Gag Reflexes

Not everyone in every situation appreciates my peculiar gag reflex. There are some on the outer rim of my social orbit who simply can’t stand it. They dismiss strategically placed peeled bananas every few flagstones as a crime against compost. To them, shaving cream is something you tame your face with, not meant to unlock your inner Basquiat. And toilet paper is no substitute for confetti.

As anyone knows who’s spent a lifetime committed to mindless pranks, the more you do the more the stakes begin to rise. You escalate, not on purpose, but because there are only so many times you can pour different food dyes into friend’s kidney pool before the joke is squarely on you. 

Any child of nature starts with the natural world. I’ve never understood the aversion to getting wet. At the end of a filthy grime-ridden day, we willingly toss our clothes into a washing machine for a mechanical soak. Yet when I decide to pelt you with a dozen rainbow-colored water balloons, you act like it’s a great affront. Maybe if I included detergent next time, you’d be a tad more receptive.  

When society types shake hands again at the grand opening of a new modern art exhibit, I’ll be there with an electronic buzzer in one palm and an actual dead fish fresh from my monger in the other. They can’t fault me for self-expression at a venue like that. Not when they’re serving salmon ceviche on toast to complement the expensive scribblings.

You hide someone’s keys for amusement and pretty soon you’re parking their car two towns over and selling the spare parts for scrap. I’m here to tell you that it never ends well, this irrational commitment to gags. But it’s a lifestyle and it’s a choice. I’m not saying your bowtie should spray a liquid other than water, I’m just saying it could. I wouldn’t recommend cutting someone’s necktie unless you have a similarly priced replacement in your jacket pocket. You can mess with a cravat, but you should really know what one is first. 

The thing is, I can’t help it. I see the world as it shouldn’t be, not as it is. How did it happen? There are several theories. One is that my love and appreciation of geology was ruined when I discovered that moraine and meringue were two different words. That there was no clear connection between pie crust and earth crust. And that shifting tectonic plates were not akin, even remotely, to the spinning of plates by a seasoned clown riding a unicycle dangerously close to a dancing bear. 

But it might not have been that at all.   

There’s a slight chance watching The Three Stooges an inch or two from the TV screen did it, hypnotizing me from the glowing luster of Larry Fine’s bald spot. I was well into my thirties before I knew that a soda siphon was not mainly for spraying seltzer in the face of an unsuspecting associate. But hey, I guess that’s just a part of growing up.