Alien Corn Time

Collided with the Jerry Springer world yesterday when the first Mrs. Rochester came into the store and began ranting that I'd slandered her son on the Internet. At first I wondered how she ever escaped from that attic in Thornfield Manor – was Grace sleeping on the job again? And then I realized aha! it's the first Mrs. _____ and she's mad about something I wrote in this very LJ! Though what I wrote about actually was the intense nausea ______ inspired in me when she intimated I was moving in on her man.

I threw her out and then _____ and ______ themselves come trotting by, grinning like kids playing Ding Dong Ditch. "Hello, Pat!" says _____.

I'm supposed to take umbrage at that "Pat."

The Jerry Springer world is kind of like the Bizarro world in those old Superman comic books. At first it's kind of amusing but then when it starts to recede, you are pierced with existential angst – there are some really stupid people in this world. _____ and ______ aren't even close to the stupidest.

And then at three o'clock in the morning, it's alien corn time again, and you find yourself taking inventory.

So, for the record:

I am fifty-five years old. I don't have all my teeth. I am 25 pounds overweight. I have a business that's doing better than it did last year but is still struggling. I have a marriage that I'm basically staying in for the good of my child. (And if you asked my husband, he would say the same thing though we like each other well enough.) I am not a very nice person. I'm having real difficulties writing two short stories for the Stegner application.

In another 25 years I'll be dead and none of this will matter.

PS

Brilliant article on Asperger's Syndrome from a recent New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/20/070820fa_fact_page