The Infamous Rides Again

I keep thinking the Infamous W. will cure herself of what ails her, but she never does. She tells me yesterday that she went to a garden supply place and there was a turkey walking around there. It's sort of farmlike there, so I didn't fall down in astonishment or anything. She told me that it made a noise, and was trying to describe it, and I stopped her.

"A gobbling noise?"
"Yes."
"Well, that's not really that remarkable. Turkeys gobble. It's what they do."

See, the Infamous finds everything remarkable. She sees someone she knows at a store, it's an event, a bit of conversational fodder. A turkey gobbles, it's an event. Some people might find this childlike and refreshing. Me, I tell her all the time that she sounds like a mental patient. But it does no good.

"I suppose if you saw an iceman thaw and sit up," she said, "you wouldn't think that's remarkable because that's what icemen do."

I began to reel with disbelief. That happens a lot, talking to the Infamous.

"You mean an iceman like the Iceman from 4,000 years ago? The Iceman from the Alps?"
"Yes."
"I would think it was remarkable if an Iceman thawed and sat up," I said. "That's not what icemen do. What icemen mostly do is stay dead."

At this point the Infamous was shrieking with laughter at herself, having begun to realize that comparing a turkey gobbling and an iceman thawing and sitting up in terms of remarkableness was perhaps not as apt as she had first thought. I was going for paper and pencil because I knew that if I didn't write it down quickly I wouldn't believe she had said such a thing. But it's true. This is the kind of thing I deal with all the time. It's not easy to be me.