Golly. What a strange couple of days it has been. My work-issued laptop has been failing for the last six months. The company laptop refresh program could not have come at a better time. I was first in line to get a shiny new (and significantly lighter) company laptop. Yay!

Unfortunately, if our IT guy was any lazier he’d have to wear a sombrero. He used a Laplink cable to transfer my files from the old/bad laptop into the new one. In the process he transferred all the BIOS cancer as well. Less than 24 hours and he bricked my new laptop. Joy of joys.

I’m using a beater loaner that is actually missing keyboard keys. SMH.

The new hardware changeover is why I missed yesterday’s blog post. I’m dangerously close to missing today’s.

I used to play G.I. Joes with my son when he was a tyke. Of course, his G.I. Joe action figures were significantly smaller than the ones I played with as a child, but us old fogies were lucky to have three Joes and my son had shoeboxes brimming with them. (Thanks, Grandma.)

My five year old son’s inclination was always to hand me the wingman Joe and say, “Hey, let’s be friends and team up against the monster!” The monster was usually a plastic dinosaur from outside the G.I. Joe canon.

Instead, I always chose to play the part of the villain, be it a plastic dinosaur, a COBRA commander, or Shredder putting in some overtime at his second job. Five year old boys have a pretty staunch moral code. During the inevitable “talking that shall precede the smashing, fighting, and sound effects*,” my son would declare his Casus Belli justification for war. “Zargon, you have invaded Saint Louis and made all the dogs sick with your poison barf breath!  Prepare to die! Go JOE!”

If I were a good dad, I would have just made a monster noise and began the smashing ritual of plastic against plastic. But I’m a writer. “Oh! So that’s what they told you, huh? The people from my planet saved this world from the memory wipe of the robotrons from Alzheimers Seven! We had a treaty with your government, and all we asked in return was ten black jelly beans every year to power the air filters on our AgriPods! But instead you sent us a box filled with girl cooties and dirty underwear! Honorless cowards! This treachery will not stand, Joe! We will have our revenge upon the President’s Special Counsel to Lower Latvia and his entire cabinet. If you insist on protecting those criminals, prepare to die!”

A precious look of bafflement would start inching across the boy’s face as he realized that maybe the bad guys had their own reasons for being bad guys. And maybe the bad guys weren’t so bad after all. “That’s messed up. Sorry about that. Let’s team up and go get those black jelly beans.”

Cue the third act turn: “Aha, you’ve fallen for our trick, Joe! Now that you are close enough, we shall turn your ears into snapping turtles with our raygun. WHHHOOOOOSSSCH!” Smash, smash, smash.

My son grew up to become a talented writer. It’s not his profession or even his hobby (unfortunately), but the short stories he wrote in high school were fantastic. I take some credit for his skill. Everything he needed to know about a good story he learned playing G.I. Joes with his dad.

On Wednesday night of my Cabin in the Woods adventure, I was writing despite not feeling very well. I was in the thrall of what those pharmaceutical commercials refer to as “Serious and lasting side effects.” I was grinding out words despite the fact that the room was spinning and I felt as if I had a rat trying to gnaw its way through my brain and out the top of my skull. I was in a bad place, emotionally and physically. Still, my fingers were flexing words onto the page.

Reading through those last few pages yesterday, I was a bit shocked to read what I wrote. Characters made very out-of-character decisions. Protagonists  were unnecessarily cruel and violent to one another.  Somehow the fever and vertigo had reverted me to a younger, more primal self. In essence, I was holding characters in each hand and smashing them into one another like G.I. Joes.

Villains must have their own code of nobility. Protagonists must be flawed. But nobody wants to read a litany of cruelty pretending to pass for plot.

I sure don’t.

*As dictated by the  Hasbro-Joeneva Convention of 1961