Creepy Dead or Alive

A while back, Desiree and I stocked up on paper towels. I lugged a couple of packs into the house and stored two others on a set of shelves in the garage. The day before yesterday, needing to replenish our indoor supply, I retrieved a pack from the garage and plunked it down on the kitchen countertop to break out a few rolls.

That’s where a plot twist occurred.

A rather large, albeit dead, black widow spider tumbled free from the plastic wrapping and landed on the counter.

Live black widows pretty much top my list of creepy things. Dead ones still rank very near the top, barely conceding the difference. A dead black widow is proof, which I do not require, that black widows consider my garage a suitable address. And they remain entirely scary-looking even when dead. The too-deep black is still black, and their legs pull up tight, forming what looks like a grim, grisly birdcage.

All I wanted was a couple of rolls of paper towels.

—Mitchell Hegman

Meditating

Following is a conversation between me and Desiree while floating around in the hot tub:

ME (closing my eyes and lifting my arms): I’m going to meditate… (After only a few seconds) Nope. I can’t do it. I think I’m incapable of that. My thoughts ping-pong all over inside my head the instant I close my eyes.

DESIREE: I’m the same.

ME: Oh?

DESIREE: When I close my eyes, I start thinking about how I want to cook food.

ME: Well, at least that benefits me.

—Mitchell Hegman

Yellow Dragon Fruit

While grocery shopping, Desiree and I came upon a small display of yellow dragon fruit. I’m always willing to try an unfamiliar fruit, so we chose three and tucked them in with the rest of our groceries.

Yellow dragon fruit is native to northern South America. Botanically, it is a climbing cactus that favors warm tropical climates, ranging from dry to humid.

The plant produces spectacular nocturnal blooms known as the Queen of the Night. Each creamy white flower can grow nearly a foot across and releases a sweet perfume into the evening air, an open invitation to nighttime pollinators like bats and moths.

Today, yellow dragon fruit is still grown primarily in South America, though smaller operations have appeared in Israel, Thailand, Vietnam, and parts of the United States where the climate behaves properly.

Inside, the fruit is exceptionally juicy and mild. It nearly dissolves on the tongue. I’ve always found red dragon fruit, beautiful as it is, to be largely flavorless. Yellow dragon fruit, however, has something to say. I like it.

Yellow Dragon Fruit

—Mitchell Hegman

Overrun by Accessories

I purchased an inexpensive underwater sport camera for an upcoming trip to the Philippines, and now I need to hire a team of scientists to put it together.

First order of business, I downloaded instructions from the interweb and read through them a bit. Actually, the camera itself isn’t terribly complicated; it’s standard stuff: charge the battery, format the SD card, set the electronic options to your liking. I can manage that, provided somebody smart (read: Desiree here) can help me if I get a brain cramp.

The mounting accessories are the impossibly complicated part of this toy. There are handfuls of weird parts with ears and knobs and shoes and clamps for mounting the camera to handlebars, helmets, vehicles, clothing, and possibly a UFO if you can catch one.

To simplify, I may just hold the camera in my hand while it’s tethered to my wrist. I’ve posted a photograph of the camera and its attendant accessories.

Camera and Accessories

—Mitchell Hegman

Stranded on Super Bowl Sunday

Somewhere in the gene pool, a glitch occurred when the selections for me were being sorted out. Now, all these years later, this mistake in human design has left me stranded on Super Bowl Sunday.

I won’t be watching the game. Here’s the thing: my genetic mistake makes watching football entirely tedious for me. Over the course of my life, I have watched, surrounded by others who were intensely thrilled, exactly one Super Bowl game. Aside from that, I once watched almost the entirety of a regular football game while captive at a bar in East Helena in the early 1980s.

The sport evades me. It strikes me as a lot of standing around, followed by brief, intense moments of people with helmets and numbers on them rioting whenever a football is picked up off the ground.

They migrate back and forth on a striped field doing this stuff.

Hmmm.

Instead of watching the game today, I’m going to walk around in the scattered timber below my house and look for chickadees. There seems to be a critical shortage of them this year.

—Mitchell Hegman

My New Habit

I’ve developed a new habit. I’ve started talking to the drivers of other cars as I negotiate traffic in town. Mind you, they can’t hear me. They’re in one car and I’m in another. And I’m not bellowing at them. I’m actually speaking in my calm, nurturing voice.

I coax them along:

“Pay attention, Dude… Stay in your lane… Right on red, Lady… Give me a signal… I go, then you go… Easy peasy… Take your proper turn at the four-way…”

When I’m driving alone, I talk my way through the entire trip. If I ever get in a wreck, I can already see myself explaining it to the responding police officer. “I told that guy not to pull out, officer. I said it twice.”

—Mitchell Hegman

Another Batch of Questions

• If, to save mankind, you had to eliminate one color from the visible spectrum, which color would you choose?
• When was the last time you impressed yourself?
• How many pennies can be found in the various catch-all places around your house?
• What is something you keep “just in case,” though you know that case will likely never arrive?
• Have you ever hidden something valuable in the freezer?
• What is your first thought when you see someone sporting a “Mom” tattoo?
• Is there anything hidden in your freezer right now?
• What household item do you own that has outlived its original purpose?
• What ordinary sound instantly pulls you back to a specific moment in your past?

—Mitchell Hegman