All things bright and beautiful

Shorter Half is one of those types who does better on massive amounts of caffeine – or other stimulant. They calm him down, slow his speech to an understandable degree, and usually limit the number of conversations he will try to carry on with you simultaneously to a reasonable number, like 2. I’m sure most of you know the type.

Well, today Sweet Daughter and I returned home after her swim class to find him opening the mail. He’d ordered a strobe-type flashlight for my pistol and was busy taking the thing out of the blister pack, putting the batteries in, and muttering some sort of stream-of-consciousness monologue about the lack of quality instructions, or lack of quality equipment, as it wasn’t working properly, when viola! A bright flashy light appeared in my peripheral vision, reflected in the hall mirror from where he was pointing it down the stairs.

He then said something like “Hey! When it gets dark out, why don’t we turn off the lights, and I’ll go to the top of the stairs and you go to the end of the hall by the front door, and I’ll turn this on, and you can tell me how annoying it is!” I declined, possibly even telling him he was out of his mind. It was bloody maddening just seeing it out of the corner of my eye in full daylight.

Moments later I turned around to see him completely mesmerized, staring into the flashing light.

Truer words were never spoken.