I learned to read when I discovered that books were a form of transportation that could get me from math to the Mississippi in a matter of seconds. Anything to get away from Mrs. Murnau's screeching chalk and Farmer Brown's chickens, which were always coming and going from eggs to chicks to skillets and ovens. Today I realize Farmer Brown suffered from OCD, an obsessive-compulsive disorder that drove him to count and recount and divide and multiply and subtract — he was loony — I was immune, and grateful to this day. Two eggs or three? they ask; What's the difference? I answer.
I learned to write during an in-class essay test on The Scarlet Letter, which I had not read. I didn't even know what it was about, or which letter. I'd been reading something else. It didn't stop me from turning in a fine paper. I received high praise for my effort, along with an F, and a private meeting with my English teacher whose only question was: What's wrong with you? I don't remember my answer, but I clearly remember the color she turned when I told her she had beautiful eyes. It was scarlet.
Her face, not her eyes. Her eyes were green. She was my English teacher through all four years of high school, which, I'm told, is a mathematical improbability. When she decided in my senior year that I was to be her lover, the math made a little more sense.
I graduated from high school because my time was up, went on to art school where they encouraged behavior like mine, and felt my way through life, eventually becoming a successful freelance writer for various corporate clients in Chicago. About 26 years later I noticed my phone hadn't rung in about a year. A year after that I was counseled to consider getting a job. The next year brought bankruptcy, the sale of my home and a new residence of the far edge of civilization, followed by nearly a year of nonstop limo driving to and from O'Hare International Airport, undoubtedly the nastiest, rudest, meanest place on Earth. Three months after the first time I awoke at 75 mph I finally had to admit that sleeping while driving was hazardous to tips. I quit the limo business, took up blogging and waited for my IRA to run out, which brings us up to date, roughly.
Article comments
1 - Shark
Fisher King,
If ya wanna be a blogger, ya gotta include SOME LINKS.
I know, I know, it was LITERARY, (what's next, friggin' poems about your lost girlfriends?!) ---but c'mon, man we gotta have links!
Newsweek?
Chicago Chamber of Commerce?
O'Hare International?
A NY Times story about David Kay's lost days in Baghdad?
Farmer Brown's Cow.com?
You missed SO many good opportunities to send your readers elsewhere.
Anyway, despite the detrimental lack o' links, it was a pretty good ride.
But it didn't have an ending.
Explain THAT.
PS: Did you ever get to bang yer teacher?
2 - CW Fisher
Incoming!
You want a poem about my girlfriend? You want a poem about my girlfriend?
You want me to blog the girlfy in a Poe-Eem? Zat wut u sayn? I aint bitin few aint payin gitabodid doo u got a attitou not in da moo lee me 2 broo u in my roo u blggl blggl
How's that? Can I be done now? Do you really need to hear the rest of the story? Have you heard nothing, man? Have I not said it is all a circle?
"...drawn in haste..." I added.
Is it not, in the end, just one neverending circle of life, the Lion King on Ice, circles within circles of spinning people all making less than minimum wage, lucky for the chance at the bigtime even if only in this jungly costume so drenched with sweat they have trenchpits. Is this not Life? If this not what Walt the Creator intended?
A circle, man. You know. For kids.
We banged often.