Life in the Corn Minion Number Three: Ikemay.

Name: Ikemay Otortipay.
Location: The Wheat (Wichita, Kan-effing-sas).
Occupation: My sire.
Little Known Fact about Ikemay: He collects/is very fond of windchimes(!!!).

The first time I met Ikemay was when his seed of life caused my mother to be in a "family way." Nine months later, when I came forth from my mother's fluid-filled containment unit, I met him and shook his hand. "Good work", I gurgled contentedly. Then I did his taxes.

Thirteen years pass.

As many of you may be unaware, I actually did not grow up in the pines; nay, I grew up in quasi-rural Northwestern New Jersey, near the Pennsylvania border and the Poconos. Many of you are currently thinking "Which exit?", thinking you're all cute and clever, sitting there chortling at your own lame joke. I shit to your mouths. The New Jersey I grew up in was a place of bucolic natural beauty, ringed by mountains and traversed by broad rivers. The whole time I lived in Hackettstown, I can only remember there being two murders, and they happened at the same time: some freaky biker brawl, if I recall correctly. And and AND, they weren't Hackettstownians, so whatever. Hackettstown's claim to fame is the fact that it's the only place in the Northern Hemisphere where M&Ms and M&M Mars products are made; when you woke up in the morning, the whole town smelled like baking brownies, and Halloween... well, it's a miracle I still have all of my teeth. Anyway, this isn't about me, it's about the old man. And me.

So, Hackettstown, whilst fairly isolated (then...) from the worries of the outside world, was merely forty-five minutes from New York City. Needless to say, by the time I left NJ at fourteen I'd been to NYC approximately 4.2 billion times. One of those times, my father decided to bring some culture into my, and my sister's, tiny ignorant lives. So, he brought us to see "Cats."

Yes, Cats.

When you live so close to NYC, all of the television channels are geared towards the NYC viewer audience, so of course I grew up watching commercials for shows and musicals. My sister was hell-bent on seeing Cats. Myself? Well, any chance to go to NYC was a chance for me to count prostitutes and try to buy ninja-stars, so I was game. So, for three hours we watched people in spandex cat suits writhe about to the poetry of T.S. Eliot. The plot, so far as I could tell, was nonexistent. There was this girl cat. Then she died. Then the big hairy cat dude brought her to cat heaven. I dunno. At any rate, we watched it, and as we were leaving, I asked my dad to get me something as a souvenir, like a $3 program or something. The old man's eyes gleamed.

"Wait outside and I'll get you a souvenir."

I'll pause now and allow you all to imagine what surely awaited me.

{dum dee dum deeeeee dum dee dum}

So, my father came out with his hand closed around something small. "It's your souvenir", he breathed. He opened his hand, and inside was a tiny lightbulb.

A lightbulb he stole from the men's bathroom.

I can laugh now, but at the time I was livid. Instead of cherishing the tiny lightbulb as I would now, I stared at it in mute horror. Oh, was I pissed.

Later that night, my dad got pinched by none other than the NYPD for driving 80 in a 65 around the city's beltline. For the first time in my life, I thought about divine retribution. Of course, my father, He of the Gilded Tongue, talked his way out of the ticket with a warning.

Now you see where I get it from?

Many years have passed since, and when I think about that goofy look on my dad's face when he showed me his "treasure", it makes me smile. He's moved around a lot since then: Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Fort Lauderdale, Raleigh. Now, he's just as lost as I am out here in the heartland.
When I went to see him last Thanksgiving, we went pub crawling. Pub crawling! With my old man! Bet your dad's not so cool.

Here's my shout out to the wheat, and the old man, and his new hip.

I remain, as ever,

Dom