Something Strange...

"Something Strtange" by Kate, 12/02/08 (MSN Paint)

Something strange happened last week as I was getting my hair colored. I have to set this up for you...

A few months ago, my sister Missy and I began playing a sort of writing game. We would take turns coming up with prompts, then each of us would complete her "assignment," exchanging them when both were finished. Before I tell you what happened in the beauty shop, I'm going to share one of my assignments with you...

The prompt was:

"A character arrives at work to find her chair missing. What happened to it?" (from The Pocket Muse by Monica Wood.)

I wrote:

He'd had a thing for chairs with wheels ever since the first night he'd accompanied his mother to the law offices where she worked. He remembered how he'd loved the feeling that something dangerous lurked in the dark, only to disappear as soon as his mother flipped the switch that brought light -- and safety -- to the front office. As she turned on her typewriter and disappeared into Mr. Bland's office for a stack of folders and dictation belts, he would entertain himself by pretending the secretaries' chairs were rides in an amusement park. He would move from one to the other, experimenting with the slight variations in tilt, or the timbre of a squeak. Then he discovered another variation...Smell.

His mother would be working so furiously to finish the day's overload that she felt only relief that her young son was so easily amused by something as mudane as office chairs. It never occurred to her that she should be concerned at the way he buried his face in each seat before he took it for a spin...

******

Now he was certain that his mother was God's own personal secretary up in Heaven. And he was sure that she no longer had to work nights. No. That was his place now...working nights, cleaning offices from which he knew he would be banned during the day. Typewriters had been replaced by computers, but offices still had cushioned chairs with wheels on them. And he still loved to smell them -- all of them. Sometimes he needed to have them close together so he could get from one to the other quickly; then he would move a half-dozen or so from their respective offices into the narrow hallway that led to the janitor's supply closet. Sometimes he would stay too long, and there wouldn't be time to return them. He would have to leave them where they were so he could be gone before the day workers arrived...

Now for the strange thing that happened in the beauty shop...

My hairdresser was the only one working that day, so for a while it was just the two of us. She had applied the color to my roots (and across my forehead in a one-inch band that reached from ear to ear), and arranged the rest of my hair attractively in a style I like to call " the paintbrush." Then I was put on display at the front of the shop. Before long her next customer arrived -- a young mom with a very cute little boy, about five years old.

Forgetting how frightening I probably looked to the little guy, I smiled warmly at him. He just looked away, pretending I wasn't there. Good. I'm pretty much over my infatuation with pre-schoolers these days anyway, so I pretended he wasn't there. For a while. Then, from the corner of my eye, as I was pretending to read my book, but was actually listening to the mom and the hairdresser trashing their ex- and soon-to-be-ex-husbands, I became aware of something shooting back and forth between the two pairs of chairs that sat facing each other in the reception area.

The cute little boy was still ignoring me, but I became fascinated watching him criss-cross from chair to chair, resting his head momentarily on each one. Remembering my writing assignment. I thought, "Wouldn't it be weird..." when suddenly he did it! He actually started sniffing each chair before he moved to the next one! I was so excited, it was all I could do not to jump up and start trying to explain everything to the other two adults in the room. (Fortunately, on some level I realized that would make me seem really weird too, so I stayed in my seat. The medication really does work sometimes.)

Anyway, that's the strange thing that happened to me in the beauty shop. If you wonder why I chose to write about in my blog, just remember...I consider this blog to be an outlet mall for my brain. That's what I had to offer today.