Mulled Vine

“Daddy, he asked me out!” she gasped. “What should I do?”
I looked at her, my young lady, tall and slender, with her mother’s long curly hair and gorgeous hazel eyes.
“Do you want to go out?” I asked, honoured that she had asked me, but wishing her mother was there.
She shook her head and I breathed a mental sigh of relief – the boy issue was safely avoided for another day.
“You should tell him.”
She frowned, “That would be awkward.”
I nodded, still wishing her mother would suddenly pop out of thin air and save the day, desperate for inspiration.
“I suppose you could text him later?” I ventured.
She brightened.
“Yes, good idea. Thanks, Dad.” and with that hurried back to her friends, leaving me to savour the moment.

I glanced over at the newspaper next to me and saw the page 3 girl of the day: a buxom blonde with raunchy, suggestive eyes, pursed lips and thrusted hips, her nudity bared for all to see. It saddened me that there was a market for this stuff, that men (and women I’m told) would want to see what was surely meant to be the beautiful privilege of a tender, faithful lover. It saddened me that even I, with all my high falutin ideals, felt just a tinge of sexual stirring at the sight of those pert nipples.

But mostly it saddened me that she was my daughter.

I began the story game: “I walked along the long, dusty road, barren fields on either side littered with dead sheep.”
My young daughter looked at me, thinking what happened to “Once upon a time?”, but going with the flow responded, “Suddenly, from behind a ridge a group of wild gnomes appeared and ran, shouting, towards the man.”
I smiled, and responded, “Luckily I had my trusty light sabre with me and was able to fend them off, killing every single one.”
She replied, “But then all their friends came, millions of them, from every direction.”
“Ah,” said I, “but I also had my transporter with me and was able to just in time teleport myself to the Pearly Gates where St Peter looked at me with some astonishment.
She looked bored, so I continued, “I told him my story, all about the road, the barren wasteland, the sheep and the gnomish hordes, but he looked at me with saintly scorn and said that he had heard many tales before but never one so ridiculous, and didn’t let me in.”

I have never understood the Sadness, why it comes and goes without reason, sometimes only fleeting, but mostly lingering a while, tingeing my days with oppressive gloom. Everything seems so hard on those days, and even the delightful giggle of my little daughter brings only a tentative smile to my lips. Well meaning friends tell me to snap out of it, to look on the bright side, to cheer up, and that it could be worse, but they don’t understand the helplessness.

So it has been 2 years since the Sadness decided to stay permanently, and I’ve watched it drag me down, sap my life of every little remaining joy, reducing me to misery personified. But today, thank God, I took charge – the sadness would have to find a new home, I would have it no longer.

My first step towards my new destiny was also my last, and it occurred to me as I fell what a long way down it was.

We love the rain, my daughter and I, particularly when the heavens really let loose and the resulting deluge causes lots of puddles to be formed.

Yes, we are puddle jumpers, and the minute the rain clears a little, sometimes not even then, we will be out there with our Wellington boots and coats, racing like like the little children we are from puddle to puddle and jumping into them; the aim? to SPLASH!!

It is great fun and I would say you should try it, but I don’t puddle jump any more.

I remember it vividly like a recurring nightmare, that fateful day when we were happily puddle jumping, my dearest daughter and I, and we found a most splendid puddle just down the road from us, where the storm drains had apparently blocked.

My little girl ran on ahead and jumped with glee into the middle of the puddle, and disappeared, never to be seen again.

Oh I ran after her and dove into the puddle, only to find it was no more than 20 inches deep, the perfect puddle for jumping, except that it is no fun jumping alone.

My daughter asked me the other day why a wheel is called a wheel, and I began to answer, before realising that I didn’t know. Ignorance is not something that prevents many people from answering, and I’m usually no exception, but as this was my daughter I thought I’d make an effort.

I thought about it a little while before telling her that words began as tentative sounds, for example “Ug.” “Ug?” “Ug!” “Sorry mate, you’ve lost me there.” “Ug!!!” (pointing at a wheel) “Aah, Ug”, and thus a word was birthed, and since you can’t call everything “Ug”, variations arose and words like “wheel” ended up being adopted by convention.

“Dad, you’ve just made that up.”

“Well, erm, you see its like this … nobody really knows how things began.”

“I think God told us it was a wheel, Dad,” she said, before walking off, shaking her head at my unbelievable stupidity.

I chatted with my teenage daughter the other day about being stranded on an island, and she asked me what one single thing I would just HAVE to have with me. I thought long and hard about it, discarding favourite books, my precious guitar, even my family, and thought … a good knife. All these other things are fine and dandy, but when it comes down to survival then curling up with a book or a loved one is just irrelevant.

I asked her what she would take and she answered straight away: “a box of tissues.” She won’t last long will she? silly girl.

But then I realised what a fool I am, and how easy it is to spend so much time surviving, that one forgets to live.

These are from a book called “Disorder in the American Courts”, and are things people have actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters who had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place.

ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.
____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in voodoo?
WITNESS: We both do.
ATTORNEY: Voodoo?
WITNESS: We do.
ATTORNEY: You do?
WITNESS: Yes, voodoo.
____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he
doesn’t know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
____________________________________

ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: He’s twenty, much like your IQ.
___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you shitting me?
_________________________________________

ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: getting laid
____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new
attorney?
____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Take a guess.

____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I’m going with male.
_____________________________________

ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition
notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on
dead people?
WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.
_________________________________________

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you
go to?
WITNESS: Oral.
_________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished.
____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?
______________________________________

And the best for last:

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check
for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you
began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law

At what point did I stop being young? I mean, in my mind I am say twenty something, but in the mirror there is the chap who looks like me, but more like me after a few days in the tumble dryer. Its very distressing actually, so no laughing. So the other day, right, this young lass says I’m rad, which any idiot can work out is short for the word radical. However I didn’t think I was being particularly radical so some other meaning was in mind I’m sure, but was it good or bad, and if it was bad, was it bad like in good or like in wicked, and if wicked which wicked, wicked good or wicked bad?? My daughter tells me to get with the program, which is a relief because I know how to program.

“Who’s that in the photo?” Jemima asked? I looked, unsure; this was a photo of us in our lounge, just last week, my wife and I, and two daughters Amy and Jemima, but here in the photo was another, a boy, somewhere around 6 years old. My wife grabbed the picture from my hand, “It looks like you when you were young, you know, the picture we call Little Lord?” I did know the one and she was right – that was me in the picture, but how was this possible? I looked at myself so much younger yet here in the picture I was. The Little Lord looked back at me, judging my uninspiring life with eyes full sadness, and slowly faded away.