Here’s my idea: People need’em. Ideas, that is. Whether you’re writing freelance and are stuck for something creative to write about, or your kid needs a topic for school, sometimes these little gems will not pop out, like Athena springing full-grown from Zeus’ head…Is that where they got the idea for the brain pregnancy in “The Heart, She Holler”? Wow, from the sublime to the lowbrow. And that’s the resource I’d like to provide:  fairly off-kilter brain aneurysms that you can run with. (Can you run with a brain aneurysm? I’m sure it’s been done, albeit not very far.)  And eventually, I’d like people to contribute to the hot mess, so we’d have a community of bizarre ideas that potential writers can use or abuse.

This is where it all came from: The Chair

So, I work itinerantly (or illiterately or illegitimately…pick one) at a magazine about once a month. I’m the eyes that pore over the articles before they are unleashed to the printers.  (Yes, I’m one of those anal-retentive language types, but I can go Virginia Woolf-ish in a heartbeat…you’re reading an example.)  So this quasi-job requires me to get in my car one Sunday a month and drive to the office to drop a marked-up copy of the magazine off.  It’s a beautiful drive—the Sonoma Valley—with world-class scenery, the occasional drunk tourist and opportunities to run into randomness that can be fairly enervating or otherwise. I generally encounter the otherwise.

So as the ultimate lazy mom with even lazier kids, I try to get the little darlings into the car by 10:30 AM so we can go through the McDonald’s drive-thru for breakfast before heading out on the 1-1/2-hour round-trip. However, one Sunday we decided to make a day of it and visit the farm. The farm is on the grounds of the Sonoma Developmental Center. I’m still not clear why it’s there as it’s like a big, unsupervised petting zoo around the corner from these sinister-looking bungalows that house the mentally handicapped, whom you sometimes see outside lounging on metal gliders-- perhaps they’ve slipped their bonds? Anyway, so you drive past the snakepit, and there’s this farm: with peacocks, llamas, pigs and about a 1,000 cats. And it’s like Dick Cheney’s bunker: you really have to know where you’re going to find this place or know whom to stalk. So we take some juice pouches, chips and other Michelle Obama-unapproved snack foods and harass the animals for an hour. 

On our way back, we take the scenic drive through Glen Ellen, which features tree-lined, twisty, narrow roads designed to test the driving skills of the slightly inebriated, and we drive by a chair. Okay: The Chair. Out of the corner of my eye, I noted its tawny brown naugahyde, its slight recline and its built-in footrest, and I’m thinking, “Hmm…wonder if that will fit in back of the SUV,” which I then stated  to the car’s occupants. 

At this time, there was no TV show called “Hoarders” on the air, so there wasn’t  the response of, “OMG, mom, you are such a hoarder.” Instead, my son responded with, “Cool. Let’s go back and get it,” and my daughter: “Really? Just really, mom? Gross.” As I continued driving, I made the case for why we needed The Chair: “It looks comfy. It looks structurally sound. It might even fit in the back of the car.” And of course, since I’m the driver and controller of the music, speed and direction of the car, I pulled over, turned the vehicle around and drove back. Alas, someone beat me to it, and I had to turn around yet again and drive by the lucky fellow who was shoving my purloined chair in the back of his Volvo.  Wahhh.
 

So, as all humans do, I licked my wounds verbally: “Oh, well, it was probably all covered in filth. Maybe someone died in it, and it’s full of bodily fluids.” (We were heavily invested in long hours of CSI-viewing at the time.) My daughter concurred, “I bet it’s fulla maggots.” Then we developed the story of The Chair: an evil cast-off piece of furniture that once you brought it home, put it in front of the TV and made yourself comfy in it, would infiltrate your body through the rear and liquefy you a la Edgar Allan Poe into becoming one with the chair. Then your relatives or a concerned neighbor would find you gone missing and either take the chair or put it out on the side of the road, both scenarios offering a “To Be Continued” outcome. Since then, when we find a topic that just begs to be pursued in a convoluted and generally disgusting story form, we reference “The Chair.”

And it even made it into print:  http://voices.yahoo.com/pwned-chair-10233957.html