enter mike

Today was full of oddity. Yes. Much oddity indeed. I was meditating with my giant peas, a foraging behavior I just can’t seem to break, when I felt a strange disturbance. It was the sort of feeling you receive when you’ve been wearing the same pair of underpants for a week and finally take them off. Some form of wafting freedom I suppose. Anyway, I knew something was about to change, besides my drawers.

As if reading my thoughts, a strange traveler appeared from nowhere, like Bakersfield or somewhere in the Mid-West. My eye was caught and held by his machete. I thought to myself, “Self. Is this strange traveler who hath appeared out from nowhere here for good or for fowl... err, foul?”

However, upon further inspection he too had the look of one whom also felt the coming change, in his future or his pants. Either way, I was going to trust this stranger with my life. I dropped my peas and thrust my hand into the air and waved it as if I just didn’t care.

But I did care. But I wanted to be cool. So I pretended I didn’t, to appear cool, and also to distract him from my peas.

I learned the traveler’s name to be Erich. He began to regale me with the tale of his coming here, how the one and only Charles Darwin, his supernatural father, had relayed to him 15 years previous the plight of mankind. Natural selection was a lie, and all animals needed to slaughtered post haste.

“This is a little hard to swallow,” I admitted to Erich.

He replied, “You must swallow it as if it were a sausage and beef sandwich with avocado and melted cheese.”

I was still highly doubtful of his story, yet slowly coming around with that sandwich metaphor, he continued to relate his conquest of a giant goat humping mouse when suddenly a voice boomed from the heavens.

“MICHAEL!”

I stood confused for a moment, not knowing what form of ventriloquist trickery was afoot. However, Erich, whom had had a previous experience with booming voices from the heavens, reminded me to look up.

“Yes?” I replied. I looked up and was mortified. “What are you?”

“It is I, the all knowing Gregor Mendel!”

Yet another great biologist of the 19^th century was upon us.

“Michael, you are my son, though a lousy pea juggler you may be.” I looked at my peas and a sudden and unexplainable realization came over me. It was too deep to explain in words, so I just made soft sounds, something like, “Uaaaahhhhhaguhugadwoooaaabooop!”

“You must aide the Son of Darwin in his battle against the giant animals, or else my place as an equal celestial biologist shall be compromised!”

“What about the threat to the world?” Erich asked. “All the doom and stuff?”

“Shut up Son of Darwin! You think I’d allow the Darwinian name to garner greater praise! The Mendelians are already shadowed and practically forgotten! Where are our believers? Where are our bumper fish??”

At first I was shocked, then slightly less shocked, then even less shocked, but finally I understood my earlier feelings. It was indeed time to change my underwear, as I had soiled them.

Amid all of the underpants chaos I asked Gregor Mendel, “I thought you were a Father or monk or something?”

“Um…yes,” Gregor Mendel doggedly replied. “So?”

“Well then how am I your son?” I rebutted.

“Oh that.” He began to back slowly down from his mountain perch. “Well to tell you the truth I sorta have a, uhh… yellow fever. Speaking of which I must leave you now. Go Michael, you must make sure the Darwinians don’t get all the credit in this one. Ohh, and save the world, etc, etc. Sayonara!”

Without the slightest hesitation or verbiage between us, Erich and I began our journey together. We did not know where we were going or how we were to get there, but get there we must!

The fate of the world depends on it!