Inspired by Edith Stilwell's quote "I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of goldfish."”
Eccentric? Ha! I throw off my goat-hat and laugh. My mother adds something, but I do not hear. I am busy drawing another cartoon to paint. The fifty canvases on her living room walls do not deter me. You are different than others, she cautions me. She has called me names trying to slow me down. I laugh at them, catching them in my teeth, slinging them around the room Firing them onto my canvases with splats. I am enjoying every aspect of my life. No one tells me what to do any more including my mother. Her habit of trying to guilt me into being normal has not worked. I am sixty years old now, so why is she still trying? I put on my knee pads, and strap on my roller blades. I’ll be back, I tell her in my Terminator voice, the long deep one. She does not recognize it. That’s okay. We have dementia now. We may not even know each other upon my return If I find my way back.
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