Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Since it's Friday, I'll share some found items, but first, an update on my checkbook balancing efforts. After spending much of the afternoon working through the remainder of my bank statements, I came up with an amount which, taking into account outstanding transactions, is still about $250 less than what the bank believes I have.

So I'm going to take some advice from The Nature Lover, who said that when she has a similar problem, she just gives up and accepts the bank's balance, resolving to stay on top of things from that point onward. So that's what I'll do. Next time a bank statement arrives, I'll try to sit down with it within a week.

In other news, my poor Canon Powershot S400 is sick again. While it functioned perfectly all through the holidays, yesterday when I turned it on, I saw nothing but black. After The Gryphon walked me through some possible easy solutions, we determined it must be something internal. What's more, it's a problem that Canon is familiar with and has posted an alert about it on their site. I called technical support, and they'll be e-mailing me a packaging label to use when I send it to them, where they will fix it at no charge.

Until then, I guess I'm back to either a camera phone or using actual film (so old-school!).

Today's found items all have a somewhat Freudian bent.

I'll start with something that appears to have been an interrupted disciplinary exercise. On the front, in bold letters, the young writer proclaims, "I WILL NOT GET IN TOU B," presumably stopping when notified of the mistaken spelling for "into."

However, at some point before crumpling the paper and discarding it, the same hand wrote, "I will" twice on the back, seemingly as a subconscious protest.

Much more Freudian, I believe, is a frightening portrait of a monster-like person with sharp, devouring teeth. Inside the mouth, it clearly reads "Mom." I don't know whether this is a mother who devours or someone who is devouring the mother. On closer examination, it might be a balding man who's been attacking the mother, beause there is hair visible on only the sides of the head (although the lighter portion could also be a doo-rag or hat).

You can click on this image to see the full portrait, which includes a rather stunted looking body. Clearly, the mouth and the eyes were more feared by this artist than anything else.

The next item is a little more light-hearted. It's a word I found scrawled on a step near where some young teens like to meet to practice stunts on their skateboards. Is it a tag, a one-item shopping list, or as Freud might believe, evidence the artist is stuck in the oral stage of development, still pining after the comfort brought by mother's milk?

We could ponder these findings further, except that my last item, in pencil on a Rolodex card, adds an air of finality, finding this all, "2 personal." I'm guessing this was a mistake for "to personnel," but even if it is, we'll let it have the final word.

Copyright 2008 by Alyce Wilson

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