Cliché Touché
Thanksgiving at my sister’s house was interesting. The noise in the house was unbearable. As I tried to sew a button on my jacket I decided to go out to barn for a little solitude and quiet. Well I completed my little task. I firmly attached that button to the jacket’s lapel, but as I finished I inadvertently dropped my needle into a stack of hay. It took me hours to finally find that sewing needle as that haystack was difficult to negotiate. Finding that needle in the hay was more difficult than people realize.
I returned back to the house where my cousin was reading a large hardcover book. The cover of that book was horrendous. Images of blood and mutilated bodies dominated the cover page of her novel. When I suggested the book must be dreadful and gory, she suggested that I was being presumptuous and I should not make judgments of the quality of the narrative based simply on the cover of that book.
I agreed and went into the kitchen where many of the family members were already making soup from the turkey carcass. The problem was there were far too many people in the kitchen trying to take control of the ingredients being added to the broth. Finally I wedged myself to the pot and the stove to have a little sip of their concoction. It did not taste very good and I suggested that there were far too many cooks and their lack of collaboration was spoiling the taste of the broth.
I went back to the living room where our old dog Rusty, was laying on the floor. In a moment of inspiration, I decided to teach the dog how to raise his paw, as it shook my hand. Hours passed as Rusty seemed very uncooperative and would barley participate in this training session. Finally I gave up as is seemed this very old dog did not want to learn a new trick. Exhausted I lay down with Rusty, but after that brief nap I noticed a little flea was playing on my left arm. Perhaps one should not lay down with dogs, concluding that when a dog is asleep you should just let the sleeping dog lie alone without interruption.
My brother Paul was sitting on the couch and reminded me that I owed him twenty dollars that I had borrowed to buy a new egg painting kit last Easter. I went down to the basement where my cousin Peter was watching the ball game on the big screen TV. He had dozed off, so I quietly removed his wallet, took twenty dollars and replaced that wallet back in his pocket. Stealing money from Peter to pay Paul seemed like my only option at the time.
I went into the den, where my niece was busy writing a one-thousand word essay for her English class at school. She seemed very frustrated as she had barely started and asked me for a little help. After discovering her topic was “The challenge of Hamlet’s internal struggle” I downloaded a picture of an old Danish castle. I handed it to her suggesting that this image was so beautiful, that this picture might be equivalent to the thousand words she was struggling to write.
I stepped outside for a moment and I was struck by how much greener the lawn next door was compared to my sister’s home’s front yard. The more I looked the greener the grass appeared to be. This made me a little envious, but when I looked at the lawn on the other side of the house, it appeared their grass was even greener. Embarrassed I went back into to the kitchen where the many family members were still working on the soup. They decided that they must make that soup hotter so they turned the element to its highest level. They just stood there watching the pot but it never seemed to boil. What they didn’t notice was that the cream was rising to the top. Someone decided to make tea and placed the tea kettle right beside the boiling pot of soup. The arguments in the kitchen continued as each were concerned about the overheating pot and kettle, debating over which would turn black first.
It was then I rememered that I forgot to buy eggs for next Sunday’s brunch. I asked my sister if I could borrow a few eggs and she said yes. I could not find a bag so I grabbed an old basket to gently place all those eggs in to carry them to the car. One of the eggs fell and cracked. I concluded that I should not have put all of those eggs in the same basket. Embarrased with a little egg on my face, I felt like I was walking on egg shells, but quickly realized I was actually walking on egg shells as I had dropped another egg on the sidewalk.
The drive home was difficult as a fog had come in. I took the back roads to avoid traffic. The dense fog made it very difficult to determine the forest from the trees, as there were no street lights on the back roads. Suddenly I had to slam on my breaks, as a mother duck and her babies were crossing the road. I got out of my car and noticed, they walked like ducks, they quacked like ducks and they looked like ducks so they must be ducks. They were not ducks, they were geese.
Before I returned back to the car, I had noticed that the front left tire was making a pitchy sound. Fortunately I had a little box of grease in the trunk. As a preventive measure, I not only put grease on the squeaky wheel, I placed grease on the three unsqueaky wheels. Some might argue that if it ain’t broke one should not try to fix things, but as I placed the box of grease back in the trunk, I knew one had to occasionally think outside of that box of grease to get things done.
Continuing my ride home, it started to rain. I crossed a bridge and did notice there was more water under the bridge than before, but then I wondered if those geese were now in that water. And what about the father goose? Had he joined his family for little drink of water? If the water was refreshing for the geese, surely it was good for the gander.
I finally made it home and immediately went to bed. I slept like a log that night and unfortunately the next morning I woke up in the fireplace.
Cue the Blong: I Forgot to Remember to Forget is not a Cliche, but it should be….
Breaking Well 