My thoughts are huddled together like cavemen during a thunderstorm. They are all in the back of the cave next to a rendering of a bison who has been poked with so many spears that he resembles a porcupine, and they do not want to come out.

What I do when I write usually feels more like channeling than a thought process. My ideas organize themselves, and I dutifully type them or jot them down as they become clear. I might sometimes have to transpose a paragraph by cutting and pasting, or reword a sentence, but the basic structure seems to present itself to me word by word.

That is the way it usually works. Today the only topic I can write about with any clarity seems to be my writer’s block.

Anyone smell irony? I do - and it smells not so much like chicken as it does roast bison.

I’ve had a headache for three days. Anyone know what the record for that is? That’s why I haven’t been posting. It hurts to think.

By the way, I’m going to try to give up diet drinks, since they can cause migraines. I hate regular soft drinks, so I’ll be drinking a lot of orange juice.

I hope people don’t start calling me O.J., because, if they do, I’ll kill them with a really big knife.

Surreal. I didn’t know the definition of that word at the time. I was only in first grade. But, when I look back on being physically and emotionally abused by a dwarf in a habit, that is the first word that leaps to my mind.

Her name was Sister James Albert. Don’t ask me why nuns used to be given male names. But, that was what we called her.

At the age of six, I used to imagine that she sensed some evil in me. It was the only way for my young mind to rationalize the nasty treatment I got.

My actual crimes were almost unspeakable, but I’ll try to list them here in their entirety:

1. I was late to school on several occasions.

2. I dropped my pencil in class.

3. I daydreamed - a lot.

That’s it. Pretty awful stuff, right?

I trusted that she knew I must be capable of much worse things than these or she wouldn’t loathe me so much.

In her righteousness, she would hit me with a ruler and call me a “big baby.” That title was mine alone. There’s nothing like being singled out for unwanted attention to drive an already shy little girl even further into her cocoon.

The ruler she used as a weapon wasn’t just for me, though. Not by a long shot. She’d whack at least four or five of us with that ruler before lunch time. Whoever she might have missed before lunch, she smacked before school let out for the day.

I wasn’t aware of the fact that she was just a sexually repressed, sadistic midget*. As far as I knew she was a representative of god. As a result of my good Catholic education, I had nightmares in first grade that I was Caine and had killed my brother Abel.

If you know the bible story, you have some notion of how screwed up it is for a little kid to have that in her subconscious.

Many years later, I spotted her in the mall when I was out shopping. She didn’t recognize me. Why should she? I was probably only one of many thousands of kids she had traumatized during her dark reign.

I was amazed that someone only four feet tall had managed to inspire such fear in me. But, I was pretty short myself in first grade and she had wielded a ruler of power.

It was quite an act of restraint for me not to smack her on top of her head.

She had it coming. Yeah, I know it looks bad to hit a nun. But, this nun deserved more than a smack on the head; she deserved a good ass kicking. She didn’t get it. At least not from me.

When given the opportunity, I didn’t hurt someone smaller and weaker than I was just because I could. If that kind of basic decency is any indicator of the true measure of a person, then Sister James Albert comes up, well, short.

*Please note: This post is not meant to offend little people. Any derogatory remarks here are intended solely for tiny, wicked old nuns who torture young children while masquerading as servants of god. If this is not you, please don’t be upset by what was said here.

My sixth grade teacher, Ms. Brown, earned my eternal respect and admiration by scaring me practically to death.

Keep in mind that my mom rarely let me watch scary movies. This may have had something to do with the fact that I was very prone to nightmares. It’s likely she didn’t want to give me any more fodder for my all too frequent bad dreams.

For that matter, I wasn’t familiar with many ghost stories. I had only heard those stories about ghosts who make a lot of noise, but are basically just supernatural annoyances.

But, Ms. Brown changed that. She told our class a real horror story. She didn’t just read it to us, either. She didn’t have a book or need one. I was in awe as I watched her face and listened to a story about a merciless killer and a young babysitter.

She made eye contact the whole time she spoke and never once paused to search for her words. When she paused it was for effect.

If you didn’t know she was just telling a story to a bunch of kids, you’d have thought she was repeating the details of a gruesome murder to the police. She was somber throughout. Her voice rose and fell, but she maintained a seriousness that is usually reserved only for funerals.

She had been born to do theater and had settled for teaching us. I was so grateful to her while I bit my nails and squirmed in my seat. Of course, I didn’t put names on my emotions at the time. I couldn’t be distracted from her story.

Here it is to the best of my recollection:

A couple who live in a secluded area need a babysitter for their infant. They will be away for one evening and return home the next morning. The girl they want for the job is too young to drive. She is a little skittish about being trapped in in such a remote area alone with the baby. But, the couple assure her that their dog will be there to protect her and that everything will be fine.

So, they bring her to their house, and after giving her a number where she can reach them, they leave.

Two hours later, the girl is making popcorn and listening to the radio. A news bulletin warns that a homicidal maniac is loose in a town which is only a few miles from the home she is visiting.

She immediately calls the baby’s parents. They tell her that she should try to relax and that they’ll be home as soon as possible. So, she sits on the couch and begins watching a movie. Whenever she starts to feel anxious or scared, she reaches down so that the dog can lick her hand.

She is just about to fall asleep when she hears a loud thump. She runs up to the nursery. She screams when she sees it. The sound she’d heard was the baby’s severed head hitting the floor. (Ewww!)

She screams and runs into the bathroom to hide. There she sees the dog gutted and hanging from the shower-head by a rope.

Scrawled on the bathroom mirror in blood are the words, “Humans can lick hands too.”

That’s it. But, you’d really have to see her telling it to get the full effect.

She was amazing. She really taught me something that day. I felt a little silly for allowing myself to be taken in by a old woman sharing a far fetched story like that one. But, I learned that the spoken word can wield a lot of power.

Thanks, Ms. Brown. I hope you are still telling stories and scaring the be-jesus out of your listeners.

*I didn’t publish this right away, because it seemed too personal for some reason. It’s not my usual silliness. I’m sorry if it’s boring for that reason.

Mimi Smartypants made me giggle. She obviously shares my love of penguins and The Purple One. Her weblog is a worthy read.

My Easy Cheese expired on May 24, 2002. No memorial service was held. I didn’t even know it was sick until I tried to squeeze some onto a potato chip and the first four inches were dried out. I’m not exaggerating about this.

I had to call Nabisco to find out when it had died, since the expiration date that’s on the can is encoded. In addition, I was curious as to the approximate age of my canned cheese in case it was an antique of sorts.

Getting the woman who took my call to reveal the expiration date was easy enough, but she seemed not to understand when I asked, “So, how old does that make it? When was it produced?” I knew now that the cheese had died in May of last year, but I was still anxious to know its age when it passed away.

She seemed to get a little pissed off when I asked that question. Maybe she had been left out of the will or something. She almost yelled when she said, “Well, it’s over a year old. We don’t recommend eating it after that point.”

Indeed. This was bad cheese.

It was well beyond the stage where it could be considered “easy” in any sense of the word. It struggled to emerge from the can, and when it finally did, it refused to be squirted into any of the standard Easy Cheese formations. It traveled with difficulty in a straight line and broke off mid-stream every couple of centimeters. Although I tried to be artistic with my ancient cheese, I soon came to realize its limitations were many. It simply could not be convinced to arc in any way, therefore a cheese circle or a cheese star were impossibilities.

By pushing the nozzle, I animated the dead. It was wrong. It was a cruel mockery. I was playing God. I was behaving like some snack food Dr. Frankenstein. I defied the natural laws of life, death and aerosol cheese.

I may just have to pay for this vanity with my very soul…

I ate some. Just a little. Don’t judge me. I felt compelled to, because it looked so gross. I had to test whether or not it still tasted like Easy Cheese.

It did. The consistency was different, but it was still deliciously cheesy.

I beg you to please just take my word for this. No matter how tempted you are, don’t try this experiment on yourself with a similarly old can of Easy Cheese. I only warn you because my vision is beginning to blur a bit, and I’m pretty sure that’s a bad sign.

As for the Nabisco lady, she never gave me a clear date of birth for my cheese. I would have questioned her further, but I feared pushing her over the proverbial edge. She seemed pretty stressed, and I didn’t want her to have a stroke or something on my account.

If answering a simple inquiry about cheese gets her freaked out, maybe she should take a little time off. I mean, if you work for Nabisco, you should be used to confronting cheese problems head on. Now that I think of it, that’s probably why Keebler just hires elves to make their cookies. They’re nowhere near as high strung as humans. I’m sure hiring elves has other benefits, but I digress.

Anyway, maybe it’s better that I’ll never know the age of this particular can of Easy Cheese. Some answers are so frightening that the questions are better left unasked.*

Isn’t it amazing how thought provoking a call to Nabisco can be? Depending on how this food poisoning thing goes, my next call might need to be to 911.

*I should write movie trailers.