I’ve got a slug living in my brain.

I’m a bit of a one trick pony in how I tell you about me and my life – in these short songlike stories – story after story they all sound the same – same structure, same rhythm – with similar beat, chorus and anthem refrain and yet you will probably stream the next Cold Play album – and thats ok with me because Cold Play are good – they also believe in love.

I really don’t mind being called a one-trick pony – because everyone really loves ponies. I always wanted to ride the ponies when I was small. I’d see them at the fair, and while I never got to really ride one, I actually rode them all the time in my head. I’ve watched from the sidelines with such intense focus that I know every step of the process. I can actually feel the feel of each stage, each step of the process. Left foot first firmly into the stirrup, hop hop hop. Hold on and then jump and swing the other leg, the leg that was hopping, and then you are on and ready to ride.

I watch everything. If I had a superhero name, it would be “The Watcher”. I wish it was something more impressive but it is not. I can just watch things, and then I can feel it all. I can even watch bad people, and when I do, I can see what has been true all along: there are no bad people. Not purposely bad anyway. You really don’t know everything. You might think you do, but you really don’t.

Did you know that my real name is not Garry? I bet after all the stories I’ve told you, you thought you knew something for real about me. Well, Garry is not my real name. My real written-down name is Guy Harry, and then comes my surname.

Mom always called me Guy. “My Guy”
I loved it when she said my name like that. “Hey….’My Guy’ want to come Knowles with me?”
I loved it when she called me that – even when her voice was shaking.
I loved hearing her voice say “My Guy”.

Everyone else seemed to make a mouthful of my name, because while there is no dash in my name, it is really a double-barreled name. So the invisible dash made my name become just Garry. Now everyone just calls me that – Garry.

So you don’t know everything. There are some things that you don’t know. There really are things hidden so hard that sometimes even God struggles to see them. Sometimes even God has to put on his glasses and bend down to come nearer to see it. You can’t see those sorts of things, but I can. I’m The Watcher, and it is exhausting, and I can’t turn it off, and this is why I know I have a little yellow slug in my head. It lives in my brain. How do you tell anyone something like that?

People think they know everything, so they don’t really listen. I mean, if you don’t believe that bad people also cry, then why would you believe me if I told you I had a banana slug in my brain?

It crawled in my ear one night while I was sleeping, and now I can’t get it out. I try to sleep less now – I should have already been sleeping less – maybe it would not have happened if I had been awake, checking if the doors were locked. Maybe it is my own fault.

I can feel it moving in the brain pipes – the ventricles – the squishy pipes of the mind – secretly secreting slime to smooth out my thoughts. They say a slug could surf in a sea of razor blades and not get hurt. That is so cool! I wish I could do that!

I can hear it talking to me – it talks to me by speaking in breath bubbles. I can hear them popping in my head like breakfast in a bowl.

Did you know that slugs evolved from snails that wanted more freedom – no fixed house on their back?

Since the slug slid in, I swear that my eyesight has got better. When I’m up patrolling the house after midnight, I don’t bump into things as much as I used to. I swear my eyes are starting to glow. Slug power! And before you disrespect slugs, let me tell you they are the royalty of cleanup. If you ever find a forest that is fresh and clean, know that you have the silent slugs to thank for that.

But if I had a choice, I would choose to have the slug out. Once, when I was at Knowles getting groceries with Mom, I saw this toddler sneeze while sitting in the chair of the trolley. I remember sitting in those chairs – I’m too big for that now. Her hands were holding the pushing handles – her hands right next to her mom’s. Suddenly her eyes rolled up and her head shot back, and then it shot fastly forward and when she looked up, all dazed, she had two huge slugs hanging out her nose. I started to run towards her so I could see better – my supervision seemed to work better at night – but before I got close enough, her mom gripped her face with a blanket or something and they were gone.

That got me thinking that maybe we all had slugs in our brains, and it was all so ok that we did not even need to talk about it. It was like breathing – nobody spoke about breathing, unless it was hard to breathe. Maybe people only spoke about slugs in your brains if you did not have some in your brain, and since everyone had them, it was not necessary to talk about them? It’s all totally normal to have slugs in your brain.

But even if it was normal, I did not want another in my brain, so at night I used to wet toilet paper balls – dipped in Dettol – in my ears to keep any others out. I did realise that these barrier balls would have the counter effect of preventing the slug from leaving that way, but as Mom used to say, “Better the Devil you know”. But when I sneezed, I started sneezing really hard and really loud to see if I could shoot out my slug that way.

There is always a good side to things that sometimes seem bad – the Dettol-dam-balls did help me sleep a bit better. I hated hearing Mom cry alone in bed. Slugs have a special place in God’s creation. I think this is why we might eat snails as a starter, but we never eat slugs.