Strike Back With Pictures

Annoying Komodo She-Dragon
Ball Point Pen and Colored Pencil on Scrap Paper
By Karen K. Remus Copyright 2013

The next time you get annoyed with someone, don't draw a sword, draw a picture.  It has been said that the pen is mightier than the sword, and believe me, that's absolutely right.  Once you have drawn your nemesis as a venomous giant lizard, for example, you will never be able to take them seriously again.  In fact, the next time you see this person, and they start pulling their mean routine, you will burst out laughing, and they'll wonder what's so funny.  They'll have no idea that you just pictured their long, forked tongue lashing out and grabbing a juicy fly off the computer screen.

If your foe is vicious and cold, turn him or her into a piranha, a poisonous snake, or some really hideous, mindless thing, like a lamprey eel. The only hesitation I have with this coping strategy, is that sometimes the person is so repugnant, the picture is an insult to piranhas, snakes, or eels.  But they don't know.  The important thing is that you get your annoyance out of yourself and onto the paper.  Let the paper do the worrying...  because the next thing you're going to do is burn it.

Hep Hep the Fisherman

After an early meeting this morning, my friend Amie and I went out for breakfast and then for a stroll along the river.  We hadn't been to the river-walk since the city blew up the dam, so we wanted to see if there were truly "white water rapids" as planned.  There were.

The mighty Chattahoochee was running higher and wider than ever before, and both sides were lined with fishing birds and men.  For several fascinating minutes we watched six great herons on our side of the river, chomping down fat, silver minnows, and jockeying for the "alpha heron" position.  The largest one stood about 4 feet tall, and when he squawked, the others listened. We were in a glorious bubble of natural beauty.  That is, until Hep Hep the Fisherman arrived on the scene.

About 100 paces down the walk to our right, a sunburned old fisherman with wild white hair was walking toward us with his fishing rod and line over the railing--with a "big one" apparently on the hook.  It was sort of like he was walking a large aquatic dog, though we couldn't see the catch.  We could definitely see the strain on the line and the man's face however, and as he came ever nearer, he started yelling, "HEP! HEP!"

We weren't sure to whom he was directing his plea.  There were fisherman on the other side of us, so we hoped it was to them.  Hep was the kind of guy who, when he yells "Hep! Hep!" really loud in a frantic manner, looks as if he might be crazy, dangerous, or both.  We stepped back from the railing to let him and his "big one" pass.

A beef cakey younger fisherman (I'll call him Josh) who had been on our left called out to him, "You said you needed Help?"

"Yeah, I got a big one!" cried Hep.

Josh had descended the large concrete steps along the edge of the river walk and was standing at water level.  He had a 5 gallon pail, and was preparing to assist Hep.

"DON'T TOUCH THE LINE!" screamed Hep.

"Yes, I know not to touch the line, Jed, we've been through this before," said Josh.

"DON'T TOUCH THE LINE!" screamed Hep again.

Amie and I watched the action from a safe distance, anticipating the appearance of a Hep's gigantic haul.

Suddenly, I saw a silver minnow, like the kind the herons had been eating, on the end of Hep's line.

"Is that the fish?" I asked Amie incredulously.

"No, I think that's the bait," she replied.

"DON'T TOUCH THE -- DAMN IT GOT OFF!!!" screamed Hep.

Amie and I quickly left the scene.  Something told us we didn't want to be around Hep when he was angry.

"Dad's Teeth" or "Find the Bone"

CRRUNCH! / CRRACK!

I remember my dad at the dinner table when I was in early elementary school.  You could have cut the tension with a knife, but you'd better have worn rubber gloves to avoid electrocution.  That's when our nuclear family (both parents & two sibs) still ate dinner together--before the core melted.

To say that Dad chewed REALLY HARD is an understatement.  The muscles of his jaw and temples flexed and bulged as if he were competing for the Mr. Universe title with his face.  His teeth chomped with piston-like action with a force of, say, 200 psi.  His expression, intense.  Somber.  He took little pills before dinner with "R's" stamped on them, which at the time, I thought stood for Remus, but later (in pharmacology) realized was the drug manufacturer's ID.  The drug was for--not surprisingly--treating ulcers.

No matter what he ate, his chewing was LOUD, like a slow jackhammer on granite.  Or perhaps "repeated blasting to destroy an old dam" would be a more accurate simile.  He sat at the head of the table, and I sat on his immediate right, between him and Mom.  Like the Son sitting at the right hand of an angry, hard-chewing God.  Come to think of it, I was often placed between my dad and mom--including on long car trips.  I WAS A HUMAN BUFFER!  I absorbed countless megawatts of electricity this way as a child.  Maybe that's why my nerves are now shot.

Anyway, what I'm building up to is this:  Dad would ALWAYS FIND THE BONE--EVEN IN FOODS THAT DON'T NORMALLY CONTAIN BONES.  Hamburger, for instance.  Maybe one out of 400 hamburgers will contain a bone chip.  His odds were more like one out of 40, and if one of us Remus's was gonna get that one in 40, it would be HIM.  ALWAYS. It was as if his teeth could bite into another dimension.  A dimension where everything--including pudding--contained bones.  He'd be chomping and grinding along happily (though expressing "happiness" more like an alligator than a human), and suddenly, you'd hear a huge CRACK from deep inside his skull.  It resonated like a gun shot.

Then, for a moment, silence.  The tension built as he mentally rose up out of alligator consciousness to figure out what had just happened.  Then he would spit out a grey lump, and finger his molar.  

"$%*@!" He grumbled, hauling the cracked tooth from his maw.  "WELL, OF ALL THE...(anger mounting)...$@#%..." his tongue exploring the new molar landscape.  He held up and examined the tooth.  "THAT'S A #%$ OF A..." or was that a bone fragment?  It was hard to say.  And he stomped off to further examine things with the aid of a mirror and flash light. 

Dessert, anyone?