Scott Robinson

Quite often when I'm going about my daily life, I instinctively compose bits of journal entries in my head. I do this almost obsessively, and it gets to the point where the inside of my skull sounds like an episode of The Wonder Years.

Two or three days ago, I was getting some sort of snack from my fridge when I remembered I had just bought peaches. Sure, peaches are damn tasty, and lately I'm trying to eat as many of them as possible to try to experience whatever transcendent peach-eating epiphany Marty described a few weeks ago, but why, for fuck's sake, does that require internal monologue? I shit you not, it went something like this:

I took a step back out of the kitchen as the refrigerator door closed. Suddenly I remembered them: the peaches. Furry and juicy, my tongue begged to explore them, like little fruit vaginas. Instantly enraptured by the siren song of these nectarines-with-fuzz, I did an about-face just in time to feel the cool rush of air on my face from the closing of the door. In one fluid movement, I swung the door back open with one hand and yanked the fruit drawer open with the other. Peaches, something-something-something, will be mine.

So that's about how absurd it is up where my brain lives. It's almost a satisfying way to keep myself company, until I realize I'm waxing Doogie Howser about a guy who holds the world record for being struck by lightning.

I think of lighting man and I realize that Vinnie [backspace-backspace-backspace] that everyone needs something to define them in life. Sure, sometimes it's rock stardom or Sultan-of-Brunei-dom, but just as often, we find ourselves becoming the human lighting rod or the dipshit climbing through my window.

Not many of those ideas ever really make it into my journal, even when I sit down and make an effort to formalize them. This is a good thing, trust me. Had I not given up halfway, at least a handful of people would have read the abomination tentatively titled "My Baggage Miracle" and including the god-awful line, "when my bag crested the top of the baggage carousel, I knew everything was going to be just fine." Those people would have questioned why they even bothered learning to read in the first place, critical nose-picking moments of their youth tragically wasted.

The best entries, the ones I'm not ashamed of writing, usually start with me trying to write about something unrelated and end with me missing any memory of what I had in mind in the first place. Things are looking up for this entry, since I'm looking at a subject line that reads "Scott Robinson." It's best if neither of us tries to imagine what this entry almost was.

As I typed out the journal entry that would serve not only to define me as a writer, but to galvanize a growing movement of tangent-embracing writers who are determined to rise up against the tyranny of good planning and cohesive thought --as I typed out that entry, I knew. I knew that one would be special.