Theater of the Absurd

Okay, so there are moments when I just have to laugh. After the hellacious Hospital Run of January 2008, the Five-Day Stomach Flu siege of January 2008, and so on. And on. I look for a little laughter. I don't have to look far around here. It finds me.

So my fish died. No. Not so funny. Absurd maybe. Fellini-esque in the scheme of this month. Blossom, my fish of 2 years, kicked the bucket. And because I have a problem touching dead things (really do . . . I always knew a boyfriend was a keeper if he was willing to bury my assorted dead birds and hamsters over the years . . . and I considered it a HUGE leap into adulthood when I buried two of my beloved birds this year who died of old age) . . . anyway, because I really hate touching dead things, Significant Other was charged with the task of sending Blossom to that great toilet tank in the sky.

Because Demon Baby, as could be expected, is FASCINATED by dead things and loves to find dead bugs and bring them to me as charming hostess gifts (can you BELIEVE how damn lucky I am?), he was invited to attend the toilet funeral, where he was taught to say, solemnly, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, so long fish, thanks for all the joy you've given us" by Significant Other. Then they sang the opening bars of Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die" (a nod to Shrek III), at the TOP of their lungs, all this at 8:00 a.m., and flushed. Gotta love the theater of the absurd.

So sometimes I wonder . . . you see all my characters are quirky. I don't have a normal one in the bunch. Right from the get-go, in Spanish Disco, my first book, Cassie Hayes bought the same shirt in 14 different colors so she could avoid the nightmare plague that is the The Mall. Based on yours truly, only I buy the same shirt in black--but five of them so if one starts looking greyish from the laundry, I can pitch it for a brand-new black one. And I wondered today, as I listened to the fish funeral, am I just SURROUNDED by weirdness? Am I a MAGNET for the absurd? Or is it simply that I chronicle if for my books and then USE the absurd. If you don't think a fish funeral with "Live and Let Die" is making a book . . . if you don't think the fact that my father negotiating with me to bring him, and I quote, "A pork sandwich with a little mayo and salt and pepper on a nice rye . . . and a beer" to the hospital is making it in a book . . . you get the idea.

Question: Do writers surround themselves with oddballs or is EVERYONE as wacky and we just write about it? What do people with staid, boring families DO with themselves? I mean, if your Uncle Charley isn't offering to take a hit out on the man who has done you wrong . . . you, my friend, are in the wrong, boring family.

Discuss.

Live and let die, my friends.

Or live and let live, as we Buddhists would say.