Once in a while, somebody asks me where I get the ideas for my columns. (Alright, once in a long while.) I usually answer that they come off an assembly line in Detroit, but some people don’t take the hint and, chuckling politely for a moment, ask: “No, really. Where do you get your ideas?”
I could answer everybody individually, but, you know, I’m getting tired of making amusing things up. So, I thought I’d answer you all by writing about where I get my ideas, although writing about writing has always struck me as a pretty self-indulgent exercise.
It all starts with a knock on my shower door early in the morning. Now, being a member in good standing of the Order of the Confirmed Paranoics, I know that my bathroom door is always locked. Dead-bolted, in fact. Right away, I sense that something is amiss.
“Yes?” I ask, sticking my head out of the shower.
“Oh, Ira,” a woman sighs, “would you please let me join you in that shower?” It is the latest Playboy Playmate, of course, wrapped in a towel. A very skimpy towel.
“Now, latest Playboy Playmate…” I start, sternly. But, before I can continue, she drops the towel to the floor.
“Please…” she invitingly pleads. “I’ve been a dirty girl and I need to get clean!”
I slam the door shut. “I’ve got to go to work!” I shout, scrubbing myself furiously. Then, a shout comes from outside the bathroom, compelling me to stick my head out of the shower once again. “What was that?” I ask the latest Playboy Playmate, who is regretfully picking the towel up off the floor.
“Oh,” she pouts, “I left the current Penthouse Pet of the Month and the most recent Screw Centrefold in your bedroom. They weren’t very happy…”
I return to the shower. That’s all I need! I think to myself. After a few minutes of intense shampooing, I’m ready to reconsider my position: I could probably afford to miss one day’s work…
By the time I’ve convinced myself to phone in sick, all the women have disappeared. “I guess that’s what they mean when they say these beauties are unattainable,” I say to myself, wistfully smiling about life’s lost opportunities while I dress.
In the fridge, Alice is talking to the Hatter and the March Hare. “He’s mad, you know,” I softly try to warn her, but they can’t hear me, and the tea party on the bottom shelf continues uninterrupted.
On the second shelf, Fred and Ginger are strenuously dancing around assorted fruits, vegetables and packaged goods. “Please pass the butter,” I ask, but they, too, ignore me. Rudely pushing them apart, I reach into the fridge and get the butter for myself. “Sorry,” I lamely apologize, “but I’m expecting my lift to be here at eight.”
Meanwhile, the Battle of the Bulge seems to be going on on the top shelf. With some trepidation, I make my way through exploding grenades and gunfire to get my hand on a pair of eggs. “Eggs secured,” I hear John Wayne say as I remove the eggs.
Which leads me to an interesting question: do the fantasies go out when the fridge door closes?
I’m losing time, so I forget the question and hurriedly scramble the eggs in a pan. When I go to get myself a plate, who should be sitting behind a piano in my cupboard than Elton John! He’s playing something I don’t really recognize, which strikes me as odd: shouldn’t I be familiar with every detail of my fantasies?
I sit down to my eggs, piano accompaniment in the background, when they start to congeal. It doesn’t take long before my eggs look like a human face! And, then:
“Hey, sport,” my breakfast greets me. “How’s it going?”
“I don’t need this,” I say to nobody in particular.
“Tell me about it,” my dish says. “I didn’t ask to be able to talk. But, since I now got the ability, I gotta tell ya: eggs aren’t good for ya. Cholesterol and all that, you know?”
“Am I going crazy?”
“Well, you know, reality is such a subjective thing…”
“What are you talking about?” I irritably mumble. It’s not every day that your breakfast lectures you on philosophical arcana.
“Well, I mean, the line between reality and fantasy is getting thinner and thinner all the time,” my eggs explain, amiably. “I suspect it has something to do with TV…”
Somebody shouts my name, but I can’t tell if it’s real or not, so I ignore it. “Yes,” I argue, “but I’ve always been a realist.”
“Realist, shmealist,” the eggs say. “The so-called real world is so absurd in any case, who can blame you for not being able to tell the difference?”
“Listen, Eggs -” I start, menacingly, but am cut off.
“Please, call me Benedict.”
“Ira!” my sister calls loudly from the kitchen door. “Ken’s here.” Not a moment too soon!
“Thanks, Li,” I say, rushing past her. “Oh, you can have the eggs if you want. I haven’t touched them.” I hear a stifled cry come from the plate, and take a perverse pleasure in the way I’ve ended that argument.
When I get into the car, Ken asks, “How ya doin’?” in that puppy dog-like way that only Ken seems to have. We exchange pleasantries for a while. Dare I tell him about the latest Playboy Playmate and the talking eggs? I think not.
“So, you heard that Ronald Reagan is seriously considering sending Americn troops into Nicaragua?” he asks when we finally run out of pleasantries.
Yes, I had heard about it. We talk for a while, and it occurs to me that there is probably a column in it, if only I can find the right angle. If only I can find the right angle…
I hope this little story has given you a better idea of the thought processes that lay behind my writing. If you still have any questions, please don’t ask me. Ask my breakfast.