If you blink, you’ll miss it

So, I was having a routine vision checkup the other day when the technician happened to mention that I have a “very fast blink reflex.” He mentioned it only in passing and moved on soon after but I didn’t hear another word he said because I was so lost in the glory of the revelation that I possess Olympic level blink speed. I mean, I always suspected that I blink faster than you mortals, but to hear it verified … I haven’t been this proud since a doctor told me a few years ago that I have the cholesterol levels of a dog. My resume is really going to shine with this new information.

Sydney Sweeney at Target

Call me drunk if you want to, but I’m pretty sure I spotted this lovely and talented actress the other day shopping at Target in Auburn. She was dressed down in sweatpants and a hoody, sure, but when I told her that I loved her in “White Lotus,” she hit me with chemical spray straight to the eyes. If you knew Sydney the way I know Sydney, you’d understand that this is her way of expressing adoration. I will savor these scalded eyeballs for the rest of my life.

Canned meat roasting on an open fire

I love prowling the stores in the days before Christmas. The desperation, the fear, the ruthlessness you see in people frantic to get their shopping done even as the minutes click down to zero hour. I actually saw a scuffle in one store as two half-mad shoppers brawled over the last jumbo can of off-brand Vienna sausages. The joke’s on them, though, because while they were engaged in battle, I made off with that dented tub-o-meat myself. Merry Christmas Mother. Here’s hoping you don’t have botulism for the new year.

Darkness here and nothing more

Instead of decorating my various computers (I use Linux, you know) with Christmas wallpaper this year, I went with an Edgar Allan Poe theme I have dubbed “The Bleak December.” The main image features the drunken, bereaved poet slumped in a chair with a dead, one-eyed cat on his lap, a bottle in one weary hand and a ghastly, gaunt and ancient raven perched upon the chair above his head. I turned my keyboard keys blood red and hired a black cat to sit on my desk to really bring on the gloom. Truly, this theme reflects my feelings about this time of year more perfectly than any adorned Christmas tree or red-cheeked Santa ever could.

Let’s just call it meat pie

This year marks the 30th straight year that I’ve failed to correctly spell Tourtière correctly on my first 10 tries. I can’t pronounce it, either, which gets really embarrassing when I go to order a couple pies at the bakery. Nobody around here seems to know what “torture ear” is so I end up with a big, fat nothing.

Searching for more LaFlamme? Check out his mini column, “Cherchez LaFlamme,” which runs in both the Auburn Now and Lewiston Now newsletters.

Mark LaFlamme is an award-winning Sun Journal reporter and columnist. He’s been on the nighttime police beat since 1994, which is just grand because he doesn’t like getting out of bed before noon. Mark is the author of eight published novels and rides a dual sport motorcycle everywhere he goes. Unless it’s winter, in which case he just sulks a lot.