The Four-Cylinder Indian

There are many times, especially when I'm alone, when I think I am hearing things that in fact aren't those things at all. Last night as I lay curled up in bed with my cats, reading the last few chapters of my book for that evening, I suddenly thought I heard something resembling an Aboriginal drum ceremony going on. I heard the drums and the high-pitched cries so distinctly that I actually sat up straight to listen more carefully. As soon as I had done so, I realized that this audio tribal symphony was just the washer banging around with its redundant thumping wish-wash rhythm. As per my last post, I have a fantastic palate of imagination, and so I am never too surprised at my mind's capacity to tranform the mundane. Perhaps my Aboriginal ancestors would even have considered me a visionary?
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Okay, I agree, that is taking it a bit too far.
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Although all stimuli that we come into contact with is delicately sifted and garnished with our own special processing flavor, not everything in my every day life makes it through my kaleidescopic imagination. Mostly it's just the usual humdrum input/output stuff that bores me silly. Sure, sometimes I hear chanting phonebooths on windy days, or drums on the wash cycle, but I'm pretty sure that I'm still on a level playing field with the stale norm, and not in need of pharmaceutical assistance anytime soon.
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There have been a few times, though, when the input/output got a bit garbled, and left me laughing to the point of tears. One of these incidents really had nothing to do with my imagination actually, but rather my inability to interpret the strong english accent of a fellow treeplanter who I think, in hindsight, had some motor skill impairing LSD experiences in the 60's that left her tongue near paralysed. To credit myself, I was not the only one who could not interpret what she was saying most of the time.
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We will call this treeplanter 'Sally'.
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So there we were, Sally and I, treeplanting side by side on a flat, brushy clearcut in the back country of Merritt, B.C. in 1997. It was a warm, sunny day, and the last day of the shift before our day off. We were feeling unusually optimistic and very talkative, and our conversation meandered to different topics as we noodled our way through the brush to find open spots for our trees. At one point I asked Sally about England, where she is from. Once in a while during her response, I picked out a few words here and there so that I generally understood what she was talking about. Then she asked me about my heritage, and I told her that I am Metis - having 1/4 Aboriginal blood from my father's side. We then got separated by some bushes for a while, and when we came back together again, I started talking about a recently purchased car with an engine that needed work. And so I rambled on about the car between huffing breaths as I tried to pick up the pace a bit. I could only faintly hear Sally at that point as she trundled along with me, and combined with my scarce ability to translate her unique twist on the english language, I completely misunderstood what came next.
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"What kind of engine does your car have in it?", was what I thought Sally had said.
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"A four cylinder", I replied. I figured perhaps Sally was going to give me some insight into my car's engine. But instead, she just gave me a confused, blank look, nodded her head appeasingly, and said, "oh".
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Later that day, when I rejoined the rest of my crew at the tree cache, one of my fellow planters said to me, "Hey, I heard that your dad is a four-cylinder Indian". Everyone was bent over laughing while I stood there perplexed, demanding to know what on earth they were talking about. Finally they let up and told me what Sally had been mulling over since our earlier conversation.
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"She said that she asked you what kind of Indian your father had in him. To which you replied that he was a four-cylinder".
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"So", they asked between gasping laughter, "how many cylinders does that make you?"
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