Playing with Matt

Matt is one of my best friends, favourite playmates, and baby brother. Did I say baby? He is 42 years old, 6 foot 1, and near 300 pounds (15 stone).

Anywhoo, our friendship has its roots in our childhood, such as it was. Matt was born with severe asthma and at least once a month we were in the emergency room because he was in so much distress he was turning faintly blue.

Back in the 60's asthma was treated with injections of Adrenaline and Sussferin(a 24-hour fight or flight reaction) and then Tedral tablets for maintenance.

So of course Matt would be wound up like the proverbial eight-day clock, while Mum and Jim slept, Matt and I (the born night owl) would be awake; playing so quietly in the living room.

Matt has always loved sports of all kinds, and especially statistics, so we would play the sports board games. Our two favourites were baseball and boxing, we had such fits of the giggles over 'the killer instinct' that was figured in when a boxer was cut and started to bleed.

That is how our friendship has remained, how we play has changed very little in feel, and expression as well. We will make a 'Music Store Raid' and buy 2 different CD's, then a pair of bottles of imported beers, settle into his room and listen to the CD's, pausing often to point out some background vocals or instrument. We watch Discovery Channel, History Channel, Animal Planet, oh, and Comedy Central and babble back and forth during the commercials.

The other night we were watching a one-hour programme on 'Evil'. They were talking about devils, satanists, and the number 666. As an illustration they showed this comical little red imp. Matt asked what it was and I told him it was an imp.

He nearly fell of his bed laughing, there were tears standing in his eyes he was that undone by mirth. When he finally calmed he started singing this doggerell as an ode to busy imps.

"Running here,
Running there.
Running everywhere.
Gotta find me someone
And poke 'em somewhere.
O Hell Yeah!"

I could not leave it there, so I wandered about the 'Net searching for appropriate images. Once I had found and saved them I 'played' with them, making them into a sort of collage with the words interspersed through the images. Below is the image as it stands for the moment.