Resolutions
By H.G. Miller
So, it's a new year.
Like most people, I spend the first part of every year looking back on my
accomplishments and setting goals for the next twelve-month cycle.
Let's see… I finished reading that book by that guy with the weird name. And,
I, um… painted something. I think. Anyway, it was a really productive year. I'm
quite proud. As for next year, I have the same kind of goals that most people
have. Lose weight. Win the Lottery. Take an A-K into the office and show those
HR people what employee dissatisfaction really is.
I'd like to get this super glue off of my fingers before the year is out, too.
Have you ever super-glued your fingers together? No, I mean it. I know it's the
kind of thing that normally takes place in bad teen movies or stupid sitcoms
from twenty years ago on Nick at Night, but it can actually happen in real
life. Quite easily, I might add. You see, I was trying to put the head back on
this ceramic clown I have… Wait, let's go farther back than that.
My roommate is a klutz. I say that as lovingly as one can. The guy runs into
walls. Anyway, there's this ceramic clown that I've had since I made the
mistake of uttering the phrase “clowns are kind of cool.” Word spread through
my family tree like a wildfire in the California hills. Before I knew it, I had
a collection of clown figurines and artwork that rivaled any Ringling Brothers
production.
As tends to happen to human beings, or any animal if you stop to think about
it, I began to grow up and eventually the clown phase passed. Some pieces I
really enjoyed, though, so I took them with me from apartment to apartment,
along with a few other items from my childhood: My buddy doll, my Ted E. Bear,
my Swift Heart Rabbit Care Bear Cousin… So, I got a thing for stuffed animals,
you want to make something of it?
They're cuddly, they're cute, and let me tell you, they listen better than any
damn woman I've ever known!
What?…
So, yeah, I've got this ceramic clown that I keep by the phone in the living
room. For the better part of a year, he has guarded the telephone with the
quiet dignity that only a painted face can provide. My roommate, the klutzy
one, has managed to go about his business running into walls and chairs and
sometimes the floor (don't ask me how), without causing any harm to my lovable
clown.
Until the other day, that is. I came home from the airport (lost luggage, a
400-pound traveling companion, you don't even want to hear about it), and there
on the telephone stand lay my clown, his head severed clean from the body. Poor
little fellow just kept on smiling. I almost cried.
Apparently, the phone began to ring, as it sometimes does, and my roommate
somehow managed to forget everything he had learned in the last year of
answering the phone and took the most circuitous route to the handset he could.
That route took his hand straight through my little ceramic clown, knocking it
down and causing his head to snap free of the body in a grotesque display of
the frailty of human existence.
Of course, I had to save my little fried, so I immediately purchased some
industrial-strength lubricant-I mean sealant-and I attempted to glue the head
back on. In the process, I managed to affix three of the digits on my left hand
together, and… well, let's just say I'll have a hard time using the lubricant
later. Ahem.
So, anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. New Year's. My resolutions. I think I
resolved to go on fewer tangents in my writing, but screw that.