Gunrock might have cried happy tears, if his unblinking eyes could
It was a joyous day yesterday. Gunrock was reunited with his family for the first time since moving to Davis in 2003. Happy tears flowed from the eyes of Mr. Blue Man as the family hugged and kissed one another. I had the chance to ask Gunrock about the emotional reunion, and he responded to my questions with an Etch-A-Sketch, drawing answers faster than you can say, “Go Ags!” Actually, it took him a little longer. Couple minutes or so.
“I just couldn’t believe the look on Pa’s face,” Gunrock wrote. “‘Is that you, Gunny Boy?’ he asked me with tears glistening on his cornflower face. Well, he didn’t really say it, because he can’t talk. But he blinked it to me using Morse code. That’s how we communicate. He blinks, and I stomp the ground. It sure brings back good memories of when Dad and I used to play catch in the front yard with marshmallows using only our mouths!”
“Wait,” I said. “Your father, of the Blue Man Group, can’t hear or talk, so he communicates with blinks. You can neither talk nor blink, so you communicate with stomps. And you mother, this horse, can’t understand either of you, because — well, she’s a horse. Is this right?”
“Yes, Ma doesn’t pick up much of what we say,” wrote Gunrock, shaking the Etch-A-Sketch vehemently to clear space. “Which might explain why the three of us haven’t talked in 15 years. It was just a big misunderstanding,” he continued, nodding his ginormous head in what I can only hope was a silent laugh. “Isn’t that right, Ma?” he wrote, looking deeply into the horse’s face for the first time.
“Crap,” he wrote, twisting the knobs of the Etch-A-Sketch with nervously speedy fingers. “This is the wrong horse.”
Written by: Jess Driver — jmdriver@ucdavis.edu
(This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and the names of “sources” are fictionalized.)
