Ninja Panic

It was Ice Cream Day at the school where Gnat took classes this week. Web design and Pokemon. As for Web Design, they learned iWeb. Sigh. Not exactly a platform with a future. In Pokemon class, if you can call that, they had the FINAL BATTLE today, and while she was knocked out in the second round, you can’t do much when you’re up against a card Dad probably bought online for $75. She also made a song in Garageband. So that was fun. Except it was Ice Cream Day, and that means the parental nightmare: instead of finding your kids at a certain spot, everyone’s lined up for ice cream. And I mean everyone. Had to be 200 kids. Plus parents. With smaller kids. No one can find anyone. In previous years my reaction to this was barely suppressed panic, because I was always convinced ninjas would kidnap her and hold her for ransom, and when I couldn’t find her I would tell myself to be rational: you would have heard demands by now. So today I just wandered back and forth, waiting for the brain to make that elemental connection that seems to precede the conscious identification: THAT IS YOUR DNA MANIFESTED IN SMALL FEMALE FORM. But I couldn’t find her.

Overheard another mom ask the head of the program where the blue blazes Pokemon was, and he smiled a wise smile, the same wise smile he has doled out to several hundred thousand parents over the years who can’t find their kid. Said they’d be out soon.

“Pokemon Adventures?” I said to the mom. She nodded. I said my kid was in that class as well, and we relaxed: this meant the class hadn’t gotten out yet, even though Ice Cream Day lines were done. Eventually I found Gnat, but that meant I had to find the mom and tell her they were out, because that’s what I would want someone to do for me. Passed a few dozen moms with the same gaze, looking through the crowd, trying to find the kid, trying not to think of a guy who said your mom sent me to get you. She’s right over here around the corner.

Yes, yes, statistically unlikely, but every parent knows that first squirt of unease from years ago, and you never forget.

Odd choice of titles for the weekly play:

Can’t quibble with the order, but still.

Eventually: warm. Eventually: sun. Eventually: normal. But busy; the running, the writing, the running, typing, talking. Today’s Bleat, such as it is, will have to be supplemented with updates, but these are labor-intensive projects. There’s a Bleat Plus update, four pages of TV Guide 1968 with a horrible movie – HERE – and five pages of the Permament Collection’s study of commercial theology, HERE. Enjoy!

By the way: I’ve hit the point at the novel that you dread, but also means you’re doing something right: everything leads to something new, and that opens up the story, but you’re also writing yourself into a horrible corner if you think you can bring it all back together. I know I can, but it has to be plausible.

Ah: just figured it out. And it makes things much better. That was swift. Really, it’s maddening: you put a character in a particular place for reasons you don’t know, but you suspect it might come in handy. Or mean something. Even though I know the general arc of this book, the details have been coming out of nowhere. The most fun you can have writing is when you don’t know where it’s going. You’re transcribing. You’re reading a novel that doesn’t exist, but you’re bringing it into being as you read what you write. A chapter that was supposed to be a night on the town with the narrator’s sort-of girlfriend ends abruptly when she gets in a dark mood and goes home; I didn’t know why. The main character goes back to the bar where the murders happened, because he knows his partner will be there. He is. They leave. I discover they’re being followed.

I go to bed. The next day I check out some pictures from the period in the paper’s archives to find a destination; I get this.

So one goes to the restaurant and the other goes to the Hub to see who’s following who. I don’t know who’s following them. When I finally write it, I’m surprised: oh, of course. And then ping, ping, ping, something else in story opens wide. I tell you, it’s grand fun. Also, I’m writing it in a style I’ve never tried: it’s all hard-boiled. Not the comic cliche where everything’s a simile, and everyone’s sarcastic and cynical – no. It’s just slangy, and I’m making half of it up. Trade names dropped without explanation, references to events and personalities without explanation – it’s not important to know what they mean, but it give a sense of period without saying “everyone wore hats like it was hat day in Hatville. I needed a drink.”

Come to think of it, I like that line.