So here is my brain when it is not in the mood to focus:
Why is there an image of a fish on this gold coin Maj got from her orthodontist? Why does her orthodontist hand out valueless gold coins every time someone comes in for an appointment? Does he think that I am leaving these coins around my house as conversation starters? “What, this coin? Isn’t it gorgeous and shiny? I got this coin from the orthodontist! He is so awesome . . . here, take this coin and call him because you totally need an orthodontist!” Or maybe he thinks I am carrying these coins around in my purse and inadvertently trying to use them to purchase things. “What, that’s not a quarter? Well, keep it anyway . . . it’s from my daughter’s orthodontist . . . you should call him sometime! But you’ll need a quarter for the call, because this coin has no cash value.” Of course, nobody uses quarters to make phone calls nowadays, so I would just look old and stupid if I said that. Remember that time in San Diego when I was walking home from school in torrential freezing rain and I had a single quarter with which to make a phone call and I had little hope that anyone would come and get me but I decided I would try so I stopped at the trolley station about halfway home and dropped my single quarter into the telephone as the rain poured down and I shivered with cold and my backpack was soaked and all my papers were ruined and I listened as the phone rang and I was filled with hope that this one time I would be rescued and then my sister answered and without waiting for me to say a single word she just yelled, “Don’t you be calling here no more you old ugly monkey!” and then she hung up the phone leaving me standing there in the freezing rain with the phone in my hand and my sodden backpack on my shoulders wondering if that really had been my sister on the phone and why on earth she had spoken like that. I walked the entire rest of the way home with my feet sloshing in my shoes and my hair streaming down my face and the driving rain mixing with my tears and my clothes drenched through and I was the only person walking on the street the only one and after a bit I stomped in all of the puddles because there was just no way for me to get wetter and I was so cold so very cold and when I finally got home no one cared and no one apologized everyone too busy with their own lives. So busy that no one noticed or cared when I started coming home later after school. So busy that no one paid attention to the fact that when I took the high school equivalency test in the fall of my junior year and passed that meant I no longer had to go to school if I didn’t feel like attending. I had a little laminated card that said I was not required to be in school in case I got questioned as I wandered the city during school hours. No one questioned me. Not once. I attended school when I felt like it and played the part of good student and was amazed at just how little work I could do and still get A’s and I even made a few friends but then I would just walk away when I felt like it and wander the city. I didn’t have to be anywhere and I hated everyone who failed to notice where I was not. A few jingly quarters would buy me a candy bar, a few cigarettes from a man at the Greyhound bus station, or a newspaper in which to work the crossword puzzle. I had no job but it turned out there were unexpected and familiar ways to make a few dollars. A way to pass the time while I waited to go to college where I was sure my life would begin. Again. The University of San Diego seemed like an unlikely place for a new beginning but I figured it would not be that hard to say that I believed in god if it turned out that the catholic school needed to hear those words from me and that lie seemed a small price to pay for the promise of a place to live that was finally mine a place where I was supposed to be a place where people would notice if I was not . . . a place where my life would begin fresh and new and apart from all that had gone before so fucking help me god. Wait . . . is that what this fish is on this coin from Maj’s orthodontist? Is it a religious symbol of some sort? Looks more like a trout than Ichthys, so maybe not. Perhaps the orthodontist is a Pisces! But wait, the sign for Pisces is two fish swimming in opposite directions or perhaps in an endless loop after one another . . . chasing one another’s tails. I am a Pisces, so I know of endless circular battles that are never resolved and circular journeys that demand you revisit the same scenery again and again and fucking again. Stupid fish.
“Hey, Mark?”
“Yeah?”
“Why is there a picture of a fish on the coins Maj gets from the orthodontist?”
“I think the orthodontist likes fish.”
“Thank you, babe.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Mark?”
“What?”
“Your brain works differently than mine does.”
“I am aware, Kris.”
Hee hee!
