A Day in the Park. (Or, Gnats to You)

So I was in the park today, about 6 o’clock or thereabouts. (“Thenabouts”? This is time, right, so it should be “thenabouts.” My spell checker, surprisingly [to me] lets “thereabouts” go right by. Whoosh! Lets it go right past. “Thenabouts”? Not so much. You can’t see this [you lucky stiff. I can see it all, and yuck.] but every time I type “thenabouts” it has that dopey little red squiggle underneath, you know, your computer’s way of saying “hey nutsack, that ain’t a word.” [The irony, {I parenthetically aside} {Though that last one is in those fancy brackets.} is that “yuck,” and “nutsack” also have those little squiggles under them. Now I’m willing to concede that maybe, just maybe {I put it in italics because it looks nice} “nutsack” isn’t a word, though it sure is in my house, but “yuck?” Get the fuck out of here, Word Perfect. {BTW- this computer does not use Microsoft Word. I use Word Perfect in Microsoft Word mode. Screw you Bill Gates.} Oh shit, I was talking {typing} about the irony here. I think, let me go back….. aha, irony. So the irony is that while the computer puts the squiggle under “yuck,” which is a perfectly cromulent word {Google that} it didn’t put the squiggles under “ain’t.” I don’t care if Carmen Electra got fellated by the Pope, or the other way around, whatever, “ain’t” isn’t a word. Squiggle it, Dell Dimension E310! Go ahead, look at it! What the hell is that apostrophe for? NOTHING! IT ISN’T A WORD!]) <– Go back and check, that was one heckuva long parenthetical aside but I think I got it right, brackets and all.

So where was I? Oh, I was in the park today, about 6 o’clock or thenabouts.. (Squiggles be damned, I’m going with “thenabouts.” It makes perfect sense. If I’m talking about a location, like “Police sources tell News Twelve that the bomb was placed under the Pope’s cassock, or thereabouts,” then I can, with the perfect logic that only typing at 3:15 am can provide, use “thenabouts.” Just watch me.)

I was in the park today, about 6 o’clock or thenabouts.. (See?) For privacy’s sake I will leave the location undisclosed. I would not like to be thronged by hordes (or hoarded by throngs, come to think of it) (Or thong-wearing throngs or hoarding hordes either) during my leisure time. Nor will I disclose my exact purpose for being there, though I am willing to concede that it had to do with softball. (Was that too big a hint? Shit, I am no good at that mysterious stuff.)

BTW- which I think means “Blog Tells What,” by the way- I am perfectly aware that I can add “thenabouts” to my computer’s dictionary and therefore (or thus. Which do you prefer? “Thus” sounds more literary, but “therefore” has more letters and thus and/or therefore pads out the blog.) and thus/therefore (C’mon, you knew that was coming.) get rid of the squiggles. Out of sheer stubbornness I am not going to add it. If I did that would be the equivalent of me telling the computer that “thenabouts” is a real word, putting my imprimatur upon it, so to speak. And that ain’t right. (How about some props for “imprimatur.” I don’t have a clue what it means!) (Yes I do. I was just being modest.)

For those of you keeping track at home, I have now typed “thenabouts” eleven times, counting that one. I typed “nutsck” three times and have twice used the Pope as a cheap joke. (Why, I ask, are you keeping track at home? I thought only Al Gore, Bill Gates, Yahoo, and the U. N. did that sort of thing.)

OK, was in the park today, about 6 o’clock or thenabouts.. (Twelve times.) It was a nice day, the sun was setting and I was sitting in my camp chair (the nice one with the cup holders in the arm rests) and had my radio (the nice one which gets the TV channels too) on my camp table (the nice one with the cup holders in the top) and shit, I lost my train of thought. Not then, now, as I type right now.

Well, anyway, it doesn’t really matter about all the cup holders I had today, four in all. I only had one diet Pepsi and I only used one cup holder, the one in the right armrest of the chair. (Now that I think about it, I may have not maximized the usefulness of those cup holders. Who is to say that I have to only put cups in them? Today, for example, I didn’t use them to hold cups at all, just a bottle of soda. Though if you use a really broad [and I am not using “broad” in any sexist way, dolls] definition of the word “cup” then perhaps the bottle was a cup, in that I was drinking directly out of a container holding a liquid.) And here I will pause and admit that I got a bit lost in this last paragraph and will now move on with what I laughably consider the ” narrative.”

Here are the salient points thus far: I was in a park.

It was in said (unnamed) park that I was sitting, surrounded by cup holders, (OK, it was Owl’s Head Park) watching a softball game.

I was sitting there about an hour and a half when the biggest swarm of the tinniest gnats you ever saw took up residence about six feet above my head. These things were tiny but there were lots of them. Could I count them all, I bet that the number would not total 587. What would be the odds of that?

They didn’t come near me, they just sort of swarmed there. The swarm swayed to the left, then back. Then to the right, and back. (I might have heard a tiny little gnat symphony leading them in their aero-ballet.) But no matter what they always ended up above my head. Not one landed on me.

So I got up and moved the chair (with the two cup holders, one of which had a bottle of diet Pepsi) and moved the table (with two unoccupied cup holders) and moved the radio (though since it was on the table I should have included it in the description of the table, it being one actual movement, not two distinct movements- i.e. I did not move first the table and then the radio, I moved the table with the radio upon it. I feel that it is very important to be clear on this point.)

I moved myself and the four cup holders (and radio) and their associated camp furniture about ten feet to the left. So did the swarm.

Again, I would like to note that no gnat came close to me, they just swarmed above me. (See how nicely I am moving ahead with the narrative, just like I promised six paragraphs back?)

It was thenabouts (thirteen) that I decided that I had enough of this shit and packed up and left. (Much as many readers of this blog have also done by now. Though had they stayed they may have noticed that it has settled into a little less manic state.) (But screw them.)

Anyway, it was a nice day and I would have liked to stuck around and relaxed some more but those tiny damn gnats made it impossible.

To sum up, gnats bad, “thenabouts” good. (And yes, this blog was far more about “thenabouts” than gnats. I know. They were just the McGuffin, sort of.)