Alice and the baby went to bed early last night

Alice and the baby went to bed early last night, so I had a few minutes to slog away at the book. I got a couple of paragraphs out--they're still very rough--but here they are:

I seem to recall his name began with a Thom, something along the lines of Mister Thomas or Mister Thompson or maybe it was Mister Thomason but it did at any rate begin with a Thom I am almost certain, and while I may not be able to recollect exactly his name it was, to be fair, something like at least twenty-five years ago not to mention the fact he was of that particular breed of high school teacher that is not terribly blessed with much in the way of a memorable personality or a memorable style, the type mostly remembered by former students as “that teacher with the bad comb-over and the ties that were too narrow (or wide, depending on what decade you attended high school), now what was his name exactly?”, I do recall with quite some clarity the fact as relayed by Mister Thom-whatever with the bad combover and the ties that were far too narrow for the late nineteen-seventies during ninth grade Physical Science class that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. I also recall with quite some clarity that the desktops in Mister Thom’s classroom, being pretty much like the desktops in most every classroom at the Clyde Roark Hoey Senior High School were made of in the majority some sort of softish composite-type material that wasn’t quite as soft as masonite but was a good bit softer than any product designed be used five days a week for thirty-six weeks out of each year for an estimated economic lifetime of ten to twelve years by fifteen to eighteen year old boys and girls who would much rather be just about any other place doing just about any other thing had any right to be, with a laminated top and bottom of what was back then still called Formica and I suppose the reason this particular construction type had come to replace the wooden desks I recalled from my junior high school and elementary school experience was the near indestructibility and graffiti-repellant nature of that Formica top given the fact that I had been near about but not entirely unable to find any place suitable to carve my very own initials on my last junior high school desktop given the veritable Woodward County history of initials already carved in its top by generations of thirteen and fourteen year old boys and girls, rendering the desk just the other side of useless for its given purpose, namely providing a surface upon which to write, without placing a book or something with some substance and a smooth finish under the paper to provide some sort of surface that was in fact suitable for writing upon, and desks are after all not meant to be sub floors. But the soft-ish composite-type material that was sandwiched between the nearly indestructible Formica top, which I believe had some sort of pattern of soft grayish lines or maybe it was a grayish non-symmetrical grid work on it I can’t quite recall, and a Formica bottom which I don’t recall actually ever examining the aesthetic nature of was, as I have said, far softer than it had any right to be and could, with a straightened out paper clip or the tip of a ballpoint pen or number two pencil in a pinch, be bored into without too much of an effort, could in fact be outright tunneled through, and it was in this pursuit rather than anything even remotely scholarly I was engaged when I heard for the very first time ever the fact that matter could not in fact be neither created nor destroyed.

I do remember a fair number of other things I was taught at the Clyde Roark Hoey Senior High School, like the fact that mitosis is the quantitative and qualitative division of the nucleus of a cell or the fact that the eyeglass sign of Doctor Eckles was not a sign at all but in fact a literary device although I didn’t learn the fact that Nick was of the homosexual persuasion until a dinner party just this past year, a fact I cannot feel all that much foolish for not having picked up on my own since I’m not entirely sure I was entirely aware of the very concept of homosexuality during the ninth grade in Woodward County, or the fact that Governor Clyde Roark Hoey was the handpicked successor and brother-in-law to boot of Governor O. Max Gardner and that during his four year term he gave a speech somewhere in the state of North Carolina on an average of every 2 days, but none of those other facts have the sheer adaptability of the fact that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. By this I mean not that the actual fact that matter can neither be created nor destroyed is adaptable because facts are, after all, facts and therefore pretty much fixed which is what makes them facts I suppose, but that the very way this fact was constructed and presented is, in fact, supremely adaptable because I have found that you can replace the word “matter” with just about any noun of your choosing and add the implied “merely redistributed” to the end and in doing so you are likely to end up with an entirely new and entirely plausible axiom, although I will confess it tends to work better with your more conceptual type of a noun like liberty or honor or pride than your more concrete type of a noun like spoon or pillow or citizens band radio which makes sense given that matter is itself one of your if not conceptual then at least non-specific types of a noun. Some of my favorite adaptations include the fact that unpleasant smells can neither be created nor destroyed, merely redistributed as anyone who has ever finally tracked down that foul smell in the kitchen to the decomposing chunk of god only knows what too gristly to be disposed of by the disposal and then disposed of it only to find that that particular odor was masking the smell coming from one of the containers of leftovers that has been in the refrigerator since god only knows when which, upon its proper direct removal to the outside trash can reveals the fact that the litter box should have been changed at least two days ago can attest to, and the fact that the fact that the I-III-V chord progression can neither be created nor destroyed, merely redistributed, as anyone who has ever listened to “Louie, Louie” by the Kingsmen (I-I-I-III-III-V-V-V-III-III), “All Day and All of the Night” by the Kinks (I-III-III-I-I-V-V-V-III), or "I Can't Explain" by The Who (V-III-III-I-III-III) can fully attest.

-Andy