Now – if I had just read that headline, instead of having written it, the words would have been deciphered as scrambled eggs. At some point, my eyes and brain began plotting against me, telling me what I wanted to hear, instead of what was really there.
The Boss at 60: Bruce Springsteen
When I saw a magazine on my mother’s endtable with Bruce Springsteen on the cover, it became a copy of Rolling Stone. Later, when I thought to myself, “Why is she subscribing to Rolling Stone?” – I took a closer look and realized the magazine was AARP, news from the American Association of Retired Persons.
There’s the rub, I believe. Think about it. Springsteen on the cover of AARP. The headline reads, “The Boss Turns 60!” How is that possible?
It does go a long way to explain my eye-brain conspiracy. They’ve seen so many things, so many times, they aren’t bothering to connect the real dots. I saw a big green box outside a construction site with “Gator Tainer” written on the side.
At a glance, I came up with some kind of Cajun spuds, “Gator Taters.” I looked closer and it became trainer. “Ah!” I said aloud, wiping the confusion from my brow. “It’s an alligator trainer, keeping the gators in that green box. A little inhumane, but understandable.”
As I drove off, it dawned on me that the “Tainer” was simply a Con-tainer, a big box to put trash in. A dumpster.
Then, blinking hard, I took a big gulp of my Mountain Dew, and the cobwebs cleared and the world became a bright, clear, perfectly understandable and predictable landscape.
But Bruce Springsteen was still sixty.