The Great American Memo

Since starting to write a blog, I have noticed how more and more of the world around me looks like a blog post. It’s like that phenomenon where you’ve never heard the world “schadenfreude” before, but as soon as you learn what it means, you suddenly hear people using it everywhere.*

My toddler will say something, or my crawler will chew on something particularly amusing, and the hubby and I will say to each other, “That looks like a blog post!”

What I’ve noticed, though, is that a single moment or a funny line doesn’t necessarily translate into much more. And yet they are sitting in my brain, dying to be shared.

This, my friends, is their moment in the spotlight.

This is the day of the Great American Memo, a tribute to a few ideas and one-liners that are never going to merit a write-up on their own.

1. The Great American Memo. When I was younger, and significantly more delusional than I am now, I daydreamed occasionally of writing The Great American Novel. Full of symbolism and angst and sheer epic-ness. Then I realized I didn’t even like reading most of these novels all that much, so there was no way I was actually going to write them. So I downgraded my daydreams from Epic to Entertaining.
   Recently my sister gave me possibly the most awesome pen I have owned for a very long time. It is pink. I mean really pink. It has feathers. And a crown. Sheer awesomeness. We laughed and laughed. I’ll never use it to write The Great American Novel. But perhaps, at least, The Great American Memo.

2. No-Touchback Germ Warfare. The toddler has a cough again. What a shock. I hope that she got it from the crawler because that would mean that the crawler is not in danger of getting sick again. It’s like Tag, you know? No touchbacks.

3. Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School. Where do all the really bad monster puns go to die painfully and repeatedly? They go to this movie. I envision a roomful of screenwriters sitting together one night, probably charged up on a lot of caffeine and too little sleep. They are all feeling nostalgic for the many terrible jokes they’ll never find a movie for.** And thus is born Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School. Take every awful vampire/werewolf/mummy joke you can possibly imagine, and shove them all into one movie. Ta-da. Tragically, we own this movie. The toddler loves it, so I’ve seen it about 7 million times. I have not yet “accidentally” crushed it with a sledgehammer, so I think I deserve nomination for sainthood.

4. Mr. Potatohead. It was a while ago, and the hubby had just shaved his head. I’m not sure what he was doing, but suddenly the toddler said, “Your head looks like a potato.” Need we say more?

5. Give a baby a fish…and she will gnaw on it for hours. Imagine a room full of toys. Brightly colored toys, balls, puzzles, dolls, wooden blocks. They squeak, they play music, they light up. And off in the corner, a small piece of faded, dirty cardboard. Now insert my baby into that room. Imagine which item will immediately enter her mouth and be slowly dissolved in slobber. There is something magnetic about stuff your baby shouldn’t chew on.

I believe this ends Round 1 of the Great American Memo. Stay tuned in a couple of months for more ideas I will never write up on their own.

*Is there a word for that phenomenon? That would be cool. 
**Not unlike me, I fear, feeling sorry for my little moments that will never be good enough for a full post. Am I my own sleep-deprived screenwriter? Gack!*