MINERAL DEPOSITS

nonfiction about things that didn't happen

Monday, July 27, 2009

SANTOS

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What was familiar about him was the way he created clutter. He did it exactly the same way I did. He would leave sticky plates on the floor, cups teetering on the arm of the sofa, clothes pretty much wherever he took them off. It was funny that I had travelled to Mexico and seen a lot of new things but this boy was definitely from the same mould as me. His mum Greta would come home from her work and chastise him. Her finger didn't wag but rotated like a royal wave, which seems hilarious now when I think of her, fat in a way more spherical than I'd ever seen before, speaking Spanish and making me feel like the wrong demographic, like when I tried to get my Dad into Monkey Dust and he sat perfectly still not laughing for the whole thing and I felt completely guilty on behalf of the programme makers for not amusing him and wondered whether it was just a bad episode compared to the other ones because i hadnt found it funny either or whether it was just as funny as the others but i just couldnt enjoy it because i was watching it through his eyes and seeing these jokes about rape and peadophiles as not jokes but just things happening that had no relevance to anything in my life or his and when i saw life through my dads eyes there was nothing in the world that could make me laugh

The main way I made clutter was to leave words on the internet and then forget that I put them there, so someone else would have to clear them up. And he did that too, and he played football once a week and wasn't very good. I thought I was better than him because I thought he didn't have a football brain, but I realised halfway through Jane Eyre that anyone watching me play would think I didn't have a football brain either.

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1 comment:

Ian_Morgan said...

Do more of these! I read it all. Tis good stuff.