It’s after 3 PM Friday.  The wind is picking up in boarded-up Boca Raton.  It’s also spinning my imagination into overdrive.

We had just returned from Flanagan’s where the bar was bustling with elbows furiously bending and all TV’s tracking Irma ominously approaching from the south.

We’re huddled in my third-floor office awaiting her wrath

I’m here with my brave, breast cancer-surviving wife Angela.  Soon to join us is our long-time friend, Lynn Aronberg, whom my talent agency represents.

You might have seen Lynn recently on FOX or INSIDE EDITION or read about her in The New York Post, The Washington Post or on Gossip Extra as we dubbed her the first Trump Divorcee.  She’s bringing her three-legged dog Ivanka, so you can guess her political affiliation.

All of us were forced to evacuate from our condos, ours located slap dab on the whipped-up ocean, just a couple miles east of our makeshift hideout.

Trying to take my mind off Irma, I’m pitching new business. You see, I’m a spin man.  I own a PR firm, TransMedia Group (www.transmediagroup.com) and the irony is that the biggest spinning hurricane in history is spinning toward me.

Bless me Father for I have spin.

A prospective client humorously writes back:  It’s good to see that you’re putting your time to good use in preparation for the Hurricane.

I reply: This is how I prepare for hurricanes—mentally.  It’s more pleasant to think of business than drowning, so right now you are my mental life raft.  Also, you must have amazing physic powers to take your vacation up north at this precarious time for Florida.

She responds:  Esteemed Mr. Madden, we try to keep our physic powers well hidden under the robes.

 Ha!

It’s amazing the twisted, weird, macabre thoughts that cross your mind waiting for a cataclysmic event.

Earlier this morning I shaved.  As I was applying the gel, I couldn’t help imagining myself a prisoner sentenced to death and this was the day of my execution.  Why would I be shaving?  What for?  Who’d care if the prisoner wasn’t clean shaven when Irma whammed him?

After shaving, I flossed, then brushed.  The spin of my electric toothbrush triggered another macabre thought.  I could see an inscription on my tombstone.

“Finally no more flossing.”

Sorry Dr. Viner, but humor is sorely missing in cemeteries and hurricane centers.

Then I noticed my Papa smiling at me.  He was waving as he always does.  But was Pope Frances waving hello from the cover of his book, “The Great Reformer,” or was today he waving arrevederci? 

 OMG!

 I decided this dark thinking needed some brightening.  How about some whistling past Irma’s ever widening graveyard?

So when I went to grab a few handkerchiefs to pack into my travel bag, I purposefully pick out ones monogramed with my initials, TM.  Was this because it might help to identify my body?

I chuckled to myself like Sydney Greenstreet in the Maltese Falcon.

What did I ever do to this Irma?

Mr. Madden’s latest book, “Is there enough Brady in Trump to win the inSUPERable BOWL?” is available on Amazon.

 

TM