You jumped when I coughed

Sorry.
Sorry, I hope I didn’t scare you.
Just got a little Listerine down my wind pipe.
Man.
That stuff’s almost as bad as absinthe.
Cause, sometimes I scare people.
When I sneeze, too. I’m a loud sneezer.
Or strange children. I remember a little girl in Krakow who was scared of my bushy, black beard.
Back in the days when I had a bushy beard, and it was black.
It’s only fair, I guess. Strange children scare me as well.
Like the little brother of the girl with the abusive father Gamma used to play with because no one else would, the quiet one with dark rings around his eyes, who clocked her with a big chunk of frozen slush one winter when her back was turned.
Clocked Gamma, I mean.
He was always so quiet, people will say some day.
Listen, let me tell you something.
Oh, wait, first: we have a new cat. A kitten.
Before we picked him up, I did the calculations: (f+p)f
“f” is the number of family members living under your roof, “p” is the number of pets you have. The result is your chaos coefficient.
Going from four family members with three pets to four pets doubled our chaos.
He likes the expensive wicker chairs in the kitchen because they’re the highest point in the room he has access to. So tomorrow Gamma and I go to the pet store to buy a climbing/scratching tower that’s taller than the chairs.
Also: he’s a genius! He loves his litter box! God bless him!
Ear mites, but I’m getting pretty good at ear mites.
Anyway, listen: I took these pills.
I was suffering from non-dimensionalism, which is the medical term for having shrunk down to a point. I didn’t even have length, man.
Thing is, I had grown so used to it that I went to the doctor for something else.
“Went to the doctor.” Two specialists had no luck, so I went to a generalist who also does… I wanted to type “herpetology”. Homeopathy, she does homeopathy. She interviewed me for two hours.
In great detail. Like, I hadn’t even noticed my craving for peanut butter.
And she gave me ten little pills, five of which I dissolved under my tongue that night, five more the next morning.
That very next morning, I was different. Like turning on a light.
I had three dimensions again.
Everyone noticed the difference.
I bumped into an acquaintance who asked me how I was and instead of dithering and wanting to explain for half an hour, I said, honestly, Very good.
Fine, in fact.
Whether it was the pills, or the two-hour interview, or some placebo effect, who knows?
It sure was nice.
I’m back down to about two dimensions right now, but it’s still excellent and I figure with a little effort I might be able to bounce myself back up to three.

5 responses to “You jumped when I coughed

  1. Hmmm. So, no length? My email inbox is filled with solutions for that… I’d be happy to forward some of them to you.

  2. D

    Mig, you exist in dimensions I don’t even have names for yet.

  3. zeynep

    I would like to live in your dimension(s) mig…or at least read about them..and I agree with D entirely..

  4. perhaps it was the kitten that brought the new dimension? we’ve got one too. how funny.