Mental Bucket

From Unspoken

One story in particular sticks in my mind, probably because Patrick and I were talking about when he came to visit us just a week before he died. In 5th grade, we embarked on an ambitious project to author a compilation of short stories entitled "Mental Bucket." We set up a "work day" and furiously wrote a set of very absurd stories (I believe Stephanie Jansen also joined us to contribute a story). Of course, being the procrastinators that Patrick and I both were, we didn't really do anything with our stories.

About a year later, we decided to write the capstone to our project: My German Village. It consisted of lots of the types of absurdist humor tidbits that Patrick specialized in, like:

-In my German village, the roads are paved in dirt. Dirt and bodies.

There were a few dozen of them, and we laughed hysterically with every one we wrote. We showed it to other people, but no one thought it was even remotely funny besides the two of us. We, of course, still failed to publish a copy of Mental Bucket.

Later in high school, we revisited the project. We solicited more stories from a wider group of friends, we compiled them... and we still failed to publish it. Once again, we also laughed hysterically at My German Village, while no one else did. We revisited the project again when we were both in college, and this time we finally published a single copy of Mental Bucket, which, to this day, I have no idea where it went. We also created a web site (www.mentalbucket.com) which, to this day, is pretty much empty.

Just a week before Patrick passed away, he came over to my house. Just before he left, we were discussing the revival of the Mental Bucket project, reciting My German Village verses to each other, and laughing hysterically.

-Peter Lesperance