The Very Best of 'Tiny Insane People'

their games are getting too weird.

Both children writhe around on the couch in their underwear making animal sounds. 

WEBSTER: Pretend you’re a sleeping cat and I’m a cow waking you up.

Violet pretends to be asleep. Webster crawls on top of her and screams in her ear. 

WEBSTER (yelling): HI I’M A SLEEPING COW.

Webster begins to dry-hump Violet’s head. She pushes him off. 

VIOLET: Stop it. Cows don’t-

WEBSTER: Now pretend I’m a wolf and you’re a cat and you wake me up. 

VIOLET: A wolf is not an animal. 

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"sounds like a great movie."

WEBSTER: Tell me a story.

ME: Okay. Once there was a little boy, and-

WEBSTER: No. Once there was Eagle Vikings.

ME: … Okay. And what are Eagle Vikings? Are they Vikings who ride on eagles?

WEBSTER: No. They are tigers who ride on motorcycles. Tell it.

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I guess he leveled up.

We are walking in the park. Webster sees a Collie and runs toward it, excited. He runs right up in front of it, stares it in the eye seriously, then runs back to me. 

ME: Everything okay, buddy?

WEBSTER: Yes! It is a wolf!

ME: Oh. Well… it’s a Collie I think, but-

WEBSTER: It is a HIGH LEVEL WOLF.

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big dreams.

ME: What do you want to be when you grow up, buddy?

WEBSTER: Batman. 

ME: Okay. Anything else?

WEBSTER: Rainbow Batman. 

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sounds like an awesome game.

WEBSTER: Let’s play.

VIOLET: Okay.

WEBSTER: Okay, I’m a potato. 

VIOLET: I’m an opera singer. 

WEBSTER: Yeah, great. Now take me to the potato factory.

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"Sorry, I farted. I farted because of strength."

— Violet, 6 years old

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"I am of the butt system."

— Webster, 3

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"Every time I eat a cookie, the inside of my mouth sings the buffalo song."

— Webster, 3, WTF.

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typical scene at 6 a.m.

Violet comes into my bedroom. Everybody in the house is sleeping.

VIOLET: Hey Daddy!!

ME: Oh… Hey honey. Sssh though, your brother is sleeping. He had a really rough night last night, and we absolutely CAN’T wake him up, so please be quiet-

VIOLET: Okay, but real quick, I have something important to tell you.

ME: Okay, what is it.

VIOLET: These are the characters in Mulan. Mulan is Mulan, her boyfriend is Chang…

ME: Violet. Stop it.

VIOLET: Do you want to hear one more?

ME: No.

VIOLET: Okay, the bad guy is Shan Yu.

WEBSTER: I’m awake!

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"You be a Care Bear. I be a princess. Let’s fight."

— My 3-year-old son, in a nutshell.

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"I’ve got a joke. It was 5 oclock and a man put his finger in his nose. Then he died."

— Violet, using a French accent.

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"Boys are daddies. And girls are mommies… And boobs and butts."

— Webster, who I think is clearly turning into some kind of toddler pervert.

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"When I say tushy, I mean no. Tushy means no. Penis means yes."

— Webster, 2, horrifying the people we are eating dinner with. 

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wtf, sweetie.

VIOLET: I’m half squirrel.

ME: … Oh. 

VIOLET: I’m half lots of animals actually. 

ME: Why do you say this?

VIOLET: Because I can smell things really good. I can smell metal. I can smell things through bricks. 

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"Do Godzillas has a penis?"

— Webster, asking the age-old questions.

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"My favorite color is Blue Diamond, which is the color a diamond would be, if, you know, diamonds were blue."

— Violet

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identity issues.

Webster points at me from the jungle gym.

WEBSTER: I’m Batman! You’re a beast monster!

ME: Okay, here I come, Batman, ROWR!

WEBSTER: No, I’m a turtle!

Webster strikes a heroic pose completely inconsistent with being a turtle.

ME: Oh, you’re a turtle?

WEBSTER: No, I’m a dolphin!

ME: Oh, you’re a dolphin now?

WEBSTER: No!

Webster straight up punches me in the stomach really hard.

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WHAT’S MY NAME.

VIOLET: Your name isn’t Webster anymore.

WEBSTER: My name IS Webster anymore!!

VIOLET: No it’s not. 

WEBSTER: (furious) What my name?!

VIOLET: Your new name is Pooky-pooks Toty Knocky-knock.

WEBSTER: Ha ha. Okay.

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no, really. EAT IT.

Webster hands me a plastic food sandwich.

WEBSTER: Eat it.

ME: Okay. 

I pretend to eat it. 

WEBSTER: No, EAT it. 

ME: … Okay. 

I pretend again. Harder. 

WEBSTER: (furious) NO!! REALLY EAT IT!!!

Over the course of a minute, I turn to the side and mimic eating the sandwich in such a way that I can systematically hide all the pieces in my hand. Webster nods.

WEBSTER: Good. Now poop it out. 

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"How did the Universe start? How did everything fit into one tiny dot before the Big Bang? What’s outside of the Universe? How did Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov? What does a fart look like?"

— questions I was asked on the walk to school. 

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worst minotaur ever.

Webster strikes a pose. 

WEBSTER: I be a minotaur! You be a superhero! You stand over there and I scare you!

ME: Okay. 

Webster emits the quietest whisper of a roar.

Beat. Webster starts to cry. 

ME: What’s wrong, buddy?

WEBSTER: I scared.

ME: What are you scared of?

WEBSTER: Myself. 

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i could really go for a peenwich.

ME: What are you eating, honey?

VIOLET: It’s a peanut on a cracker. So it’s like a peanut sandwich. I call it a peenwich.

ME: … Do you now.

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"Daddy, I’m pretty sure that I’m the main character in this family."

— Violet, age 4

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the definition of sexy.

Violet sits at the kitchen table making just the worst, most annoying sound known to man.

VIOLET: Doesn’t that sound sexy?

ME: What??

VIOLET: This sound I’m making, it’s very sexy.

ME: Honey, what… what do you think that word means?

VIOLET: It means very fancy. Like, you know, like I swallowed an iPhone.

ME: … Oh. 

VIOLET: That’s what it means, right?

ME: Of course.

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now entering the ring…

WEBSTER: Let’s fight! 

ME: Okay.

WEBSTER: I’m a Stegosaurus! You’re a pickle!

ME: That… seems like an unfair fight-

The Stegosaurus hits the pickle in the crotch with his pirate sword. 

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best joke ever.

VIOLET: Knock knock.

ME: Who’s there?

VIOLET: Interrupting Seinfeld.

ME: Interrupting Seinfel-

VIOLET: WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH THAT??

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the more layers, the more fanciness.

Violet goes through her closet carefully.

ME: Remember that I have to take you into my office today, honey. Do you want to wear a dress, or a skirt, or…?

VIOLET: I don’t know. I think the girls in your office aren’t very fancy. 

ME: Well, no, some of them can get pretty fancy. 

VIOLET: But not fancy like ME.

ME: Well, no.

VIOLET: I am going to wear a dress AND a skirt. 

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what naked people do.

Webster watches his sister take clothes off of a Barbie. His eyes go wide. 

WEBSTER: She naked.

ME: Yeah. 

Webster picks up a Ken doll. 

WEBSTER: Make him naked too.

ME: Um… okay, buddy.

I remove Ken’s clothes. Webster stares at the dolls for a long time, smiling, as if a primal switch has been thrown in his brain. 

ME: So, uh… What are they going to do?

WEBSTER: … HI-YA!!!

Webster violently makes Barbie and Ken kick each others’ heads for a full minute.

VIOLET: I don’t know where I fit in this game. 

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it’s all over my everything.

From the next room, we hear the sounds of a Batman cartoon, then an immense and wet-sounding sneeze.

VIOLET: AAHHH!! Webster needs a tissue!

ME: There’s tissues on the couch, honey, can you give him one?

VIOLET: NO, HELP, it’s… it’s such a weird one.

WEBSTER: It’s all over my everything!

I run into the TV room to help. Webster sits grinning, completely snot-free. 

WEBSTER: I ate it all.

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at least attempt to understand how it works.

April 5. Violet enters the bathroom with a laundry hamper on her head.

VIOLET: BLAAHHH I’m a robot laundry man.

ME: Okay-

VIOLET: APRIL FOOLS, I’m not.

ME: Oh. Honey, that’s not really how April Fools works- 

VIOLET: BLEEE BLOO bLAAH I’m a crazyhead, April Fools I’m not.

ME: Right, and also April Fools was days ago.

VIOLET: I’ll be doing this the rest of the week.

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i mean, i can try, but…

WEBSTER: Can you take this out of my mouth?

ME: What?

WEBSTER: This. Out of my mouth.

ME: Do you mean your tongue?

WEBSTER: Yes.

ME: … No, I can’t take that out of your mouth.

WEBSTER: Please?

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that’s just how it is, with the fanciness.

ME: Hey Violet, I have a question. Do you want to go to Disney World?

VIOLET: Yes, but did you know that when you say “I have a question”, like you just did, to a fancy kid, such as me, it makes their eyes go wide like this?

Violet opens her eyes as wide as they can possibly go and stares at me for a long beat.

ME: Oh. 

VIOLET: That’s just how it is with the fanciness.

An Open Letter to the people at the Times Square Red Lobster.

An open letter to the people at the Times Square Red Lobster:

by thomwoodley

Last night I entered your establishment a man. This morning, I am something else.

It all began a few weeks ago, when I saw an advertisement for Red Lobster. This had its intended effect, and made me desire seafood, and specifically, the seafood available for purchase at your establishment. I stated my desire on my social network of choice, where many of my friends commented. Some agreed that, yes, visiting Red Lobster would be an excellent use of my money and time. Others warned me.

One comrade by the name of Ciaran emailed me, at 6:45 a.m. the following morning. “I’ll go,” he wrote. “Any. Time.” He proceeded to tell me that he loved Red Lobster, that its founders were “innovators of restaurant concepts (flash frozen mass distribution), flavor combos, food science, you name it.” He went on to rave about the “coconut skramp” and the “Lotta Collata.”

He CC’d a friend of his, Darius, who I was not acquainted with, but who shared a love for Red Lobster, and would similarly attend. Any. Time. “Set a date,” Ciaran concluded, rather aggressively.  

And so we did. After some rescheduling, the three of us, plus my friend Felix, a last minute addition, strolled last night into the Times Square Red Lobster, which was the only Red Lobster available to us as citizens of the New York City metropolitan area. We were welcomed cheerily, escorted to our table with grace, and found our waiter, Luc, to be exceptionally friendly and ready to cater to our every whim.

At the time, this seemed a blessing. Now I am not certain.

Now, I have previously attended various Red Lobsters in the great state of Pennsylvania. In fact, when I was a child, Red Lobster was my chosen destination for every birthday meal. I have many fond memories of big-haired Allentown waitresses serving me shrimp poppers, and watching my seafood-despising father squirm. The last time I had visited one had been as a young man of 21, and I am now a gentleman in my mid-30s. I fully anticipated, based on prior experience, that I would consume a large amount of food and drink. To prime my body, I ate nothing all day except a cup of yogurt and some pistachio nuts. Then, before dinner, Felix and I went out and downed a few beers on an empty stomach.

So, when I entered Red Lobster, I was extremely hungry, but also a tiny bit buzzed. Perhaps these two factors worked in tandem to eclipse my wisdom and ignite my hubris, for soon I found myself confidently ordering the Lobster Pizza, a big bowl of New England clam chowder, extra cheesy biscuits, and a “Top Shelf Margarita”. This was merely to be my prologue. For my entrée, I selected the flagship meal of the Red Lobster fleet… the Admiral’s Feast. Shrimp, bay scallops, clam strips and flounder fried to a golden brown, with a ration of broccoli on the side. This was the favored meal of my youth. In college, for a brief time, my compatriots referred to me as ‘The Admiral’, because of my acceptance of a dare to eat two of said Feasts in one sitting. A dare, I might add, that was successfully accomplished.

The food arrived quickly. Almost too quickly, in retrospect. The Lobster Pizza was delightfully malleable. The New England Clam Chowder was tepid, but served the purpose that a Chowder should serve. The cheesy biscuits were a carbohydrate delight. The Top Shelf Margarita turned out to be accompanied by a tiny little pitcher of Grand Marnier. Meanwhile, Felix, Ciaran and Darius feasted on two plates of Coconut Shrimp, while discussing Red Lobster’s innovative use of flash freezing technology.

When my Admiral’s Feast came, I was thrilled. It was just as I remembered it: an enormous amount of fried seafood on an oblong plate. A tiny forest of broccoli hid in the corner, as if to separate itself from the seafood and say “Whatever happens, we were not responsible.” I ordered another drink. This time I went with Ciaran’s recommendation and got the Alotta Colada, a 700 calorie concoction that turned out to be an enormous tsunami of ice cream and alcohol. I asked for double rum, and Luc obliged with a shrug.  

About halfway through the Feast, I started to sense that I had, perhaps, eaten enough. Felix had already quit, having eaten only a fourth of his Admiral’s Feast. Ciaran hadn’t quite finished his wood-burned shrimp, lobster and scallops, while Darius was profoundly dominating his immense kettle of crab-type objects. I decided that I must power through. I would not eat my shrimp, as I am now deathly allergic, but the scallops, flounder and clams must be eliminated. This I accomplished. I took solace in the Clean Plate Club award I might receive from my imaginary parents. While we waited for Darius to finish, I took a couple more bites off of errant cheesy biscuits that had escaped their trough.

I knew something was wrong the minute Luc asked if we wanted dessert. “No,” I found myself saying. Despite the perceived deliciousness of the Warm Chocolate Chip Lava Cookie (1070 calories), I refused. But surely, I found myself saying to myself, surely you are mistaken. You love dessert. You need dessert. Yet this night, I did not desire it. Oh no, I realized. Oh no, I have consumed far too much. 

Around that time, the mother of my children sent me a text message, asking me if I would run her a small errand. ‘Oh jesus’ was my reply. It was not, in fact, a response to her request, but rather a groan of realization that I had done something terribly, terribly wrong. It was a final pathetic whimper before succumbing to a coma. It was the broken cry of a man begging for forgiveness, or failing that, the sweet release of death.

We paid, bid our hosts goodbye, and exited to a balmy Times Square night. Outside, Ciaran and Darius spoke of going to Dave & Buster’s, but I found myself unable to even conceive of doing that, or indeed of taking any action that wasn’t collapsing on the couch of my apartment, or failing that, the floor. I said farewell to my compatriots, knowing that after the ordeal we just went through, we were more than compatriots. Now, we were brothers. I made my way swiftly home. I was asleep within minutes.

I was visited by a great deal of dreams, none of which made any sort of mortal logic. There was the dream of digging a great muddy hole in my backyard. There was the dream of chasing a golden butterfly across a sea of blood. There was the laughing old grey-bearded man, massive in his scale and limitless in his depravity. O, I dreamt of vipers, wriggling up my body. Goblins and hodags and Jersey devils flittered across my mindscape, waving their claw-like appendages and beckoning me to come dance. Come dance with us, forever.

I woke at 4 a.m. with a burning sensation in my stomach. A loud gurgling had commenced, a great cataclysm of internal oceans. A profound fatness had crept over my entirety. From my abdomen to my throat to my third eye, all were covered with a layer of intangible mind-grease. I felt a great welling up within me, as if a thousand honeybees had taken up residence and commenced to breed. I commanded myself: get thee to a bathroom.

Then the diarrhea started.

I won’t go into detail on this matter, except to say that at a certain point, the boundary between ‘diarrhea’ and ‘not diarrhea’ became blurred, and then nonexistent. Soon, I could not imagine a time in which I did not have diarrhea. I have always had diarrhea, my mind whispered. I am diarrhea.

In this state, my soul went on a journey. Why had I done this? Why had I willingly put myself in a position that I knew would give me such pain? I had multiple opportunities to correct my path. I could have skipped the appetizers. I could have skipped the Alotta Colada. I could have substituted the Admiral’s Feast with something smaller, say, a nice salad. Or, I could have skipped the Red Lobster experience together, relegating it to the part of my brain where dwell the likes of He-Man, high school drama club, and the Police Academy films – things that truly were better once upon a time. Any of those choices would have spared me.

But then, would they have? Was this even a choice? Or was I directed inexorably to this event, and thus to its outcome? Had I free will? Was my visit, and its concomitant consequences, preordained? Had I followed a path of my own volition, or had I been the victim of the machinations of some demonic puppeteer? Do any of us have free will? Are all of our actions scratched into the Akashic records of our existence from time immemorial, and we do naught but follow its groove til its inescapable conclusion?

And who actually was The Admiral, of whose feast I had so willingly partaken? What sort of man was he, that he could so easily devour so much flounder, scallops, clams, shrimp, and broccoli, and so often that they would name the feast after him? What girth had he? From which Navy sprang his titanic form? Was he, in fact, a man at all? His meal was of Herculean proportions; was The Admiral a demigod, or a giant, or perhaps great Poseidon himself? Or was He the Great Admiral, the Admiral over us all, to whom we are but loyal little dinghies in a great fleet? Had I, in fact, supped at God’s table? Was this flounder which I did so heartily gorge upon that which the Son of God multiplied for the masses? Did last night occur in real time, in real space, or was it an event taking place in the ethereal realm?

Was anything, anyone, anywhere real? Was existence real? Or was it all the fever dream of some wayward demiurge who had eaten too many celestial cheesy biscuits?

My young son, awakened by my all too audible dilemma, knocked on the door and asked in his sweet voice if he could “use the potty”. “NO,” I replied sharply. “Daddy is using the potty.” Daddy is using the potty, forever.

I could not tell how long I was in that bathroom. Was it an hour? A few minutes? Multiple reincarnative lifetimes? When I emerged, I went back to bed. When I finally awoke, and found it time to go to work, I immediately went into the shower, but the hot water could not wash away the inner stain of what I had done. I tried to dress, but my body rejected any and all accoutrements. I want to be by myself, it shouted. I felt as if any exercise I had taken in the last decade had been undone in one night. It took another hour to pry myself from my bed, into my clothing, and out the door.

When I complained to the mother of my children about the agony I was feeling, she simply looked at me with clear disapproval and said, “well, you’re getting old.”

Ultimately, I made it into work, where now I sit. I have successfully eaten an apple and I suspect it might be the only food I consume today. My body is on the mend. My soul, I cannot speak for.

I want you to know, Red Lobster, that while you were responsible for supplying me the food that ultimately sparked turmoil both existential and abdominal, I do not hold you culpable. You were only behaving as a Red Lobster should behave. You advertised copious quantities of seafood of dubious quality, and that is what I received. You admitted the calorie count on your menu, and I looked squarely at that 1200-calorie Admiral’s Feast and invited it in. You warned me, through your avatar the waiter Luc, that the Alotta Colada was a profound undertaking, especially with double rum. In short, you did everything inherent to your existence, and for this I cannot blame you. Would you blame the tiger for hunting the elk? Or the volcano for spewing its ash into the air? Nay, and neither can you blame the Red Lobster for populating its booths with endless supplies of doughy, cheese-covered deep fried biscuits that cannot remain uneaten.

In a way, I might thank you. While I suspect I shan’t be gracing your doorway in the foreseeable future, the experience has taught me a good deal about myself, my limits, and how I love to ignore them. I am but a man, Red Lobster – and you have reminded me of this.

You told me I would ‘sea food differently’. I do now. I sea food differently. I sea a lot of things differently.

Yours,

Thom Woodley