Oh, the Possibilities!

Hey! Remember back on Sunday, November 2nd, 2014, when I declared that I was starting a new sideline for my proposed handbasket factory? Val's School For Boys Who Can't Dress Themselves and Don't Really Care About Helping People, I called it. I was wearing black socks, red Crocs, navy blue sweatpants with a white stripe down each leg, and a yellow-and-white striped short-sleeved big shirt when I wrote it.

Okay. So maybe you don't have H-SAM (Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory) like Marilu Henner, or that character Poppy Montgomery plays. But I wrote about that school-for-boys plan. And now, I'm branching out. Branching out as a life coach, available to help geniuses and the other end of the spectrum, guys like Hick, carry out the tasks of daily life. Because they are sadly unprepared. I daresay they wouldn't know how to put on a tree skirt without explicit instructions and modeling.

Let's begins with the malleable Pony. This afternoon, I asked him to light a Creamy Custard and Apple Cinnamon candle. Yeah. Sometimes I don't know whether to smell them or eat them. So first of all, The Pony was discombobulated because I had taken the box of long stick matches off the kitchen counter and put them away in the cabinet. Once he got over that glitch, he took seven or eight tries to scratch that match into flame. Then he let the candle sit flat on the counter while he stuck the match down inside the glass holder to the wick. Of course the flame started licking up toward his thumb and finger. Nothing understands gravity better than a flame, unless it's underwater air bubbles.

Good thing I was watching him like a hawk while I was scrubbing a copper-bottomed pot with ketchup, and putting 19 eggs in a bigger pot to boil. I saw the wick catch, and the match flame licking up the wooden matchstick. "BLOW IT OUT!"

The Pony had already yanked his hand back from the heat. He gave a WHOOSH of a blowout attempt. Right into the candle, which had caught. It went out, and the flame remained, advancing toward his flesh. "BLOW IT OUT!" He finally did.

"I tried! You scared me! I didn't think it was lit, so I was letting it light." He moved to the sink to run the matchstick under water before throwing it in the wastebasket. At least he had learned one lesson. His second attempt at lighting was more successful, since he tilted the candle before sticking in the match.

Next we greet Genius, the college man, home for four weeks. Four weeks of wearing one shirt. Because he went off and left all his shirts in his dorm room.

"Um. I kind of forgot my shirts."

"I'm sure there are shirts hanging in the laundry room that will fit you."

"Yeah. Well. Four weeks is a long time."

"I guess you can go without a shirt."

"I only have this one shirt."

"Okay. I get it. What's cheaper, a whole new wardrobe, or gas money to go back for your shirts?"

"The gas money."

"Didn't you get gas money from the kid you drive home this afternoon?"

"Well yes!"

"And you won $20 on that scratch-off ticket I sent you. So there's your gas money."

"Um. I was thinking of driving back tomorrow morning."

"And..."

"Could I have...not the whole amount...gas is down...uh...twenty...no, make it twenty-five dollars?"

"All right. I hope you can get in your dorm."

"Oh, I can get in!"

So...I've put out the fire on one little genius, and gotten shirts back on the back of the other, and my attention turns to Hick. Hick, sitting in his La-Z-Boy with his feet up, watching home improvement shows while waiting for time to go to the auction.

"You know the soles of your work boots are filled with mud, right? Mud clods and rocks and cedar shavings."

"Huh. They are?"

"Yes. And when you get up, they're going to be in the carpet. You've probably left a trail through the house already."

"I didn't know they were muddy."

Said the man who just came in from the goat pen after a day of constant rain.

Yes. A new business sideline, with a new business card:

Val: Life Coach For the Very Smart and Very Not-Smart.