Home > Opinions > OPINION: Just Because I Throw Knives Into Cardboard Boxes Hidden Under My Bedspread Doesn’t Mean I’m Crazy

OPINION: Just Because I Throw Knives Into Cardboard Boxes Hidden Under My Bedspread Doesn’t Mean I’m Crazy

April 17, 2015 Leave a comment Go to comments
By Pump Minger

By Pump Minger

There’s snow on the road. Two rudimentary tire tracks cut through it and the going is treacherous. Pop is driving– my wife is in the passenger seat. I’m alone in the back.

They came to me this morning in my room.

Ambers (that’s my wife) began crying. “Pump,” she said, “your Dad is here. We’re going…well, we’re going to take you somewhere today. Go ahead and put the knives down.”

I put them down. I could see her looking at the square-shaped protrusions that stuck out like strange towers from beneath my flower-patterned bedspread. And the gashes. Hundreds of them– they were everywhere. They were even in the wall where I had missed.

“Where are we going?” I said.

“Well, just for a ride, that’s all.”

Dad stormed in. “What the hell is this?” he yelled, pointing at the bed. He ripped the bedspread straight off revealing my series of cardboard boxes with the targets that I had drawn on.

“Doesn’t even make any god damn sense,” he said quietly. “Christ, you can’t even see the targets.”

Then, we were driving. I watched carefully as we passed through long stretches of wooded area deep in the Lankville suburbs. Nobody said anything.

We pulled up in front of an ancient, imposing building. I knew it. Everybody knows it. The Foontz-Flonnaise Home of Abundant Senselessness or, as it’s more commonly-known, “The Laughing Academy”. It’s hard time.

“Why are we here?” I said.

“Maybe because you throw knives into cardboard boxes hidden under your god damn bedspread,” Pop said under his breath. I could hear him though. My wife began crying.

We were met at the front door by a man in a white coat. It was stained with sauce. He took me to a small office.

“Pamp, let’s talk for a moment about the knives,” he said.

“It’s Pump.”

“Let’s talk about the knives. You throw them into cardboard boxes that you’ve hidden under your bedspread. Tell me about that.”

“It’s just a hobby. What? It don’t mean anything.”

He coughed. He looked embarrassed. Then, he rustled around in some papers in a folder.

“It doesn’t mean I’m crazy, doc. It’s just some cardboard boxes hidden under my bedspread. I just..I throw knives into them, that’s all.”

“These papers indicate that the cardboard boxes have targets drawn on them,” he noted. “Let’s talk about that.”

A hanging lamp suddenly became disengaged from the ceiling and smashed him in the head. The light bulb popped like a firecracker.

I pressed on. “I get the cardboard boxes myself. I go out and find them. I find them so I can throw the knives…”

I was getting off point and I knew it. He had me. He knew it. He brushed the pieces of light bulb out of his hair confidently.

Now I’m in a cell, looking out at the snow.

Don’t think it makes me crazy though. I really don’t.

Categories: Opinions Tags: , , ,
  1. oversion
    April 26, 2015 at 10:34 pm
    Reply

    Sure, you’re looking out the cell window at the falling snow.
    Why would anyone think anything? Watch out for the starlings.

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