Speaking
of my inability to keep my mouth shut when I have nothing to say, I
should tell you about what I knew about dead cats. When I laid down the skinny on former felines it was in the same
kitchen talking to the same mom that I expounded my wisdom about the
U.S. pound of asparagus. You know? I was just thinking I was always
trying to impress this woman maybe it was one of those pre-sexual
crushes and I just really wanted to have her like me. Anyway, we were
talking over some of her after-school baked goods and she mentioned
that she had seen a dead cat that was on the side of the road and
that it was quite bloated. She wondered out loud what causes dead
animals to puff up like that and I thought this was a perfect chance
to impress this woman with my knowledge of everything. I came up with
some true-smart-facts right on the spot and began to hold forth not
just verbally but with a diagram I drew. I told her and the other
kids that the reason an animal will be bloated after death was that
they died of a punctured lung and as the breathed their last breath
they filled up their body cavities to bursting. I used my nonexistent
skills as an artist to draw a diagram of what would happen complete
with the outline of a animal, a rudimentary lung and arrows showing
what was happening to the air. She had actually known the actual
answer the whole time and was just stimulating thought with her
musing so she could tell the right answer as a teaching moment. She
either mercifully or cruelly waited for me to be all the way finished
with my cringe-worthy monologue on perforated lungs and then told us
why it really happens. I am not sure if she was super impressed with
how smart I was, or just really impressed. To this day I still
shudder at the shame of laying down made up wisdom with a diagram.
With a damn diagram.
