365 Days (Part 1) | ✓

172. Crossword Puzzle

172. Crossword Puzzle: Open up the newspaper or find a crossword puzzle online and choose one of the clues to use as inspiration for your writing.

She asked, "What is an un-birthday present?"

Madness in Wonderland was not like madness everywhere else. It was not hidden away in sterilized rooms and cool hospital gowns, or locked behind plain doors in even plainer corridors, like no attention was to be attracted toward it. Madness in Wonderland was flamboyant, extravagant, over-the-top. It was almost attractive to be so beyond reasoning in a place that defied reasoning itself. You were no longer set apart. You were part of the majority. In Wonderland, everyone was mad. In Wonderland, the sane were the dangerous ones.

Yet it was still a land of wonder. Strange.

He was mad. He said so himself. He was crazy in the way that brightened his eyes and allowed him to study outlandish things and blurt out what he thought even if those thoughts were only half-thought. He was mad in a way made him feverish and frantic, but also merry and never confused -- because he was always confused, so it never made any difference to him if he understood anything or not. He was mad like someone utterly without inhibitions is considered mad.

He was mad in a way that allowed him to consider the un-birthdays worth as much celebration as the birthdays. Maybe even more worthy, because there was so many un-birthdays compared to birthdays, and why wouldn't you want to celebrate more and not less? And why wouldn't you want more cake.

Alice still dreamed about him. In her sleep she saw him with his unfocused eyes that still seemed to take in everything and his wide grin that somehow was never a smile if he didn't turn up one corner more than the other. She heard his high laugh that quivered when it went on too long, and then died abruptly along with his smile. She saw his ragged hat, which he never replaced, even though he made more all the time. She dreamt of him the most.

Her parents once asked her what she was singing and why.

"It's my un-birthday," she had said, humming the birthday song.

"Hmph," her father had said from behind his newspaper. It was all boring, Alice thought, full of staid stories and unhappy endings and sanity.

"What nonsense," her mother said.

But that was why Alice sang it.