Cereal

He woke up after eleven and didn’t go outside all day, not even to his Writing Shack. What did he do?

He watched late morning cartoons meant for children too young to go to school. He ate bowls of cereal. He watched his mother play dominoes. He played dominoes with her for a little while until she was winning by such a margin it wasn’t fun for either of them. He went down to the basement to do his laundry. He pulled the chain for the light and it turned on like magic. “Electricity is like magic” he said to himself. He thought he would like to write that down but his Implements were in the Shack. He’d already built up so much momentum inside.

—Inertia? he thought. “What’s the difference between inertia and momentum” he asked himself as he hefted dirty clothes into the washer. “Maybe inertia is the momentum of not moving” he thought as he measured and poured the blue detergent into the drum. “Momentum is the inertia of moving forward through time” as he selected WARM-COLD on the dial and pulled it out to start the machine. “What do you think is the difference between inertia and momentum” he asked his mother when he opened the door at the top of the stairs.

“When you switch over your laundry could you bring up my underwear from the dryer” she asked not looking up from her dominoes. A thread of smoke curled from her cigarette and spread out on the ceiling.