A Teaspoon of Surprise

...Plus something from science class

I remember something from science class. 

The moon is a piece of the earth itself, cleaved in an act of cosmic violence. Was it also in the wrong place at the wrong time?

I used to have a job. My job was imagining things. This was called freelance writing. Then something happened I could not have imagined. Someone ran out of beer.

Then she stole a truck, careened over a curb, and crumpled a car. I was in the car.

The car looked like crumpled paper.

For a few years, I woke up each day and wondered if I had emerged from a really bad dream or had really been hit by a drunk with a truck. Then I wondered if I really broke my brain. The answer was Yes.

Writers create something from nothing. Or rather from the alphabet and any images that come to mind. Which requires a mind. I lost my former life and my former mind.

Then? I sounded like what you’d get if you stirred three heaping teaspoons of something with a cup of something else (metaphorically, I mean) — if it survived and you could un-crumple it. I looked like that, too. I also couldn’t read or write, but other than that, I was fine.

In an instant, I was unemployed, also due to the drunk with a truck, but eighteen years later, I hired myself to do this job (without pay) and hope to keep doing it. A teaspoon of surprise, a teaspoon of entertaining, a teaspoon of something more. Twice a week.