I'd like to share a couple of thoughts and ask your opinions. But first, stout shoes are called for:

Springtime is looming. Oh yes, it's time to be mindful and leery. Soon terrible things will start to happen. Opossums, a pre-historic species, a virtual dinosaur among us, with their horrible hairless tails... yes, the Possums, the toothy Opossums will come down from their trees by night and lick the deliciousness from our barbecue grills. We will ingest molecules of possum-tongue and possum spittle without even knowing it when, skilled and wise, the barbecue chef browns the hod dawg rolls before brushing down the barbecue grill in order to imbue the rolls with flavor, and over low flame at that. Yes. Possum molecules ingested again. Who knows what de-evolutionary, not to say gastronomical, ramifications are wrought each year when, once again, we ingest the tongue-cell molecules of a pre-historic mammal? No good can come of it, I tell ye!

As we all know, school begins for the crustaceans in springtime. And you got to watch out. Hellwaxing crawfish will know many songs, and will be gurgling out their pledge of allegiance in the mornings after they sing their morning songs in their schoolrooms, oh yes, don't doubt it! Organized bands of enthused youth; crawfish youth, will be lurking in the creeks and rills, ready to devour your foot like a couch-tornado devours a snack cracker. Wear your shoes. Stout shoes!

The glommering troll-world of under-bridge untoward nightlife, including customs revolting beyond conception, will vanquish the quiet of the night. When you hear the jollity of the wassailing trolls, turn and disperse. Don't be drawn to the odd sounds, the alien timbre of those green guffaws, just disperse!

So anyway,

The song PONY TIME by Chubby Checker contains words that have always befuddled me. "Now turn to the left when I say Gee, turn to the right when I say Haw. Now Gee. Now Haw." I finally understand now. These are (I'm serious here) sled-dog commands. Gee means 'turn left' and Haw means 'turn right' while Whoa means 'stop' and Mush On means 'go'.

Now, on a completely unrelated topic, here's my new theory that I came up with all by myself when I heard a story on the Radio this morning about women who schedule a C-Section for the delivery of their issue, and in this way avoid the disruption of their schedules, the hours of painful labor, and the possible incontinence issues that are all part of vaginal child-birth.

And it occurred to me. The condition called "Panic Attacks" is no joke. You read about it. A person is going about their business and suddenly, for no apparent reason, a crush of utter panic; unreasoning, self-sufficient, horrible and insistent, ambushes and penetrates and fully occupies this person's consciousness. These are, by all accounts, horrible episodes. One can't help but wonder, why do these panic attacks happen? And so I have a theory. When a person is born, it is nothing short of a crisis. Mom is in danger and agony. So is the person being born. And the sounds the fetus hears and the chemistry coming through the umbilical chord are sounds and chemistry of urgency, pain, and crisis. So, maybe the panic attack phenomenon can be attributed to the fact that, in our deepest consciousness, the whole idea of being out and about among all the other life forms who must breath to exist, is something we associate with pure panic due to the fact that at the time we entered the world of air, panic and intensity were the prevailing conditions.

I feel sure this theory has already been expounded, and I'd be flattered if the theory has been presented in a medical journal.

You never know. But the good old mental stimulation of formulating a theory, whether it's erudite or a bunch of ill-conceived hog mawg, made my morning that much more satisfactory, as I oxidized onward, my brain slowly rusting. Another land-dwelling creature on the planet, me.

COPYRIGHT 2006 DOUGLAS CLOUD ALL RIGHTS RESERVED