Sometimes life imitates art

[Zoom]

My mom works at a funeral home. Upstairs, not downstairs; she doesn't touch corpses and then come home and make dinner. But anyway she was on the phone with a friend a couple of hours ago, telling a story from work, and I was in the same room and overheard it. Basically, the driver of the hearse crashed it the other night. Not very badly; just kind of dented and scratched. But he crashed it down the embankment and partially into the water, and there was a casket in the back. A full casket. And I just imagined, what if he'd crashed it all the way into the water. What if he's a bit dazed after the crash and the hearse is filling with water and suddenly this HUMAN CORPSE floats by and he's like, "...shit, I have to go rescue this already-dead corpse, or I'll lose my job." I start cracking up, I'm like doing laundry and busting a gut.

And I thought, this would be perfect in a dark comedy. PERFECT. And it's not the only thing from real life that seems like it came right out of fiction.

For example, I was looking for apartments on Kijiji, and I got kind of distracted in the FREE STUFF category, and I came across this GOLDEN ad, this guy's mice had had babies and he was just going on about how these are magic mice or something, and this is a defining moment for me, the reader, and will I succumb to feeding these precious children to SNAKES, or will I take a stand against blah blah blah etc, and there was something about the father of these mice controlling the weather.

Of course I had to reply to it, this was from my area and there's a chance I know who this is! I have to find out! I'll let you know if I hear back. I said I was prominent in the field of mouse-human relations. A diplomat.

And so much more. The world is awesome. How about you guys, any perfect stories?

[the Red Dragon]

You got me at the whole mice controlling the weather thing. I love moments like that.

One time some friends and I were playing this game, Catchphrase, and my sister was trying to get us all to guess the phrase "bad hair day." So she's like, "this really annoys girls," and one of my guy friends is like, "Guys!"

It's not funny when you hear it, but at the time it was hilarious. His timing was just so perfect.

[Zoom]

Oh man, the 'you had to be there' stuff. Do you remember sleepovers? At like three AM when you finally turned off the lights and went to bed, everybody would get the giggles.

Also: don't play Cards Against Humanity with your family. Don't do it.

[Zoom]

Oh by the way I got a reply from the mice person! She knew I was joking, so I don't think she was completely actually insane, but she was sure weird. Anyway apparently the mice are all dead. No reason was given.

[sapphire]

I shudder to think of the fate of those poor mice.
There are all kinds of crazies out there. I've gotten a few phone calls at the call center where I work, but I've promised myself I wouldn't tell any bad work stories until I don't work there anymore. It feels unprofessional.

(Related to the Catchphrase/Cards Against Humanity thing, has anyone here played Bananagrams? It is so much fun.)

[Zoom]

That's admirable!

Yeah, crazies. Plenty of those. You kind of wonder what went wrong in their life.

And: almost worse in that they're super-common: all those sad anxious desperate people, twenty-five-year-olds trying not to yell at their kids or each other so they can keep pretending they're happy, fifty year olds that are those same people but who've been trying for twenty five years, groups of middle-aged women desperate to impress each other like they're in middle school, other groups of aged misfits.....hardly anyone feels actually comfortable with themselves, their friends, or their family. It kills me.

OMG WE HAVE BANANAGRAMS. Awesome game. Especially since it's so versatile, I mean you can make up different games with the same tiles, adapt it for solitaire use, etc etc. I love how it reminds you of all the neat words you know. Conniption. Vascular. Sultry.

[sapphire]

Thank you.
I must admit, I do vent to my parents, and occasionally co-workers. But they don't count, right?

They really are - I have to wonder, with people like that, how unhappy they are. It's honestly rare that I get answer a call at work from someone who sounds genuinely happy.


Bananagrams is the best game. Ever. I don't even like card/board games, and I could play Bananagrams for hours. The version we play is basically speed Scrabble with individual workspaces. I think we mostly follow the official rules. My brother taught me, so I don't actually know for sure.
I used a really good word the other day, but now I can't remember what it was. I was really proud, though.

[the Red Dragon]

Bananagrams!! I love bananagrams!! I always win 'cause I'm the only writer in my family.

Unhappy people (or just people in general) are interesting to watch. I work at Chickfila and I've been working the register lately, so I get to interact with a lot of people. It's interesting.

[Zoom]

Definitely. People are just miserable. I'm not sure if it's always been this way or if it's a new thing. This crazy modern lifestyle I keep hearing about. I'm just tired of feeling sorry for everyone I meet. It kills me.

Remembered another 'life imitating art' anecdote: So I was kind-of-friends with this guy in high school, acquaintances really, but we smoked together. He was telling me about this girl he was interested in, and I actually kind of knew her, but I didn't mention that. So he's going on and he says "And her accent is just so sexy. She's from like Scandinavia or something." and I bust out laughing, literally I can't breathe. He's wondering what's going on and eventually I manage to tell him: it's not an accent. She's a local. It's a speech impediment.

[sapphire]

I would rather interact with people face-to-face than over the phone any day, though. I thought working at a gas station was bad - it has nothing on a call center. And I had a bottle of diet Coke thrown at me at the gas station once.

Haha, that's kind of awesome, though, Zoom. He didn't get anything negative from the way she talked. I have to say, it would make an amazing moment in a story though - you should hold onto that story, use it sometime.

[the Red Dragon]

I love how you specifically remember that it was DIET coke that was thrown at you...

[sapphire]

That moment is seared into my brain.

[Zoom]

Man I cannot even imagine the thought process behind having a bottle of diet Coke and then throwing it at somebody. Now there's a good writing prompt: figure out the reasoning behind Crazy People.

Remembered another: one day at lunch in high school a good friend of mine (at the time) and I went to the abandoned house to poke around. So we're looking around - it's a weird old house, like the owners just picked up and left without taking anything; we found some really neat stuff in that house - and we're in the 'living room' which certainly isn't anymore and Mak (my friend) really has to pee, but we don't want to walk back to the school because that would waste the rest of our lunch period. So she pees in an old mug that was just left on the coffee table when the owners left. And she isn't sure what to do with it afterwards, so she sets it on the windowsill, out of the way, to dump later, but because it's still warm, it's steaming, and I can see it in the light coming in through the window, and because it's in a teacup it looks like someone left a fresh mug of tea on the windowsill in this old abandoned house. It was surreal.

About that house: one day we were there and I went all Nancy Drew and decided to find out what happened. So my friends are poking around like usual, "oh man look why the hell did they have a rainbow wig in their bathroom" kind of thing, and I'm there racing around the house rummaging in the attic, in dresser drawers, in old desks etc looking for official papers that might have a name on them. Eventually, and I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier, but I check the mail rack thing (you know) and find a bunch of bills made out to a Marguerite Smith (not real name but kind of like it). I did some Googling when I got home and found an obituary, a news article, bada bing bada boom I'm pretty sure some old lady died, left the house to a son way out West, he didn't give a shit about the house or any of the stuff in it, and let it rot.

[sapphire]

The abandoned house thing sounds... kind of awesome, actually. I love that you dug into the history of it. There's something both incredibly beautiful and incredibly sad about abandoned buildings.

The house I grew up in was over a century old. Three stories high, not counting the attic and basement. It was black for a good part of my childhood, with a cherry red front door, until my parents had it painted a few shades of green. People in the neighborhood still use it as a landmark (turn right by the big house, you know, the one that used to be black).
We had the upstairs bathroom remodeled at one point, and that involved taking out and replacing a wall. Inside the wall, we found a letter addressed to a previous occupant of the house, an old tobacco tin, and a newspaper clipping. There was also a live, bare wire in the ceiling, that at any point could have started a fire.
We might never have found any of that if the previous occupants hadn't decorated that bathroom in 70s gold and orange.

[Zoom]

Ha I love how someone might direct a tourist, who'd never been in the area before, to turn right at the house that USED to be black

Gosh, that is so cool. Do you remember much about the clipping? Might give you a clue as to the year. Did you read the letter? I feel like if it's a letter sealed in the walls of a house, it might have been interesting reading. Explaining some of the background or something. That's what I did.

Tell me you still have that tobacco tin. And keep like smarties or something in it.

Weird thinking your whole family could have died in a fire if you hadn't renovated. Like, what else in your house - or anybody's house - is there? I bet there are people out there blissfully living in homes with skeletons in them.