Noggin Quotes

The boys. The beef-witted featherbrained rattleskulled clod-pated dim-domed noodle-noggined sapheaded lunk-knobbed boys. How could anybody accuse her of stealing them? Why would anybody want them anyway?

And what have I done?" What? WHAT?...You've stolen them." With that, Cornelia fled, but Buttercup understood; she knew who "them" was. The boys. The beef-witted featherbrained rattledskulled clodpated dim-domed noodle-noggined sapheaded lunk-knobbed BOYS.

But in that moment I understood what they say about nostalgia, that no matter if you're thinking of something good or bad, it always leaves you a little emptier afterward.

When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.

I just bonked a werewulf on the noggin. Jeez.

I kissed her," he explained, aggrieved. "Mmm, yes, I had the dubious pleasure of witnessing that, ah-hem, overly public occurrence." Lyall sharpened his pen nib, using a small copper blade that ejected from the end of his glassicals. "Well! Why hasn't she done anything about it?" the Alpha wanted to know. "You mean like whack you upside the noggin with that deadly parasol of hers? I would be cautious in that area if I were you.

I am old enough to know that time passing is just a trick, a convenience. Everything is always there, still unfolding, still happening. The past, the present, and the future, in the noggin eternally, like brushes, combs and ribbons in a handbag.

Let's use that empty noggin of yours as a punch bowl, so it's at least good for something!! Whadja say?! Ooh, but I love punch!!

We all get lots of people. And maybe we don’t always get to have them the exact way we want them, but if we can figure out a way to compromise, you know, then we can keep them all.

Maybe we all just exist, all versions of us exist at times, and we have to figure out a way to get to each of them, to find each one and tell that version that it's okay, that it's all justthe way it works, a concept too powerful to ignore but too complicated to explain.

Some people say dying alone is a fate worse than death itself. Well, they should try being alone during the living part sometimes. There's no quicker way to make you wonder why the hell you ever thought you'd want to return.

You ever feel like you know someone so much that they can breathe for you? Like when their chest and your chest rise and fall, they do it together because they have to? That's how it felt. That's how it always felt.

I thought maybe a day was coming when I'd stop constantly worrying about how to live. Maybe at some point I'd just start living, no questions asked.

He tried to choke me with the seat belt, so I elbowed him in the face until he stopped moving. It took three good blows to his noggin to put him out. I’ll admit, I enjoyed that part.

You can find ways to be okay with dying, but you can’t fake your way through living.

When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets,” Papa would say, “she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.

You know, he doesn't have to be the only one bopped in the noggin when noggin-boppin' time rolls around.

No matter how often you see or talk to someone, no matter how much you know them or don't know them, you always fill up some space in their lives that can't ever be replaced the right way again once you leave it.

Creative people have it hard. There is always something trapped in their noggins yearning to escape like a caged animal, both too free and wild to contain. Little does the world know it will often scrape the inner walls of the mind until it gets what it wants.

You have to forget about people when you can't have them anymore. That's the only way to be okay.

The formidable Lord and Lady Maccon were both prone to yelling loudly and bashing the noggins of those whose opinions did not mesh with theirs.

Secrets, he said, will boil under your skin until it feels like every time you speak, every time you look in the mirror, every time you hug someone or kiss someone or tell someone you love them, it feels like you’re going to die.

You're both living these lives you didn't choose to live in a world full of people telling you what that's supposed to mean. That's messed up.

Rue carried her mother's parasol, which was too ugly to match any of her outfits, but was more sturdy than any of her fashionable ones. This one, felt Rue, could really cause damage to a noggin if applied with enough enthusiasm. Somehow this made her feel more secure about life in general.

You have to forget about people when you can’t have them anymore.

Everyone just outgrew me. Now I think I'm just haunting them.

Be creative. Unlock your imagination. Open your noggin. Do anything.

Noggin is a protein that forms the skull.

No, madam,' I said to the woman in my ESL English. "That's my mom. I came out her asshole and I love her very much. I am seven. Next year I will be eight. I'm doing fine."... You believed, like many Vietnamese mothers, that to speak of female genitalia, especially between mothers adn sons, is considered taboo- so when talking about birth, you always mentioned that I had come out of your anus. You would playfully slap my head and say,'This huge noggin nearly tore up my asshole!

But once in a while, even if nobody mentioned one, the thought of women entered his head all on its own, and once it came it usually tneded to stay for several hours, filling his noggin like a cloud of gnats. Of course, a cloud of gnats was nothing in comparison to a cloud of Gulf coast mosquitoes, so the thought of women was not that bothersome, but it was a thought Pea would rather not have in his head.

The captain scowled at her. Then he threw Petey to the floor with a coarse oath, knocking the scrimshaw and the carving knife from Petey’s hands. Petey gasped for breath as Captain Horn hovered over him, wearing the look of a man who’d just been struck in the noggin by a yardarm and was itching to tear apart the one who’d done it.

I don't know whether any of you, gentlemen, ever partook of a real substantial hospitable Scotch breakfast, and then went out to a slight lunch of a bushel of oysters, a dozen or so of bottled ale, and a noggin or two of whiskey to close up with. If you ever did, you will agree with me that it requires a pretty strong head to go out to dinner and supper afterwards.

All that time I'd spent worrying about why I'm here and how I'm supposed to live had kept me from remembering that Jeremy Pratt will never be back. His people will never have him again. He is Jeremy Pratt who died and stayed dead and will never get a second chance. And even though that hand that spent the last five years holding hers was somehow doing it again, it wasn't Jeremy Pratt's anyone

Oh dear, oh dear, I sat there. I am sitting there still. I am old enough to know that time passing is just a trick, a convenience. Everything is always there, still unfolding, still happening. The past, the present, and the future, in the noggin eternally, like brushes, combs and ribbons in a handbag.

It's a real shame. I like how people act on holidays. Everyone just seems . . . I don't know-- lighter, maybe. Like they're allowed to have fun all day long and eat anything they want and do silly things, and no one cares because, hey, it's a holiday, so why not?

But in that moment I understood what they say about nostalgia, that no matter if you’re thinking of something good or bad, it always leaves you a little emptier afterward.

What are true things, and what are not? What is good, and what is rubbish? Everything you encounter in life, everything you read, you have to use your own noggin.

I’m single. Well, no. I’m a writer so I am one person with many others always running around my noggin, so I guess I’m a... plural?

scissors and shaved the stubble with her electric razor until his noggin was as smooth as her legs. Strangely, his bald head seemed half

Brandon,” Marc said. “Say something so she can hear you.” “You’re in deep shit, Kayli,” Brandon said. “Can he hear me?” I asked Marc. “I can hear you,” Brandon said in my ear, a little fuzzy, like he was standing in another room with the door closed, but I could make out what he was saying. “Just wait until I get a hold of you.” “Raven,” I pretended to plea. “Brandon said he was going to hurt me.” “I’ll kill him,” he said. He jammed his own ear plug into his noggin. “Corey? Yeah. Hit your brother once for me. No, in the dick. No, he won’t hit you back. I promise.” “Cut it out, you guys,” Marc said. “How come I can’t hear Corey?” I asked. “I get Corey,” Raven said. “You get Brandon.” “I want to switch.” “I said stop,” Marc barked at us. Stone, C. L. (2014-02-24). Thief: The Scarab Beetle Series: #1 (The Academy Scarab Beetle Series) (Kindle Locations 5192-5200). Arcato Publishing. Kindle Edition.

We have this way of putting certain ideas out of our minds...we do that. Humans, I mean. We have to bury things, hopes and dreams, so deep sometimes that it takes a little while to access those things once we need them again.

In Brain Watch (1985), superpsychic powers are the result of splitting a doctor’s noggin into a quadruple brain, unlocking his ability to project illusions, become superstrong, and control the pigment in his skin to ensure a really great tan.

Beaming into the thick of a tree without becoming a lifelong tree hugger was a tricky business. A precision job. Scrooby’s job at the Time Saving Agency was a tough one. Billions of lives depended on him not screwing up. Literally billions and billions. Once, he’d screwed up in only a very small way and people wore those little yellow smiley faces on t-shirts for decades afterwards – and that was just a small screw up. He sighed. Here he sat, in the branches of an apple tree in an apple tree orchard – and without a single apple in sight. Below him, Isaac was waiting to get bonked on the noggin with an apple so that he could fulfill history by toddling off to invent gravity and shape scientific and mathematical principles for generations to come. Only one problem – no apples.

Even if I wasn’t so annoying, I’d always been shunned because of what I packed up in the old noggin. I had a totally deserved reputation for being a brain and an attitude. That’s why I went to a school so far from home, to get away from all the people I’d pissed off just by opening my big mouth.

As much as they loved each other, Willow and Gavin had seldom seen eye to eye on anything. And now was obviously no exception. Frustrated, Willow's tongue ran off with her good sense again. "Well," she taunted, "I may be ignorant 'bout some things, but unlike you, my brains are at least where they belond-in my noggin, not in my britches, Daddy!

Okay, so first we get you a new computer and then a Facebook page. Priorities, you know," he said, typing in Kyle's password. "What would I do without you--" "Found her," he interrupted. "She's at Carrie's OK Bar. It's downtown." "What the hell is Carrie's OK Bar?" "It's a karaoke bar. Travis, come on." "Wait, how do you know she's there?" "She checked in there about twenty minutes ago." "What does that mean?" "Oh. Right. Since you left, it's become very important that we all constantly know each other's thoughts, locations, and birthdays." "That's really stupid. Except for in this one very specific situation. I can't go if her fiancé's there, though. That would be too weird." "He's not." "How do you know?" "Because she put 'Girls' Night' with about five exclamation points after it." "Are people just asking to be murdered?" "Pretty much. So are we going?

That's how I knew I loved her so much, because not loving her didn't make any sense once I'd known what it felt like.

I'm not sure why so many people get addicted to pain pills because, at a certain point, not feeling anything becomes much more painful than the disease eating away at your cells.

When one of us is dying, they say a part of all of us is. I think that's why it hurts. We go our whole lives losing little chunks until we can't lose any more of them.

You know things are weird when you start appreciating your farts.

That's the thing. You come back and you expect everyone to be just the way they were when you left. But it's not that easy, okay? You can't just force us all to be how you liked us.

The first time she wore her gi she also mistakenly wore her lucky Valentine's Day panties that showed through where she sweated like a boiled lobster in gauze. And last week in the turtle tot class where she loves to volunteer she bopped one of the cutest tots on the noggin with a foam noodle to get his guards up and he responded by throwing up on her feet. So there were setbacks.

They say the heart is just a muscle. They say it plays absolutely no role in our emotions and that its use as a symbol for love is based on archaic theories of it being the seat of the soul or something ridiculous like that. But as I quietly listened to every word she was saying to me, as each syllable shot a sharp arrow through the phone and into my ear, I swear I felt like my entire chest would collapse in on itself. I knew this feeling. They say a heart can't really break because there's nothing to be broken. But see, I once had to leave everyone I loved, and it felt this same way.

When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets,' Papa would say, 'she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing. "Spread your lips, sweet Lil," they'd cluck, "and show us your choppers!"' This same Crystal Lil, our star-haired mama, sitting snug on the built-in sofa that was Arty's bed at night, would chuckle at the sewing in her lap and shake her head. 'Don't piffle to the children, Al. Those hens ran like whiteheads.' Nights on the road this would be, between shows and towns in some campground or pull-off, with the other vans and trucks and trailers of Binewski's Carnival Fabulon ranged up around us, safe in our portable village. After supper, sitting with full bellies in the lamp glow, we Binewskis were supposed to read and study. But if it rained the story mood would sneak up on Papa. The hiss and tick on the metal of our big living van distracted him from his papers. Rain on a show night was catastrophe. Rain on the road meant talk, which, for Papa, was pure pleasure. 'It's a shame and a pity, Lil,' he'd say, 'that these offspring of yours should only know the slumming summer geeks from Yale.' 'Princeton, dear,' Mama would correct him mildly. 'Randall will be a sophomore this fall. I believe he's our first Princeton boy.' We children would sense our story slipping away to trivia. Arty would nudge me and I'd pipe up with, 'Tell about the time when Mama was the geek!' and Arty and Elly and Iphy and Chick would all slide into line with me on the floor between Papa's chair and Mama. Mama would pretend to be fascinated by her sewing and Papa would tweak his swooping mustache and vibrate his tangled eyebrows, pretending reluctance. 'WellIll . . .' he'd begin, 'it was a long time ago . . .' 'Before we were born!' 'Before . . .' he'd proclaim, waving an arm in his grandest ringmaster style, 'before I even dreamed you, my dreamlets!' 'I was still Lillian Hinchcliff in those days,' mused Mama. 'And when your father spoke to me, which was seldom and reluctantly, he called me "Miss." ' 'Miss!' we would giggle. Papa would whisper to us loudly, as though Mama couldn't hear, 'Terrified! I was so smitten I'd stutter when I tried to talk to her. "M-M-M-Miss . . ." I'd say.' We'd giggle helplessly at the idea of Papa, the GREAT TALKER, so flummoxed. 'I, of course, addressed your father as Mister Binewski.

(N)o matter how often you see or talk to someone, no matter how much you know them or don't know them, you always fill up some space in their lives that can't ever be replaced the right way again once you leave it.

Secrets...will boil under your skin until it feels like every time you speak, every time you look in the mirror, every time you hug someone or kiss someone or tell someone you love them, it feels like you're going to die.

The first thing you need to know about me is I’m not retarded. Or mentally handicapped I guess is the polite term these days. But whatever you call it, I’m not that. I have a mental disability, but I wasn’t born this way. It took extra stupidity for me to get this way— driving drunk, shooting through the windshield, landing on my noggin, and scrambling my brains permanently. I don’t babble and I don’t drool, except sometimes on my pillow when I’m sleeping, but everybody does that.

Most people who have cats would not put up with what I put up with from my cats... You know- clawed furniture, cats who pee all over the place, and everything. But I feel it's their house as much as mine. What I do like about them is since they don't talk, that's sort of a plus. And they really are very mysterious. It's impossible to know what's going on in their tiny noggins. It's very interesting sharing a house with a group of people who obviously see things, hear things, think about things in vastly different ways.

We're all so happy you're feeling better, Miss McIntosh. Looks like you still have a good bump on your noggin, though," she says in her childlike voice. Since there is no bump on my noggin, I take a little offense but decide to drop it. "Thanks, Mrs. Poindexter. It looks worse than it feels. Just a little tender." "Yeah, I'd say the door got the worst of it," he says beside me. Galen signs himself in on the unexcused tardy sheet below my name. When his arm brushes against mine, it feels like my blood's turned into boiling water. I turn to face him. My dreams really do not do him justice. Long black lashes, flawless olive skin, cut jaw like an Italian model, lips like-for the love of God, have some dignity, nitwit. He just made fun of you. I cross my arms and lift my chin. "You would know," I say. He grins, yanks my backpack from me, and walks out. Trying to ignore the waft of his scent as the door shuts, I look to Mrs. Poindexter, who giggles, shrugs, and pretends to sort some papers. The message is clear: He's your problem, but what a great problem to have. Has he charmed he sense out of the staff here, too? If he started stealing kids' lunch money, would they also giggle at that? I growl through clenched teeth and stomp out of the office. Galen is waiting for me right outside the door, and I almost barrel into him. He chuckles and catches my arm. "This is becoming a habit for you, I think." After I'm steady-after Galen steadies me, that is-I poke my finger into his chest and back him against the wall, which only makes him grin wider. "You...are...irritating...me," I tell him. "I noticed. I'll work on it." "You can start by giving me my backpack." "Nope." "Nope?" "Right-nope. I'm carrying it for you. It's the least I can do." "Well, can't argue with that, can I?" I reach around for it, but he moves to block me. "Galen, I don't want you to carry it. Now knock it off. I'm late for class." "I'm late for it too, remember?" Oh, that's right. I've let him distract me from my agenda. "Actually, I need to go back to the office." "No problem. I'll wait for you here, then I'll walk you to class." I pinch the bridge of my nose. "That's the thing. I'm changing my schedule. I won't be in your class anymore, so you really should just go. You're seriously violating Rule Numero Uno." He crosses his arms. "Why are you changing your schedule? Is it because of me?" "No." "Liar." "Sort of." "Emma-" "Look, I don't want you to take this personally. It's just that...well, something bad happens every time I'm around you." He raises a brow. "Are you sure it's me? I mean, from where I stood, it looked like your flip-flops-" "What were we arguing about anyway? We were arguing, right?" "You...you don't remember?" I shake my head. "Dr. Morton said I might have some short-term memory loss. I do remember being mad at you, though." He looks at me like I'm a criminal. "You're saying you don't remember anything I said. Anything you said." The way I cross my arms reminds me of my mother. "That's what I'm saying, yes." "You swear?" "If you're not going to tell me, then give me my backpack. I have a concussion, not broken arms. I'm not helpless." His smile could land him a cover shoot for any magazine in the country. "We were arguing about which beach you wanted me to take you to. We were going swimming after school." "Liar." With a capital L. Swimming-drowning-falls on my to-do list somewhere below giving birth to porcupines. "Oh, wait. You're right. We were arguing about when the Titanic actually sank. We had already agreed to go to my house to swim.

(I)t's too easy to get hung up on people the way we do. I mean, that we all get one person to be ours and that's it. We should look at it differently. We all get lots of people. And maybe we don't always get to have them the exact way we want them, but if we can figure out a way to compromise, you know, then we can keep them all...We all get people that help us make sense of the world, right? We just have to figure out how to keep them however we can.

If you aren't in love, Willow Vaughn, then my name isn't Miriam Brigham." Willow started out of her daydreaming and glanced up from the laundry tub. Miriam stood before her with her fists planted on her hips. "Now, Miriam, I-" "No sense denying it, young lady. You've got that dreamy dazed glow about you. Rider Sinclair isn't much better, the way he hangs around you,like a bee drawn to honey. He's always holding your hand or throwing his arm around you when he thinks I'm not looking." "Well,even if I were in love, it wouldn't change anything. I still don't want another man to look after, and I don't need one looking out for me either. I can take care of myself!" "Course, you can!" Miriam agreed, picking the last sheet out of the rinse water and wringing it out. "Most women can. Look at me, I run a boarding house and support myself just fine. But let me tell you something. That lonely bed of mine is mighty cold on winter nights, even here in the territory." Willow blushed and concentrated on her hands where they rested on the edge of the tub. "Willow," Miriam continued, "you've been managing your pa just fine since he got home. A husband isn't any more difficult to manage than a father, unless, of course, you're married to a no-good lout." Willow dried her hands on the wide white apron around her middle. "But, Miriam, if I don't marry, then I don't have to bother finagling a man to my way of doing things. Staying single makes a hell of a lot more sense!" "Watch the cursing, young lady." Miriam slung the sheet over the line and returned to help Willow with the wash tub. They each grapped a handle and carried it a few feet before setting it down to rest their arms a moment. "Willow, use your noggin, will you? Part of the fun of being a woman is wrapping some big, handsome hunk of a man around your little finger. You do have to use your good sense, though, and realize when you're wrong and he's right. Of course"-Miriam chuckled-"that won't be too often. "And you have to be careful not to hurt a man's feelings overly much. Men are funny creatures. They seldom let their emotions show because they think it isn't manly. But you can tell when they're upset.They start pouting like a little boy.I've always thought that was rather curious.

He is encompassed himself, in the steering clasp of hand on shoulder and scrubber-fluffed noggin bobbing in prayer to the gods of cock, filled with grace from the sacred font of the phallus.

One platter held two fillets of salmon, each thinly sliced and surrounded by appropriate garnishes and small rounds of dark bread. The other platter had a lush assortment of appetizers. "Why, that's perfectly lovely," said Sally, who immediately had a brioche round swathed with foie gras on the way to her mouth. I attacked the salmon. Between chews, Sally managed to say, "Please thank him for us. I'm sure it's a sweatshop in the kitchen, but when there's time, I'd love to meet him." "I'll be sure to tell him. Right now he's a bit like a chicken without its noggin." "This salmon is delicious. Do you smoke it yourself?"I always like to compliment freebies from the kitchen. It usually keeps them coming. This time I was being totally honest; the salmon was incredible. "Aye, we do. And the other salmon fillet on the plate is cured in tequila and lime juice. We do that here as well. And we bake the brown bread that's with it. All of our salmon comes from Ireland, as well as the dark flour for the bread.

Easy, son. You took quite a whack on the noggin," a voice said. At the foot of the bed was an insectile-looking doctor with a pervert's grin on his face and a stethoscope around his neck. The doctor was a praying mantis for a moment, until Daniel blinked himself back to reality.

You don’t see a whole lot of twenty-seven-year-olds just dropping dead at random all willy-nilly, do you?  Especially with blunt-force trauma to the back of their head,” Crumple explained.  “What do you mean blunt-force trauma?” Daisy asked.  “He took a frying pan to the back of his noggin.  What an unsavory way to go.” “Frying pan?  What a weird choice.” It was rather odd.  It also happened to be the murder weapon used in the script too.

Looking uncertain, Lutian came forward. Royal protocol aside, Adara hugged him close in relief of seeing him whole and hearty. “Thank the Lord that you are unharmed. I was terrified of what they’d done to you.” “Methinks they unaddled my noggin, my queen. For the first time in years, I seem to be thinking right again.” She smiled at him, then placed a chaste kiss to his cheek. “We both know there was never anything really wrong with your noggin, Lutian,” she whispered in his ear. “Aye, but ’tis more fun to pretend that there is.

And what have I done?" "What? What?...You've stolen them." With that, Cornelia fled, but Buttercup understood; she knew who "them" was. The boys. The village boys. The beef-witted featherbrained rattleskulled clodpated dim-domed noodle-noggined sapheaded lunk-knobbed boys. How could anybody accuse her of stealing them? Why would anybody want them anyway? What good were they? All they did was pester and vex and annoy.

Voters have soaked up a noggin full of negativity over the last twenty years, with an economy we had to bring back from collapse, plus terrorist attacks and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don’t want to belabor these points, but your listeners know what I’m talking about. I think the antidote is to appreciate what we have, enjoy where we live, and make a positive contribution to our communities. My Cracker Pride campaign is balanced by the spirit of Cincinnatus. He was a farmer and Roman general who was twice made dictator. And he had the forbearance to resign as dictator as soon as he had vanquished Rome’s enemies. He became a civic ideal for good leadership. That’s the spirit I want in my district and in my campaign. - Veda Rabadel, The Tea & Crackers Campaign.

That’s our cue,” Dr. Chadwick noted, managing to approximate a cheerful smile, addressing the room at large. “Everyone please stand behind the yellow line until the doors open. No food, drink, flash photography, or video cameras are permitted. Once aboard the ride, please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times until we come to a full and complete stop. Otherwise, they’re apt to end up in another universe somewhere without ya, and wouldn’t that fry your noggin?

The village boys. The beef-witted featherbrained rattleskulled clodpated dim-domed noodle-noggined sapheaded lunk-knobbed boys.

Driggs turned to Lex. “What is happening right now?” “Couldn’t tell you,” said Lex, equally confused. “I’ll tell you what’s happening,” Broomie said, slamming her bottle down on the table. “That rotten-ass bastard LeRoy and his blind-ass puppets running this town like a stupid-ass carnival, that’s what.” She looked at the Juniors as if she expected them to have the capacity to respond. But there they sat, like a pile of open-mouthed dead fish. “I’m sorry,” Driggs said politely, folding his hands up under his chin, “but I’m going to have to ask you to rewind a little here.” “Rewind? Sure. Twenty years ago, China. Middle of a monsoon. My mother’s water had just broken, and my massive noggin showed no signs of slowing—” “Okay, fast forward,” Driggs jumped in. Pip looked ill. “Orphaned and shipped off to Australia?” Broomie suggested, as if offering chapter options from her autobiography. “Arrested after stealing half a million dollars’ worth of pearls? Freed by LeRoy and brought to DeMyse? Promoted to the second-highest office in the city?” “Okay, right there,” said Driggs. “Go.” She gave him a wide grin.

When I got home from school, Mom was asleep on the couch, still wearing her pink scrubs. She'd worked the graveyard shift, something she only had to do once a month or so. Dad had driven me that morning on his way to work, which was awesome because when he drove me, we always pulled through McDonald's for breakfast. Here's what you should know about my parents: they had very opposing ideas of what was good for me. My mom, for instance, would've forced me to eat a bowl of oatmeal with a half a grapefruit or a banana before driving me to school. But my dad, he figured life was too short for stuff like that. So on mornings like that one, we ate our sausage biscuits and hash browns in secret, together, and we had a silent pact that my mother would never find out.

Truth is, I was the past and I had to find some way to exist in the future.

Rachel pointed to her daughter’s perfectly round noggin. “Look at that. Oh, it’s a little bigger than it was then, but not much. That came out of my vagina. And no one thought to lube her head up. You would think the way these men are in this town that someone would have a tube of K-Y on their persons, but no.

I like to rest my noggin on a nice firm block of man meat, not wallow in the wetlands, you silly swordfish.

That first noggin shot I hit him so hard I bet his fuckin’ dog back home shit a turd in the shape of a praying Jesus.

Now, that isn’t to say that I don’t think Cain should have at least counted to ten, like I was trying to do, but maybe Abel was a meddler, just like my sister. And perhaps, even though Cain had repeatedly told him to back off, Abel decided to stick his nose into his brother’s business one to many times—thus deserving a good wallop on the noggin after all.

Cyrus’s eyes flew open. “The enemy is getting away!” he exclaimed. “We need to stop them!” “He’s conscious!” Alexander exclaimed. “The redcoats have fled from their positions on the Delaware!” Cyrus went on. “Let’s rout them and end the British scourge once and for all!” “He’s conscious, all right,” Erica said sadly. “Unfortunately, his mind’s in the wrong century.” Cyrus glared at all of us. “Don’t just sit there!” he shouted. “Go tell General Washington I need more troops! The fate of the Continental Army hangs in the balance!” “Take it easy, Cyrus,” Catherine said. “You’ve had a nasty bonk on the noggin.” Cyrus’s eyes went wide at the sound of her accent. “She’s British!” he shouted to us. “There’s a spy in our midst! Seize her and I’ll have her tarred and feathered!” He lunged for her, but his legs went out on him and he collapsed to the floor, unconscious again. Catherine looked to Alexander, concerned. “I haven’t seen Cyrus much in the past few years, but I’m assuming that’s an atypical episode?” “Yes,” Alexander agreed. “Although once, when I was quite young, he got a bad concussion and thought he was a member of the Mongol Horde for a week.” He knelt down, hooked his hands under Cyrus’s arms, and hoisted him into the bed. Cyrus started singing “Yankee Doodle” in his sleep.

So you’re left scratching your noggin, wondering how to convert them to your singularly valid viewpoint, which can be mind-numbingly frustrating. Don’t worry, though, you needn’t get on the same page right way; you need only understand you both have your reasons for being on separate pages.

There’s a psychological theory that says we each carry a core maladaptation—a little liar who takes residence in our noggins before elementary school (like Inside Out—the Nightmare Version). Some days we may work to confirm the lies are, in fact, true. That the Voice is right, and that we are very wrong. On those days, life seems to whisper, “No one will ever truly like you, let alone love you.

I can’t believe it worked,” I say. Quint grins. “Believe it, friend! My noggin is superior!” “I wasn’t knocking your noggin.” “Never knock my noggin.

Lamar had joined the navy in ’74, after seeing a commercial. He was seventeen. The navy was a blur of boring oceans, exotic locations, shore-leave parties, pills, and blown checks. Lamar couldn’t see why all the floppy-haired college students down in Madison had gone crazy over Vietnam, getting their noggins thumped by police batons and blowing up a university building. Lamar was having a blast. He was dishonorably discharged in 1977.

I keep getting drunk. There’s no more interesting way to say it. Only drunk does the volume crank down. Liquor no longer lets me bullshit myself that I’m taller, faster, funnier. Instead, it shrinks me to a plodding zombie state in which one day smudges into every other—it blurs time. Swaying on the back landing in the small hours, I stare at the boxy garage and ghostly replicas of it multiplying along either side, like playing cards spread against the slate sky. Though this plural perspective is standard, I’m surprised by my own shitfaced state. The walkman sends punk rock banging across the tiny bones of my ears. And with the phonebook-sized stack of papers on my lap still unmarked, I—once more, with feeling—take the pledge to quit drinking. Cross my heart. Pinky swear to myself. This is it, I say, the last night I sit here. Okay, I say in my head. I give. You’re right. (Who am I talking to? Fighting with?) By the next afternoon, while I’m lugging the third armload of groceries up the back stairs, Dev, who’s bolted ahead to the living room, shrieks like he’s been stabbed, and I drop the sack on the kitchen floor, hearing as it hits what must be a jar of tomato sauce detonating. In the living room, I find Dev has leaped—illicitly, for the nine hundredth time—off the sofa back, trying to land in the clothes basket like a circus diver into a bucket of water. He’s whapped his noggin on the coffee table corner. Now dead center on his pale, formerly smooth forehead, there’s a blue knot like a horn trying to break through. I gather him up and rush to the kitchen, aiming to grab a soothing bag of frozen peas. But I step on a shard of tomato sauce jar, gash my instep, slide as on a banana peel, barely hanging on to Dev till we skid to a stop. I tiptoe across the linoleum, dragging a snail of blood till I can plop him in a kitchen chair, instructing him to hold the peas to his head and not move an inch while I bunny-hop upstairs to bandage my foot. Coming back, I find he’s dragged the formerly white laundry into the kitchen to mop up the tomato sauce. I’m helping, he says, albeit surrounded by gleaming daggers of glass while on his forehead the blue Bambi horn seems to throb. Minutes later, my hand twists off a beer cap as I tell myself that a beer isn’t really a drink after all. So I have another after that to speed preparing the pot roast, and maybe even a third. Before we head to the park, I tuck two more beer bottles in my coat pocket, plus one in my purse alongside a juice box.

Ah, we’re here. Try to look less conspicuous. You stand out like a dick in a nunnery.” “You’re really starting to annoy me.” “Only starting? I must be losing my touch. It’s down here. Watch your noggin.

Noggin power. My most powerful weapon.