Close encounters

...on Saturn and Utah

Once upon a time, there was a woman named it-doesn’t-matter. She lived in a town called No-One-Knowsville, on a spinning rock in space humans call Earth. It was home to lots of humans and to lots of stories, too, which flew in different directions at the same time. Like lots of tiny clips from lots of tiny movies mingling in my mind.

Which brings me from inner to outer space and back again. Back in the 70s, when I was in my 30s, Richard Dreyfuss had a close encounter of the third kind. Meanwhile I had close encounters of the word kind every day. And still do. That mingles with me in 10th grade, when I had a close encounter with Bobby, who dropped me for Debby, when I wouldn’t do it, but she would.

In one episode, Raquel Welch arrived with two girls named Kama and Sutra, and when the phone rang, Mork answered the toaster. In another episode, Mindy found Mork busy at the breakfast table and said, "Mork, why are you building a tower of Cheerios?" Mork answered, "Because it's hard to stack oatmeal." Then they had a baby. Just in case you’re an Orkan, that is not how babies are made.

Once I was in brain rehab with other folks with screwed-up brains. The Leader gave us a notebook and told us to write how we take our coffee on the “How we take our coffee page.”

She did that so — at some point in the future, like 5 seconds later — we could see how we take our coffee. I don’t take coffee. I take notes. I call them scraps. Scraps jump from past to present and take place in diverse settings like Saturn and Utah at the same time.

Fyi, on his first earthling Christmas, or first Christmas anywhere, Mork tells Mindy, “There's a little fat dude in a red suit on every corner! And he's called Santa CLAWS.” The next day, Mork asks why their friend Eugene comes through the door is dragging in a tall dead tree.