No means No, unless you talking about a kitten

This is the story on how we got our first pet.

  In my house right now we have the dog, a cat, cockatoo and a scarlet macaw.  Some may say that is a lot, but at one time we also had on top of these four family members, we had two budgies, a rabbit, a cockatiel and an albino catfish named “Al”.  Basically when we went to the “all about pets show” in Mississauga, we got our money’s worth.

This menagerie and pet addiction started with a kitten we didn’t want.  Here is what happened…

  My father in law one day said “Betty’s son’s cat is having kittens, Do you want one?”
We said “No thank you since we have 4 kids and do not have time to look after a pet. But thank you for thinking of us.”

 Maybe we were not clear or loud enough for him to hear us say “No!” or maybe because he is Sicilian and does not know the meaning of “no”.

 Every other day all we heard was “want a kitten? “ No!” 
                                                            “Want a kitten? “No!”

This went on and on and until finally a few weeks passed and not one word about kittens. In fact we totally forgot that a kitten was offered to us until we came home one Sunday evening after being out all day.
 There was a message on the answering machine, not “ sorry I missed you, I will call again” but a very direct and blunt message from my father in law that said “ I have your dam cat here and it is ripping my curtains apart, come and get it”.

Ok at this point two things came immediately to my mind, the first being, what if this guy was a car salesman?
“Hey buddy, want to buy a car?” “No!”
A week later he phones you and says “Hey buddy want to buy a car?” You say “No!”
Another week later he phones you and says “Hey buddy want to buy a car?” You say “No!”
Finally a month later when you think it is safe to answer the phone and he says “hey, I’ve got your car here, come and pick it up or I’ll charge you storage fees.”

But more serious was the second thought was,  that if this “kitten” was tearing up his curtains, did I really want this spawn of Satan in my home? If he is this destructive as a kitten what kind of terror can I expect from a full grown cat?

So, my wife phones him and said “we told you many times we did not want a kitten.”  To this my father in law says “I don’t remember what you said.”

 So now we are proud owners of a new kitten, who by the way was soft and gentle and never touched his curtains.

 

a new beginning

Hello
This is the first and hopefully of many posts on my new blog. As usual I am late in the game of blogging ( does anyone still do this? more importantly does anyone still read these?)

I feel that to begin with I should discuss the title, "Delusions in Crayon". I came up with this title as a name for a comedy tour. It started with my uncle suggesting, when I was 17, to have a show titled "delusions of grandeur!" with the word illusions on a poster crossed out and placed over it was the word "delusions". I never went with it.
 Recently I was searching for a name for a comedy tour as mentioned and recalled what my uncle suggested and also recalled attending a lecture by a great performer and ventriloquist Mark Wade in the late 90's. He mentioned how we as a society in general have lost creativity because we start out with a pack of crayons and a blank piece of paper and are told to be creative. We then went to school where they took the crayons away and gave us a pencil and an eraser and we were once again told to be creative on lined paper. Thus restricting our creativity.  After that they took away the pencil and eraser to be replaced by a pen. We cannot make any more mistakes as all we do is now done in ink, thus again being told to "be creative".
 This made a lot of sense to me, as I noticed anytime anyone retured to the free flow creativity of crayons and a blank piece of paper they were the ones who  considered a crazy. Grown men and women using crayons? How absurd!
 Now almost 20 years since that first insight into how we view creativity society has been dumbed down even more. With the advent of the computer age we no longer depend on pens, but on cut and paste from  the internet. No longer are we creating new but rehashing what has already been said and done.
 Try this, think of the most unusual question or thought and do a google search for it. Look at how many results you get. Amazing how hard it is to be original, in fact I have just proved it because I have had to bring back a theory discusssed almost 20 years ago in order to be ORIGINAL!
Have fun and welcome to my blog,
Michael Picard