Month: May 2008

A little meme I found languishing in my drafts. I changed a few questions, added a few questions, and voila, here it is. Short ‘n’ sweet.

Copy/paste into comments.

1. You have $5 and need to buy snacks at a gas station. What do you buy?

2. If you were reincarnated as a sea creature, what would you want to be?

3. Who’s your favorite movie redhead?

4. What do you order when you’re at IHOP or any other breakfast-type establishment?

5. Last book you read?

6. Describe your favorite school lunch when you were a kid.

7. Describe the last time you were injured.

8. Choose: Bagel or English muffin?

9. Rock concert or symphony?

10. What kind of toothpaste do you use?

11. What kind of shampoo?

12. Bath or shower?

13. If you could only use one form of transportation for the rest of your life what would it be?

14. Most recent movie you’ve watched at the movies?

15. What’s your favorite breed of dog?

And when the next letter inevitably comes, you are so weary, so used to being weary. What it says doesn’t even matter. The words themselves don’t matter because it’s all so cyclical. Variations on a theme. Abusive monotony. You can hear about the horror that is you only so many times before you’re bored with it, really; the lifelong litany of charges against you. Nevertheless, you still open it, you still read it. Partly because that’s what you’re supposed to do. Partly because you’re helpless not to. “There’s power in the blood” suddenly has a whole new meaning. And who knows, maybe there will be a searing revelation of some newly discovered blight on your character. A new frontier in the science of what’s wrong with you. An incurable strain of personality, perhaps. A 10th planet in your sorry little galaxy. Drumroll, please. As you read, however, you realize, Nope. Nothing new here. There’s the pointy Xeroxed scrawl. There’s the perpetual indictment. The words are different, sure, but the idea is always the same. You get to the bottom of the copy and notice the last line is cut off. You mentally fill in the blanks, call your father, ask him if you’re right. Yes, he sighs. Where’s the original, you ask. I don’t know, he sighs again and you picture that big black file drawer she has. When you hang up, you stare at the muddle of words, clench your jaw, and declare yourself immune. But there’s no vaccination, not really, and as time goes on, the poison leaches deep into some unreachable limbic pool in your brain.