Michael Kindt's Blog, page 99
September 27, 2015
When I was a wee child, I used to love going to the laundrymat....
When I was a wee child, I used to love going to the laundrymat. It was the only place I could sleep, and, apart from the oxygen tent and the shaving of my chest, my earliest memory.
I could never sleep as a child because I was devastatingly hyperactive. My parents had to get help from relatives and they all worked in shifts taking care of me. In those days I slept between four and six hours a week, which is why I used the adverb ‘devastatingly’. I nearly killed my caretakers, mere humans who required around eight hours of sleep a night.
One time, when all the adults had collapsed from fatigue, I mixed up all the flour in the house with water and put it in the washer and dryer. I then somehow managed to climb on top of them and turn them on (I was only 3).
They were both destroyed.
I don’t remember this episode. I only know about it because family members have told me, again and again, about it.
“Jesus fuck, were you a little hellion!”
I do remember the weekly visits to the laundrymat that soon followed, however, and like I said they are among my very earliest memories.
The hum of the place soothed me. The smell of the detergent soothed me. In fact, as I write this, it is bright and fresh in my nose, even though I am currently sitting at a metal desk in a large warehouse full of pumpkins.
I would climb in an empty basket and immediately fall asleep. My mom was delighted, and soon we were going to the laundrymat a couple times a day. I even understand that there were serious discussions about our family moving to a bigger town, one with an all night laundrymat just so I would, for the love of God, go to fucking sleep.
Eventually, the doctors started feeding me speed and I calmed down a little bit. Speed works backwards on freaks like me, apparently. How the hell did they discover that? I often wonder. I was able to sleep two or three hours a night and could even pay attention to one thing for up to 30 seconds. I still wasn’t able to read until the fourth grade, though.
To this day I love laundrymats and no matter how wide awake I am, they still make me sleepy. I am a grown man now, off speed, with more gray in my beard than in my childhood. I usually sleep between five and six hours a night, rarely longer. I simply don’t need it. I have a washer and dryer of my own, but I also have several pounds of flour.
Hmmm.
September 26, 2015
Sick Day
A guy at work called into today because he was up all night being chased around by a meth head with a board.
So many questions popped into my mind.
“Did he get you?”
“Did it have a nail in it?”
“Why?”
“Why did you allow this to go on all night and not, like, get in a car and run him over?”
“Or call the cops?”
“Was it a hardwood board?” (If it was merely pine he should’ve been able to make it in).
You can’t fire a guy for calling in with an excuse like this. In fact, you can’t fire anybody, really, anymore. Thankfully, though, you can cut them down to one 30 minute shift every other week until they go away.
It’s just too funny of an excuse. What else will he come up with?
September 25, 2015
My grandparents during their senior year of high school.My...
My grandparents during their senior year of high school.
My grandma was a cheerleader. The skirts were longer in the mid-1940s because American culture had yet to be completely sexualized. They married not too long after graduation and had five kids, contributing to the baby boomer generation that nearly destroyed this country. Grandma taught school for a while, then became a housewife. My grandpa drove truck, mined coal, and ran various businesses–a gas station, a cafe, a hotel. He died in a car accident in his early 50s. She lived into her mid-80s.
Little ditty ‘bout Jack and Bonnie, two American kids growin’ up in the heartland…
September 24, 2015
Met a dude at the bar tonight who is a “recreational gold prospector”. How fucking cool.
I ask you, is “recreational” even needed here?
September 21, 2015
I hope to be the world’s first radical moderate.
In the polarized bullshit world of contemporary America, I believe it is not only possible, but necessary, to be radically moderate.
Fuck you and your socialism! Fuck you and your anarcho-capitalism!
Let’s everybody get a fucking grip!
What we have are opinions, not facts.
Why do we still not get this?
People talk about the coarsening of public discourse in this country, then there’s the obstructionist UNCOMPROMISING positions of BOTH sides.
Never forget: “That’s just, like, your opinion, man.” -The Dude.
If you are absolutely convinced of your rightness, you are wrong and, also, an asshole.
Remember this always.
I have one general question for all the promoted people taking questions: Who the fuck are you?
Ransom Riggs? Are you a pro wrestler or something?
Ransom Riggs is an author of a best selling novel. The only reason I know is because I was looking for new books one day and ended up buying one of theirs.
Fair enough and thanks. I just see all these names passing by and not one of them ring a bell. Ransom Riggs totally sounds like a pro wrestler, though.
I have one general question for all the promoted people taking questions: Who the fuck are you?
Ransom Riggs? Are you a pro wrestler or something?
