The Adventures of Macaroni McSpoon

Part Duh
by Scott Hefflon

[You think you’ve waited a long time in checkout lines or at the registry? Well, Mac has been stuck in an elevator for six weeks, waiting for this issue to come out.]

The elevator jerked rudely to a stop and Mac fell on top of himself. The elevator doors opened. “Why, thank you.” Mac said politely. He helped himself to his feet and stepped into the hall. Mac had no clue what to do next. It was as if God, or whoever the script-writer of his life was, suddenly had writer’s block. Mac waited patiently for God to have an inspiration. He hummed nursery rhymes to himself. He had found that to be a good way to whittle away the time when God ran out of ideas. You don’t even have to carry a pocket knife around with you. How convenient. It was at times like these that Mac wondered just how bright God really was.

Suddenly, there was a large crash at the end of the hall. Mac realized he’d just missed the point. And the point had missed him entirely. Bad guidance system, evidently. He walked to the end of the hall to find the point. He got to the end and still didn’t see anything. Out of somewhere, the thought struck him. “How can I see the point if I don’t know what the point is?”

The thought considered Mac a moron for not thinking of him earlier, so he struck Mac really hard on his blind side. Mac was knocked off his balance, tripped over the point, and fell headlong into a door that was ajar. Mac was momentarily stunned. When the moment passed, he was Mac again. He got back on his balance again, and shortened his head back to its original dimensions. The point was evidently satisfied that it had served its purpose and had gone off to prove itself to someone else. The door was no longer ajar. It was a door again. Mac closed it tightly. The latch clicked contently home and the door settled into being closed.

Mac smiled and looked around for the thought that had struck him. He wasn’t mad at it, he just wanted to know where it was. Sometimes thoughts come in handy. He found the thought hanging out in his head, having a drink with a few other thoughts, a couple of beliefs, and a philosophy. He seemed to fit in rather well, so Mac left him alone. Mac looked around the cluttered apartment he’d stumbled into.

Nothing grabbed his attention, which was probably a good thing. That can often hurt. Mac decided to clean up a bit until he decided what to do next. He wanted to make a decision, so he did: Clean. It was kind of a silly decision, yes, but it could’ve been worse.

Before long, Mac discovered why dish-washing was not on the checklist of a few of his favorite things. The discovery began immediately after he started the task in the form of a nagging hypothesis. It took a short time for it to quit bitching and state, in a clear and concise manner, what it was. Mac toyed with the hypothesis for a little while. He weighed it in his mind, and studied it from obscure angles until his neck protested. He played with the hypothesis and a few other incestuously inter-related ideas. He continuously lost at “Hide and Go Peek,” tired quickly of “Duck, Duck, Duck,” and was befouled playing “Chicken” with a dirty mind.

Mac realized his humor had gone bad and spent a considerable amount of time getting a fresh one. When he did, he slapped himself for obvious reasons. The reasons were not obvious to him, and he was taken by surprise by his actions. As is often the case with surprise, its effects soon wore off and Mac returned to his senses. He still didn’t get it, and wound up slapping himself again. Mac decided to stop doing dishes before he hurt himself badly. He realized he’d been washing dishes for just shy of the time span he would have considered long. He had the feeling if he washed the dishes for a long time, a really bad thought would strike him. He tried not to think about the thought, or about the feeling about the thought.

He frowned at the sudsy water draining down the drain (hence its name ) as if that’s what was bothering him. But then all the sudsy water was gone, and his frown still hadn’t gotten off to wherever it is frowns go when you don’t need them, so Mac figured he’d better find something else to frown at. He couldn’t see well enough to find anything very bothersome. Everything was cloudy. The sun had popped behind a cloud for a bit of privacy and had plunged the world, including the house in which Mac stood, into gloom. Mac tried to frown at the gloom, but it was already too gloomy to care. He tried to think of a way to get rid of the gloom so he could find something substantial to frown at. His thoughts, he discovered gloomily, were also cloudy. It seemed they’d been having a jolly old time getting to know each other and had gotten very, very drunk. They were tumbling inside his head, making fools of themselves. “Turn on the lights, you ass.” thought a thought with his head stuffed in a trashbasket. Mac could have kicked himself for not thinking that himself. In fact, he tried to as he reached for the lightswitch. Instead, he slipped in the huge puddle of soapy water on the floor just as he flipped the lights on. Suddenly, many things happened.

TO BE CONTINUED…