert on subliminal advertising while I was in college. The expert showed us enlarged restaurant menu photos of a fish dinner plate that turned out to be a disguised drawing of a human orgy.
I will never be able to forget what the shrimp were doing to the clams.
Selah.