"You have no idea."  This little phrase, nearly a colloquialism the way it gets thrown around these days, got me to thinking the other day.

Maybe you do__have an idea, I mean. Possibly, even probably, you could comprehend what it is that I and everyone else are experiencing if we took the time to explain rather than uttering 'You have no idea', wandering off shaking our virtual [or physical] heads. I mean, how many disparate occurrences are there that we cannot at least associate on some level, to some degree?

So where did this 'You have no idea' come from?  Do we envision ourselves so separated from each other that even our slang has become riddled with remotisms to be thrown out in apparent shrugging disregard? Sad. Maybe we should start with that when we begin on our restructuring process...the one where we begin to reconnect and build a better and more cohesive society.

Today, just to prove to myself that I still have that spark of jump up and slap insanity in the face for the hell of it, I went to town__Walmart to be exact__on a Saturday morning less than two weeks before Christmas.

I find doing things like this at my age to be good for one's heart. If you make it through the experience then you can pretty much figure you're good to go for another few months or so. Call it a pronosticative endeavor. [Yep, new phrase].

The outing was what you'd expect; total chaos with random intrusions of interesting occurrences. I'm not certain but I don't believe there was a single child in the entire store who wasn't crying/screaming...and there were a LOT of children.

Then there was the 100 years I spent on the spice aisle looking for the cream of tarter in the thumb-nail sized container down next to the floor. That was rewarding.

But I think my favorite was the slow motion traffic altercation after I left the store. I can't describe it as an accident because it wasn't__there was nothing accidental about it. The entire thing was very deliberate.

I would like you to picture, if you will, a five entrance intersection. This is not a major traffic inflow. It is off the main drag where businesses have leeway access roads. From these side access roads they pour into a central hub which then goes out to the main light and onto the highway. The only traffic light is at the highway intersection. All the other roads have stop signs.

So__

There are cars at all the intersections. Several decide they need to go all at the same time. Instead of giving the right of way to the car to the right as is the law, they all go forward...and keep on going at the top speed of, oh, 5 miles an hour, and continue until they drive into each other. WTF? Yep. Blam at low speed. It was, well, I don't know quite what it was but the rest of us just sat there and watched them like they'd all lost their minds.

Festival of Lights (Lyon)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festival_of_Lights_(Lyon)

"What is that?"
"It's a rainbow table."
"I can see that. "

"I paint a rainbow on the table every time I feel sad."
"Well that's kind of d..."
"..or angry..."
"....umb."
"...or worried..."
"Why not when you're feeling happy?"
"I don't need to paint rainbows when I'm happy. I already feel rainbows when I'm happy."
"But if you only paint these rainbows when you're feeling bad then when you sit at this table you're going to be reminded of all the bad times."
"No. I'll think of all the colors I used to wash the sad away."
"But..."
"So when I sit at my rainbow table I will feel the power of happy overcoming the power of sad."
"Hmm. Got an extra paintbrush?"