When I was a child, my father would often go to the office on weekeneds,
and I would tag along.

Yes yes I would tag along yes I would yowza yep uh huh.

He in his office ensconced, the building deserted, quiet, not even the
faint echo of Friday's footfall.  I having the run of the corridors, the
stairwells, and best of all - the elevator.

Push the button and it will come.

The muffled murmer of the motor, the door silently majestically opening,
the first time it happened was always the best.  Powerful yet respectful
gentle servant, there to do my bidding.

Into the cab on 3, push G, wait for the door to close, feel the slight
lift when downward motion begins, the subtle pressure of stopping, then
push 2, get off, race up the stairs to meet the elevator.  Could I win
against my own servant?  I would set up contests.

Ten million years later the game ended.  The crowds never returned that
Monday, nor Tuesday, nor the thousands upon thousands of Mondays and
Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays and Fridays following.  Yet never
did I tire of roaming endlessly the corridors, nor never did my servant
fail me.  At the end of the ten millionth year, I knocked upon my father's
office door.

38 responses total.

Wow.

I'm sitting in suspense wondering if he answered...

Okay, so I haven't really been sitting all this time.

rand you'd have a sore butt if you had!

I worry about Ten million years. All else is on a very human scale, but
Ten million years is beyond human comprehension, except as a number. I
would like to change Ten million years, but am unsure to what. No number
fits; makes sense; closes the metaphor; answers the question. I wait.

  ...ten trillion years..... 

(has a better flow)

no it doesn't!

Don't talk back young man!

kiss my nose many times over.

500th year- forever or a lifetime in a kid's imagination.

What?

kids like big numbers.  When they can count more-or-less to 20 and have heard
of 100, 1000, etc., they will randomly assign amounts in the mid hundreds or
thousands to anything they see as large: 20-99 seems too familiar but hasn't
an exact referent, ten-thousands+ are too complicated.  Soon after that, they
will add numbers like "500 thousand million" to mean unimaginably big.

I am a bat.  I swoop about my the cave; sometimes they think I cannot
but collide with the wall or the ceiling, but it never happens.  I
always change my course at the last instant.

Yet there is more to it than this.  For you see, I have the power to
make the cave ten feet higher.

(Thank you, Michael Delizia.)

I am a giraffe llama cross-breed.

AndI'm goat cheese...

And i'm a cross of them all.  A ggirat cheese

bless you! does everyone have a cold today?

No, I've just come back from the dead to check my e-mail.  Or at least
I felt like i was going to die sometime this week, when I was at the
Commie High dance last night.  I spent most of the dance sleeping on a
brick windowsill (Ouch!).

And has this simile a like perfection?
The mind is like a bat.  Precisely, save
That in the very happiest intellection
A graceful error may correct the cave.

You're welcome.

I'm loser baby so why don't you kill me?

Fine.  I will...

reduce (no- small enough already) reuse (feeling used and abused?) recycle-
got to die to be born again. And again.  And again. And

Well, if there is a rock cycle, a water cycle, why isn't there a soul cycle?

There is, I've already been 1/2 way through it!
\
<|;)
/

That's my theory.  At any rate, vidar, do you mean
you are halfway along the path to enlightenment?

No, the soul cycle, like everything else is a loop.  Never ending...
I am in the middle of the first run.

I am in the middle, new, old, goat, beck.

yeah, but what about the spin cycle?

I'm in the rinse cycle!

I'm dried by now.

You're silly.

Me too.

Re#13:  Where'd you get that?

From Michael Delizia, just as I said.

#19 gives the rhymed version.  I didn't write it myself, 
of course, I just entered it.  I had a great idea for
casting Poe's "Raven" poem into today's English, but
I only got as far as "So the raven is like, 'NOT'" and
then gave up.

Digression inevitable in this item?

and all other items

It's bound to happen.  And it has.

Response not possible - You must register and login before posting.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss