Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Good Morning Justin...

Happy Birthday to My Son
Tuesday, 8 January


I've begun drawing a bit.  It’s like a journal, maybe a diary.  For me it is better than words.  Words honestly used often reveal too much.  I prefer the obscurity built into pictures.  People provide their own stories when viewing pictures.  Is a picture ever meant for just two eyes?  If so, it would be like telling a story into thin air, where there are no ears to hear but one’s own.


Happy Birthday Justin!

Twelve is a popular number.  It even has its own unique name.  You’re a dozen years old.  Next year comes the incredible Baker’s Dozen – thirteen cookies in a bag meant for twelve.  If you think twelve is great just wait till next year when you become Super Twelve – which beats having to say thirteen.  Some people feel thirteen is a lonely number.  It gets blamed for all kinds of bad things.  Have you ever been in a building that didn’t have a thirteenth floor?  I have.  The elevator went from the twelfth floor right straight to fourteen.  You have to wonder what you missed.  And try finding out anything at the Information Desk.  Excuse me, how do I get to the thirteenth floor?  There isn’t one?  You’re telling me fourteen is really thirteen?  How does that work? 

I can’t make this up.  Humans are really an amazing breed of animal.  We’re so smart we like to indulge in practical jokes on ourselves.  The official explanation is that if there was a thirteenth floor people wouldn’t want to visit it or have their place of work there.  Scary things happen.  People wouldn’t be allowed to have scissors, for one thing.  Pages would be put together with string because staplers can cause blood to emerge from tiny holes in fingers.  Can you imagine all the painful paper cuts that would happen on a thirteenth floor?  Think of all the resulting infections, too, because you don’t want antiseptic around.  It might get in someone’s eye.  Then there’s the constant stings from static electricity that sneaks into your body from walking across ordinary carpet.  Your chair breaks or you fall over in it and bang your head because it swiveled back too far.  You get burned just minding your own business because someone stumbled with hot coffee in their hand.  And you’ve lost track of the number of times you’ve bumped your shin on the coffee table in the reception area.

Now that I think about it I can now see the sense in avoiding a thirteenth floor.  What a jittery place to work.  I’d probably get an ulcer.

Why talk about thirteen, anyway.  You’re twelve!  You’re incredibly fun.  You’re happy.
You’re smart – smart enough to know to go from a wonderful twelfth year straight into glorious fourteen.  I did.  Look how I turned out.

Happy Birthday, Justin.

Love,
          Dad


No comments:

Post a Comment