Inside Doug's Head

OK, I will admit that my abnormal and underdeveloped brain is confounded by a great many simple things. I can never remember which side of the sink the hot water tap is on, the inner workings of a doorknob mystify me, and I am always surprised when actors appear in new movies after they are killed off in a previous one. Today, I have been giving deep thoughts to expressions that confuse me, along with a bunch of other nonsensical questions that have been taking up space in my head. Let me begin with, thinking outside of the box.

Where is this mythical box and how do people know so much about it? What is in the box, and why must I be told that I have to think outside of it? There could be some really cool stuff in the box, things that would be really useful to the current situation, and here I am running around all over the place deliberately trying to avoid looking inside of it. There could be a utility knife, handguns, grenades, chap stick, clean underwear, money…pretty much anything, and I won’t know if I don’t look. The potential of what I may find warrants, at the very least, taking a quick peek inside.

Whenever I hear the words spoken, “We need some out of the box thinking,” I always ask the speaker of those words, “If I could obtain for you this box of which you speak, would you allow me to look inside, first, just to be certain that there is nothing of value in there? If there is not, then I will immediately proceed to investigating the area surrounding the box for possible solutions to our problem. Also, I think it would be very helpful to identify and map the region of all space that does not contain the box, thereby limiting my search efforts to places where I know the box is not present. By doing so, I will be able to prevent myself from inadvertently looking inside of it.” They always say no, and then give me a weird look, as if I had asked them if I could look inside the Ark of the Covenant for a pencil eraser.

One of the consequences of having a vivid imagination is that I can clearly visualize the box. It is a large white shoebox with a lid that has folded over edges on it. Sometimes I see it as a used cardboard refrigerator box, with Fragile and This end up written on it, but the arrow is pointing off to the side. Usually it is a shoebox, and I really want to open it.

OK, here is another one: “Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.” Maybe it is a really bad baby, or a really ugly one, and we should be getting rid of it to save ourselves the constant misery of having to deal with it every day. Perhaps it is the water we want to be keeping, and the expression should be, don’t throw the water out with the baby.

Speaking of ugly babies, I have this thing I do whenever a mother shows me picture of their baby. First, I make a sort of wrinkled-but-not-quite-disgusted face, and then I ask them, “Is the father ugly?” It’s because I am a jerk that I do this thing. It prevents them from showing me pictures of their hell-spawn in the future, because I really don’t care to see them. Well, there was this one time, I looked at the picture, and as I was about to make the face, I realized how incredibly, unfortunately homely this child really was, and all I could say was, “Is his name Quasimodo?”

“We have to be careful about comparing apples and oranges.” Why is comparing apples and oranges an activity that needs to be so staunchly avoided? Why would you not want to compare two different things to see how they are different? What are we afraid we will find out? Comparing an apple to an apple results in the discovery that they are both apples and are very similar. What’s the point in making such comparisons?

Many time I have heard, “Don’t go putting the cart in front of the horse.” Would that really be such a bad thing, or is there a law against doing it? It would be like a having a rear wheel drive car. Unless there is something about horse psychology that I am unaware of (the probability of which is incredibly close to 1.0), I am very much inclined to test the theory that horses don’t make good cart pushers. Maybe there is something in the cart that we don’t want the horse to see because it will get angry at us, but for the life of me I can’t think of what that might be. You can use your imagination and send me your thoughts on the matter.

Why do you say you have a bony elbow? Of course you have a bony elbow, your elbow is a bone, which would tend to make it necessarily bony. What else would you expect it to be? Mushy? If it were mushy, it would require medical attention.

You can’t put toothpaste back in the tube. Why would you want to? Has someone been doing that so much lately that you are bothered by it? Is stuffing gooey paste back into tubes such a big problem in your house that you require an official statement admonishing people not to do it? All such truisms are annoying. You can’t un-ring a bell, or un-see the gross looking fat guy wearing a speedo, either.

Are serial killers afraid to go out to the park late at night, in fear of encountering one of their colleagues? Or, are they pretty confident that they won’t get mugged?

Who was the first guy, ever, to bring a cat to a dogfight?

Oh great, now there’s pudding in my eye.

-DG.