Five will get you fifty...sometimes even more.

What shall we write about today? We have a commitment to keep.
Look up. What's there? A jelly fish. 

There is a floppy, stuffed toy jelly fish sitting on the books just behind my laptop. It’s from the Beanie Buddies collection, but we didn’t buy it for that. My kids were little and SpongeBob SquarePants was big. Jelly fishing!!!

Now my kids are no longer kids. My older son is twenty-three and my younger son will be twenty-one this November. I don’t know why I kept the darn thing. I am a sentimental person, but usually only sentimental about things my kids were attached to themselves. They liked the floppy pastel multi-colored jelly fish, but it wasn’t a beloved toy. Mostly it sat on one or the other’s bed.

Property of United Plankton Pictures
and Nickelodeon Animation Studios.

But there is a happy associated memory. I remember driving in the car, both of them in the back seat and hearing a commercial for the some summer special of SpongeBob cartoons. Many of them involved jelly fishing and they talked about it in the commercial. Catching (and then releasing) jelly fish was a favorite hobby of SpongeBob and his friend, Patrick Star. ‘Cause that’s how they rolled. Occasionally they were grudgingly accompanied by Squidward Tentacles, SpongeBob’s and Patrick’s neighbor. Squidward lived in an Easter Island head. SpongeBob lived in a pineapple. Patrick, who was a starfish, lived under a rock. A starfish living under a rock is the least insane thing I just told you about.

It is my considered opinion that the people who create this shit are all high as balls, all the time. Ceaselessly high. Or perhaps simply very, very creative on the fly. I can do that, spout funny nonsense without being high. It’s when I’m trying to make something more permanent that I have blocks.

Hmm. Created by Stephen Hillenburg, who is a marine biologist, cartoonist, animator, director, producer, writer, and voice actor. Okay, so probably it's the creative thing.

ANYWAY…After the commercial for the summer special was finished, we’d sing the SpongeBob SquarePants theme song. All three of us, together. It was pretty awesome. A totally happy, anxiety free moment with children when they were little. Those are rare for me, totally pure happy memories. My brain manages to infect a lot of my happy with unhappy, telling me I was not a good mom. So I kept the floppy jelly fish because it  reminds me that we had happy. I have never fully analyzed that before, the keeping of this particular toy which seemed to have no deep sentiment attached to it.

"This is where I chill. Where I relax. Where I chillax."
- recent jelly fish attributed quote. I think he got it from somewhere else.
He's like that.

Interesting what can happen when you sit down to write for five minutes because you made a commitment...because you want to write all the stories you have in your head and sell them and be paid to write more and having a bit of money would be nice and you know this is your thing, your lifelong thing so why can't you just DO IT ALREADY...I'm getting off track.

Interesting what can happen when you simply begin typing about the first thing you see when you glance up. And I thought this would be a dull prompt. I made it up myself, this prompt. Just today! 

I don’t remember if we ever named the jelly fish. For some reason I refer to it as he. Jelly fish do have genders. However…they do not have brains.

And that sort of explains the whole earth experience, in my considered opinion.

I leave you with this:

Seriously, what the fuck, Outdoor Swimming Society?
What the hell is that freaky mask?