Dear Killer Minnow

How Do You Like Your Eggs?: Sex, Death, and other Breakfast-Related Topics
Current mood: ADVICE

Dear Killer Minnow,
ooh, advice eh? well, i am in a somewhat unique position having effectively revolutionized my everyday life and undergone the successful liberation of desire (that was a long friday when i finally managed that one) so most day to day things that grate on people are merely like water off a duck's raincoat for me. but, as it happens, while working in a public library in the periodicals dept i once came across an old dear abby column from the early 80s that fascinated me- well, the query did, in any case. abby was predictably unmemorable as usual. the column was, somewhat amazingly, made up of TWO letters about the same incident: one was from the mother of a teenage amputee girl, who had walked in on her daughter and a young male friend who was "caressing" her leg stump. the mother was very upset. the other letter was from the boy who did the stump caressing, who seemed in his letter to be generally innocent and just curious, only rubbing the stump because the girl told him it felt nice when he did.

now, my problem with this is that neither the mom, nor the boy, nor abby said one single thing about morphogenetic fields, or phantom limb phenomenon. can you believe that? maybe you should rethink the whole issue in light of those theories and let me know what you think. not that i'm planning on making out with any amputeens anytime soon but one never knows, does one?

L,
paranormal limbs


dear paranormal limbs,

Consider this: there was a violinist named Paganini. He had various diseases of the joints that allowed him to do inhuman things with a violin, including a left-handed pizzacatto. His flair for showmanship lead people to accuse him of entering a pact with the devil. Paganini would equip his violin with old fragile strings so that he could pretend to break them with his ferocity of virtuosity. Then he would dazzle the crowd with his concertina played on one single string (the G string--jokes aside).

can we be sure that this girl, who has no presence in the whole story, no life, no pulsa!, was not pulling a hoax, fooling both parent and boy? so that the boy, the parent, and all readers of the dear abbey would become infatuated with her stump? do you even know about the career that followed that article? localized as it was, the girl became a fashionista in her own right. She started various companies, eventually getting into the wine business (ever heard of stump jump merlot?). She made thousands upon thousands of dollars (which was a lot back then, it was almost four thousand).
is she an accident victim or a virtuoso?
the boy is obviously a rube.

And you have found a metaphor for something in your life.
I say that you need to figure out what, possibly with a two by four. I suggest you buy a pair of Bermuda Shorts, and spend a series of moments contemplating what connects you to the stump hoax. Perhaps you are perpetrating a similar rouse in your own life? Or perhaps you need to.

phantom limb is right. Think about it.
As my great aunt Rose used to say, it's not what you put in the fryer, it's how you shake it that counts.
Take a cue from the girl, from Rose, from Paganini, and get rid of all your other strings, all the other legs, all the fancy contemplations that mark your zen Fridays, and become a virtuoso.

sincerely,
Killer Minnow