Informed

You can always tell when a man’s well informed.  His views are pretty much like your own.

--H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Too Handsome to Win the Ugly Contest

According to accounts I found on a variety of news sources, including the Guardian, the Huffington Post, and the Associated Press, controversy has tarnished the latest Mister Ugly contest in Zimbabwe.  Beauty contests and, apparently, not-so-much contests are kind of a big deal in Zimbabwe.

The winner of this year’s Mister Ugly Contest, a very happy fellow named Mison Sere, is accused of cheating by being, well, handsome.  More specifically, he is accused of cheating because he is missing a lot of teeth and is capable of manufacturing ugly faces.  When he is not smiling, according to detractors, Mison is a fine-looking man.  Only when he smiles can he possibly win the ugly competition.

According to some contestants—including, William Masvinu, last year’s winner—Mison Sere should be disqualified because he is not truly ugly.  Masvinu and his supporters mobbed contestant judges with objections following the selection of Mison.  “I am naturally ugly,” Masvinu complained.  “He is not!”

Another indignant contestant shouted: “Do we have to lose our teeth to win?  This is cheating!”

I will be the first to admit that I am not a great judge of the physical attractiveness of men.  Just the same, I think Mison Sere is righteously ugly.  Of course, I mean that in the nicest of ways.  I have reposted an AP photo so you might judge for yourself.

Honestly, I’d be pretty happy to be disqualified from winning an ugly contest because I am too handsome.  That’s the kind of problem I have always wished for.

--Mitchell Hegman

-1°

This morning, in a predawn hoarfrost world, with a temperature of -1°, I scampered out to sit my hot tub outside.

-1° before sunrise is its own reality.  No sounds.  The air itself sparkling.  Steam curling around my face and turning to frost in my tangles of bed-hair. 

Where warm and cold meet, the moisture instantly clamps still and turns perfectly white.  The opposite of hot lava meeting the ocean.

At this temperature, to be still is everything.

--Mitchell Hegman

Humanity

From a single split in the yarn, the finest of knit sweaters can be unknit.

--Mitchell Hegman

Today, I Give Thanks

I am thankful for small streams stitched-through with trout

For quiet moments without cause

For green pine boughs holding snow

I give thanks to friends in agreement

And friends who may have lost their way

Thanks for little ones toddling toward us

And the old ones shuffling away

Thanks for the sunlight that paints colors in all corners

Thanks for every night that brings every day.

--Mitchell Hegman

The Downside to Cleaning

My friend, Kevin, with the help of his siblings and his kids, has been cleaning his father’s house from top to bottom.  He has been living in the house for for a good part of this year.  After his father’s passing, Kevin began sorting through a house filled with many years of keeping old jars, miscellaneous screws, papers, stray dinnerware pieces, and stacks of half-full boxes of assorted dry goods.

The other night, I stopped down at Kevin’s place to pick up some plastic bottles and glass bottles so I could recycle them along with my own truckload of recyclables.  Kevin looked pale and exhausted.  Apparently, Kevin is a vigorous, if not thrashing, cleaner.

“How’s it going?” I asked as we dragged a couple bags of plastic bottles out to my truck.

“I am just about shot,” he admitted.  “I cleaned out the basement kitchen cupboards today.  I kept getting hotter and hotter as I cleaned.  I was sweating like crazy.  When I finally looked at the thermostat, I saw that it was 90 degrees in the basement!  I must have bumped into the thermostat when I was cleaning.  I was ready to collapse!”

Kevin is also an early riser.  Usually, somewhere near 5:30 in the morning, he sails past my house in his van and drives the two miles of country road out to where our mailboxes are located to retrieve our newspapers.  I wake at about the same time and watch for his returning headlights.  If awake, I will step out to grab my paper from him as he returns home again.

The morning after I picked up Kevin’s recyclables, I watched the headlights of his van swim across the darkness to the drive as he drove back home with our newspapers.  I stepped outside to meet him when he neared my house.

I stood in the early morning chill chatting with him.  “I had a nightmare about black widows last night,” I told him.  “They were everywhere.   I hate spiders.”  I pointed my rolled newspaper skyward in an expansive gesture of disgust.

Kevin’s eyes expanded.  “I killed seven spiders upstairs in my house this morning,” he said.  “Seven,” he repeated.  “I think the heat from when I cleaned my basement drove them upstairs.”

I grimaced.  “Almost makes you want to stop cleaning…”

--Mitchell Hegman

Altered Phrases

Nocturnal Omission:  Forgetting what you did last night.

Internal Oregon:  Imagining a trip to the Oregon coast.

Relative Timidity:  Fear of your Uncle Harold.

Dark Spatter:  That stuff that will not wash out of your new shirt.

Lost and Fund:  What you have with a son or daughter in college.

Spring Clinging:  Barely hanging on after a long winter.

Fierce Supposition:  Those times when you are both loud and wrong.

--Mitchell Hegman