Out of Control

Reading for January 24, 2010

It all started innocently enough. I remember it well. In the 1950s, my father would close his drugstore at one in the afternoon every Sunday. After the spirited antics of my older brothers at the big family lunch, in fall, it happened.

My little skull was filled with gifts of Christmas merriment, as I looked forward to a trip to a real wonderland. During the holidays one of the wholesale outfits from where my dad purchased his merchandise, opened their warehouse doors to customers. The wonderland was in their warehouse wherein several rooms full of toys existed - existed for me to pick out my Christmas gifts............there was a hair-pin turn ahead, though, upon which I would loose total control.

Attendance at Sunday's morning mass was part of life. The mass for school children was at eight in the morning, so with my Father opening his store at 10 am. he too attended the 8 o’clock mass. So it was that I found myself in the area of the great church under the auspices of Sister Spongia..........soon to be St Hyacinth's own Bermuda triangle.

My classmate Charles was next to me. Charlie and I equaled disaster. Sinister forces probably from the “triangle” came into Charlie and me and totally possessed us. Our “possession” made us manifest the ultimate of all possessed states: uncontrollable loud and totally disruptive laughter. Yes........... we were in the most feared of all “loss of control” states: silliness. Nothing, absolutely nothing, could make Charlie and I stop laughing. We were literally turned into ridiculousness. When I started to edge toward self-control, Charlie would jinx me, and I would go to pieces. When Charlie started to take himself seriously, I would hit him with an idea so hare-brained, he would crack up.

Charlie and I were warned by the nun repeatedly; but it was of no use. We fed off each others’ deepest core of nonsense and became doomed as we were sucked into the triangle’s vortex of complete idiocy. Our only hope was in, of course, an exorcism. The mass ended before an exorcist was found, and I was …...............
to be continued............

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Happy daze,


The Captain