Slightly Unnecessary Vehicle

CHIP OF WISDOM:

"A man without self-control is as defenseless as a city with broken-down walls."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

I am dangerous.

I ought to be locked up.

Seclusion.

The tank.

The hole.

Put me away.

Let me tell you something: if I can convince my wife that we need to spend serious amounts of money on something-- anything-- then I am good, I am very, very good, and, therefore, ergo, I am bad, I am very, very bad, and ought to be punished.  

Locked away.

Goodbye, key!

Feed me through the bars.  

Watch your little piggers, though.

This fucker bites.

-------------------------------------

While our children were in utero, my wife and I had one last hurrah.  A vacation for soon-to-be lost souls.  A fling, a flitting journey to an unfamiliar (to us) land.  We were going to go to Canada, but we decided that wasn't far enough.  So we settled on Ireland.  I'm an Anglophile, she's already been to England, so that's kind of how we decided.  That's how these things happen sometimes, you know.  

Describing the trip itself, I think, is largely pointless now.  There were lots of sheep, and sweaty, Australians stinking of alcohol, there were breakfasts of dubious virtue and provenance, and funny street signs and license plates.  It was Ireland.  We made lots of tea in our various, quirky hotel rooms and I got a brochure for the Nissan Micra, which I fell in love with, and which will never be brought to this country because it's far too small, far too fuel efficient, and far too cute.

Speaking of cars in Ireland, though, what my wife and I saw there comforted us.  See, waiting back at home for us we had two vehicles: a 2009 Honda Fit (small but remarkably ergonomic) and a 2002 Volvo S-40 (small and remarkably less so).  We were doing our fair share of freaking out in those days knowing that two babies were coming and our driveway (we don't actually have a driveway) was shockingly bereft of a station wagon (remember those?), a SUV, or a minivan.  

"Families with twins can't live without one [or all three] of those vehicular soul-killers," we thought.

But, the funny thing was, in Ireland, we were taught a valuable lesson by our sensible European neighbors.  Everywhere we walked-- towards the National Botanical Gardens in Glasnevin, or to some cool Turkish restaurant in Cork, we saw, parked and in motion, impossibly tiny cars, containing two car seats.  

Oh, we thought.  

Right.

Fears were set at ease.  The children were born on a frigid December night, and were transported home in my Volvo S-40.  My wife and I were safely ensconced among six undeployed (but ready and waiting) airbags and our tussies grilled by two delicious ass-warmers nestled under two unfathomably sumptuous beige leather seats, and our children were snug as two pints of Guinness in the back, going we we we, all the way home.

And a few months went by.  Half a year, to be exact.

Then, something snapped in my head.   

This car isn't big enough.  

This car is too old.  

We need something bigger.

We need something newer.

I had forgotten all the lessons we'd learned in Ireland, (except for the one about not eating baked beans before eight o'clock in the morning), and off I was, going off, acting nuts, looking at SUVs online, and working my wife.

I worked her like a suspect in The Box.  

Eventually, my wife, practical, sensible, frugal, conservative, disapproving, skeptical and cautious, relented.

She even started to believe it was a good idea.  Maybe that's pushing it, but she saw the idea had merits.  Which, I'm not going to lie, it did.  But, I'm also not going to lie: we could have kept the Volvo and been fine.  People in Ireland do it.

But, no.

I sold the Volvo, to a friend of hers from college-- ON FACEBOOK FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, and then I spent a lot more money, you know, OUR money, on a used CR-V that is, to quote my wife, "spartan".  

No leather.

No tussie warmers.

No power seat.

No faux wood on the dash and the shifter.

And, of course, none of those things mean anything-- you know, until you don't have them anymore.  It has plenty of things the Volvo didn't have, of course-- like a thousand or so extra cubic feet of storage space, and 4-wheel drive, which comes in handy when you work at a place that pretends you are "essential personnel" (it's fun to pretend, isn't it?) during things like blizzards and hurricanes, and, when the babies are both flipping out, my wife can actually fit in between their two gargantuan car seats and anesthetize them with snacks or, on rare occasions, her boobs.  

Admittedly, can't do that in an eleven year old S-40.  

I miss that car, predominantly on long trips, where those succulent Swedish cowhides made you feel like you were riding astride the silken back of a lipstick lesbian slowly undulating against a bearskin rug.  (I should have gone into advertising.)  And, as greatly feared benchmarks of the coming years approach, I find myself pining for those several thousand dollars that went jumping into the back pocket of a Honda salesman in Northeast Philly.  Our tiny house requires that we finish the basement so that both of our children can have a bedroom of their own sometime in the next two years.  

"We're going to have to take out a loan for that, right?" I asked my wife a couple nights ago, lying awake, terror-stricken, in bed.

"Yup," she said.

I did that.  Me.  My choice.  My SUV.  Mine.

And as it lustily consumed cripplingly expensive fuel, and as my left butt-cheek falls asleep on car rides that last longer than half-an-hour, I marvel quietly at my frightening persuasive qualities.  

It scares me.  Make it stop.  

I haven't ruined our family financially, by any means, but I haven't done us any fab favors, either.  It's funny-- one of the great advantages of the CR-V showed itself on July 4th, when my wife and I had my inlaws come over and babysit while she and I went to the fireworks.  Not wanting to be around, you know, people, we parked in a supermarket parking lot and climbed up onto the roof of the car and spread out languidly on our butts propped up on our elbows and watched the dazzling colors and the booming bangs from our own personal observation deck.  A couple days later, while walking to the car in the morning, I noticed that our combined weight, nominal though it is, had caved in the CR-V's roof.  

Well that's just fine, I thought to myself.  Now even the black eye has a black eye.    

A Real Pro

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 30, Verse 20

"There is another thing too: how a prostitute can sin and then say, 'What's wrong with that?'"

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

When I was a budding adolescent, there was a wonderful VHS tape that I was rather smitten with.  It was called "COPS: Too Hot for TV".  I ordered this through the mail.  My parents didn't know.  Parents don't need to know everything.

Right?

Of course right.

"COPS: Too Hot for TV" wasn't exactly like what it sounds.  There was mostly just a lot of obscenity, you know, that is omnipresent on regular "COPS" broadcasts, and is just bleeped out by the very busy censors who censor these types of things and are probably chronic masturbators who drive Philips head screws through their penis heads while strangling themselves with white tube socks, lying underneath the boardwalk drunk on paint-thinner and wearing underwear made of old Time magazines. 

Anyway, what I mostly found enjoyable were the bloopers-- yes, COPS has bloopers.  There's the veteran officer who gets out of his car to initiate a traffic stop and, the second he is about to walk up to the suspect vehicle, an old Cadillac with tail-fins, it backfires loudly causing the officer to scream "HO--LEEEE SHIT!" and then crack up once he realizes he's not about to be killed. 

There's a very old, short clip of two detectives barreling down a city street in an unmarked car and they can't get the blue flashing light on the dashboard to work, and then the siren won't turn on, so the inventive detective riding shotgun grabs the radio mic, turns it to speaker function and yells "EEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRR-EEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRR-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEER!!!!" doing a great impersonation of a siren while his partner cracks up and says, "Unbelievable", shaking his head.

Once I became an EMT and one shift happened to be piloting an ambulance that had a siren that sounded like the noises an elderly basset hound being raped by a cow might make, my mind traveled fondly to that clip from "COPS: Too Hot for TV" and I smiled and said, "Unbelievable" to my partner.

I guess lots of people bought the VHS for the same reason I initially did: they were sure it was gonna have boobies.  And don't get me wrong-- it did.  There were boobies.  Like the oddly triangular, tattooed (blue flames) boobies the toothless crack fiend displayed while impulsively taking off her shirt for two stoic officers who accused her of hiding drugs somewhere on her person.  During the unceremonious striptease, she muttered something absolutely incomprehensible-- even after multiple viewings, I still have no idea.  Teeth are really good to have if you want to be understood in this world.  I have a dentist appointment on August the 27th at 4.

There are better looking boobies in this VHS.  The ones that really stand out belonged to a young prostitute who was caught in a police sting operation in Las Vegas.  The undercover officer was Middle Eastern, and he was playing a wealthy tourist from some Arab country or other, white dress shirt, necktie and headscarf.  Mustache.  Classic.  The prostitute's face was obscured, but you could tell she was no toothless crack fiend.  She was probably a Lady of the Pills.  You know, classy.  She had very tiny nipples, I remember that.  Thinking, God-- they're so tiny.  Like little M&Ms.  Of course, back in the days when I was watching this, I had never seen a woman's nipples in the flesh

PUN INTENDED

and so what the fuck did I know about nipples?  I knew a hell of a lot more about M&Ms.  And Doritos. 

Every time I watched that tape, and, yeah, I watched it, um, a few times, I got sad when they arrested her.  Not because I didn't get to see her do terrible things on that polyester hotel bedspread, but because she had M&M nipples.

They say you can tell a lot about a society by the people whom it imprisons.  If that is true, then America is racist, sexist, idiotic, paranoid, uninformed, irrational, and it is also just, moral, unflinching, righteous and thoroughly insane. 

FREE THE M&M NIPPLE'D ONES!  MR. GORBACHEV, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!

Prostitution's a funny thing.  You pay someone and they have sex with you and then it's over.  Is that wrong?  I don't know.  I suppose it's wrong if you're in a committed relationship with someone and you do it, or if you're married, or if you don't use a condom, or if you get/give an STD, or if you knock the prostitute up, or if the woman is forced into the profession against her will, or if she's a minor, or if you inflict physical harm on her, of if she's mentally ill, or if she's supporting a drug habit, or if you're doing it near a school and some impressionable minor sees it and gets irreparably damaged for life because of that unfortunate visual, but, barring any or all of those aforementioned qualifiers-- is it wrong? 

I don't know. 

People say pornography and prostitution objectifies women, and I'm not so sure that's true, anymore than slapstick objectifies Moe, Larry and Curly.  It's a service they're getting paid to perform, and you get something out of it.  If anything, it's mutual exploitation.  I don't know if I was objectifying anyone by buying "COPS: Too Hot for TV" back in the day.  It's not something I'm particularly proud of-- I'd much rather brag about how I watched the 1939 film adaptation of "Wuthering Heights" with Laurence Olivier when I was eight (I didn't)-- but we've only got what we've got in this world.  Our stories.  Our M&Ms.  Our bits and our bobs.  Our thoughts and our feelings. 

Unsupported, unsubstantiated, undercooked.

Understood.       

Happy, happy. Joy, joy.

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 15, Verse 15

"When a man is gloomy, everything seems to go wrong; when he is cheerful, everything seems right!"

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

I'm a happy-on-the-inside kind of clown, I guess.

Inside, my heart is a rainbow.  My eyes, kaleidoscopes.  My colon's a disco ball.  I fart unicorns.

I am a happy man.  

I'm told, though, that I have dysthymia, which, incidentally, SpellCheck tried to correct to "hysteria".

(I have that, too.)

Dysthymia comes from the ancient Greek word "melancholy" and, even if you don't speak Greek, or DSM, I'm sure you can pretty much guess what it means.  It's not so good.  Of course, it's not a hole in the heart or the brain or an extra one in the nose, so it's not so bad either.  People live with it.  They deal.  The smart ones take meds.  The dumb ones, like me, hand over $50 every other week and slide around aimlessly on a pillowy leather couch in a climate-controlled office and vainly complain, whine, and refuse to take meds.  

"This has been going on for a long, long time," my therapist said, like he knew, "I mean, you were telling your mother you needed to see a therapist when you were, what, eight?  Nine?"

"I don't know.  It's hard to remember dates.  It was the eighties.  We were all high on Tab and Cosby sweaters."

I'm funny in therapy.  You know, for a dysthymic guy.

I meant what I said earlier, though-- inside, I am happy.  I'm desperately in love with my family, I am loved and supported at work.  What few friends I have left are straight and strong and true.  Well, they're not all straight.  I have my (physical) health, aside from asthma, and I can run and jump and prance and mince, and, trust me, that comes in handy when your hobby is Gilbert & Sullivan.  I can even sing a little, too.  I love folk music and the Love Bug and falling down and getting up and the whole stupid thing.  

I love it.

My basset hound has a hundred thousand wrinkles.

I love it.

Life is good and fun and sweet, even when it's terrible and a kick in the balls and a hole in the body and a wreck of a mess of a sham of two mockeries of a sham.

It's good.  I love it and it's good.  

Still, when I see certain people bound enthusiastically into a room grinning like Garfield in a lasagna advertisement, I want to kick them in the teeth and never stop.

Happiness as an outward expression fills me with anger.  

Who the fuck are you to smile so?  What gives you the right?  Don't you know there's a patient in that room strapped to his bed?  Don't you know that the ceiling's falling down?  Don't you know?

Or don't you care.

I mean, look at these assholes.  Teeth.  Crinkled eyes.  Laugh lines.  And, what the fuck-- is she his wife or his daughter or his schtuppenfrau or what?  And what does the caption say?

AUTO ACCIDENT CLIENT

What the hell, exactly, are you so happy about?  Like you're watching "When Harry Met Sally" together.  No.  You wrecked your Kia because you were texting your cat and lolz you got a big settlement because you blamed Nokia because if the @ button on your phone hadn't stuck you wouldn't have had to take your kaleidoscopes off the road and I hope you die.  You're an ad for a shill shyster slapped onto the ass of a bus, I get it.  

Still, die.

I wonder how much shill shyster bus ad models get paid.

In college, when I took Acting II, my professor regarded me silently one day and, when she broke her silence, it was, as usual, a doozy:

"You know, my dear, you'll never be a model or a leading man, but that face of yours was made for character roles."

And I was tempted to spit in her eye, but she was right, of course.  I have never, and will never, play the romantic lead in a show.  You'll never see me grinning like Rock Hudson on the back of a SEPTA bus, because, when I smile, my lips stay closed to hide my teeth, not just because they're misaligned, but because I prefer to keep my happiness, my true pulsating insatiable glow, beneath my olive skin and my unseemly amount of body hair.  Because, for some reason, there's some piece of me, and I don't know what it is, that tells me every moment of every day that that's where it belongs.  

So down it goes.  

I have my grandfather's smile.

I have my mother's smile.  

But I have it.  It's mine.  And, dysthymia be damned; I love it.

A Sensible Fish

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 27, Verse 12

"A sensible man watches for problems ahead and prepares to meet them.  The simpleton never looks, and suffers the consequences."

 

---

 

CHIPPED WISDOM:

 

What if you were a fish.

 

You know, in a tank.

 

(A fish tank.)

 

And there was brightly-hued gravel on the bottom and little fishy shit squiggles were all mixed in there.  And there was faux seaweed made in China and a little treasure chest, too.  And the little scuba man with the fucking Hannibal thing on his head. 

 

And you're the fish.

 

But, see, you're not just "the fish".  No, that would be too easy.  And you don't get off that easy, pard'ner.  Nah, sorry.  No, you're the fish, alright, but you're also a certain kind of fish.

 

You're a Nervous.  Fish. 

 

Nervousfish.

 

Pescadorus Nerviensus. 

 

You're one fucked fish. 

 

Now, as a Nervous Fish, you have certain... responsibilities.  Certain... obligations.

 

You have things to do, and you have to do them in a very certain way.

 

Or, rather, you have things to do, and you have to NOT do them in a very certain way.

 

Because, you know, you're a Nervous Fish, and a Nervous Fish can't just go around doing the things it has to do because it's, um, nervous.

 

TREASURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Yeah.  There's TREASURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! down there, but there's a little problem.  You're just a wee bit nervous about doing anything other than holding perfectly, serenely still in the water. 

 

Christ-like. 

 

Except he'd be on top of the water.  Wait a minute-- wasn't Jesus a fish?  And he went with a loaf of bread?  And a Bearnaise sauce?  

 

I really wanted to go to Catholic school when I was a kid, because they wore neckties.  I loved ties, even as a six year old.  I knew enough to know I couldn't get away with wearing one in public school, even an effete public school, I had enough restraint to stop myself from doing that.

 

You know, because, even at age 6, I was a pretty nervous fish.

 

What will they say about me?

 

Who will be my friend?

 

Will somebody choke me out with my tie in the bathroom?

 

Okay, maybe I didn't think that last one when I was six.  Anyway, I didn't go to the bathroom in school until I was in 12th grade. 

 

*****  SO IT WASN'T EVEN AN ISSUE  *****

 

I hate fish, not because they're boring and because they don't make sounds and because they look at you all fucked up-- I hate them because they're so free.  I mean, yeah, they're in a bowl or a tank and they're actually terribly restricted, but they don't know that.  They're too stupid, with their stupid fishy brains the size of a tick fart.  Watching a fish slide and glide through the water, that's an incredibly irritating experience for a Nervous Fish to watch. 

 

See, because there are no nervous fish.  You never see a fish hesitate.  A fish never goes "Hmm, God, I don't know, should I shoot myself effortlessly across this glistening scenery of plastic flora until I am satisfied with the distance I have achieved or shouldn't I?  Shit, um, well, let me make a pro and con list and a Ven diagram and a Zone of Proximal Development and a clothing chart and a call to my clergy and let me sleep on it and oh wait I don't sleep and let me toss it around a bit and let me run it by a few dozen people a consortium a focus group a parent teacher conference a minyan let me stroke the rabbi's beard and rub Buddah's belly and Band-Aid Christ's stigmata and let me pop a pill and canvass the neighborhood and profile suspects and step out of the car sir and wait no wait oh yes no wait should I no wait no no no no no no."

 

You never see a fish doing that. 

 

They just fucking go.

 

And I hate them. 

 

I can't just go.

 

Let it go.

 

Go.

 

---

 

*No fish, Nervous or otherwise, were harmed in the making of this blog. 

 

**I'm lying, but that's okay.  You must be used to it by now.      

In the Top, Right-Hand Corner

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 27, Verse 1

"Don't brag about your plans for tomorrow - wait and see what happens."

 

---

 

CHIPPED WISDOM:

 

It's 9:02.

 

In roughly an hour, I will be in bed.

 

In spite of the relentless, throbbing heat of the second floor of our house, I will sidle up close to my wife as I have done for ten-ish years and hold onto her as if she were a life-raft. 

 

Because, basically, she is.  A life-raft with glasses.  And moles.  I love to count her moles.  On her leg, she has three moles that are aligned in an almost perfect diagonal.  I like those three the best.  There's a crescent moon-shaped one on her big toe.  I forget if it's the left one or the right.  I'm not good with left and right.  They gave us numbers in first grade, and you had to put your number on every piece of paper you wrote on or drew upon, in the top, right-hand corner. 

 

Top, right-hand corner.

 

My number was 16. 

 

I wrote it on everything. 

 

You're never too young to learn that, in this life; you're just a fucking number.

 

Tomorrow, I will go to work and stare at a screen for a long time.  No one will tell me I have to write the number 16 on the top, right-hand corner of what I'm working on, but my employee I.D. number is 30014.

 

It's on my paystubs, so I know it's real.

 

Tomorrow I will do things and learn things and say things and I will say some stupid things and some insightful things and most of the things I'll say will pass for normal, banter, palaver, junk.  It's symbolic of JUNK!

 

On Sunday I had some direction about Monday.  But then Monday came and I did what I had to do for Monday and Tuesday, well, I just don't know.

 

I don't know about Tuesday.

 

There's a lot that I don't know.

 

There's a lot, probably, that you don't know either, but you're better at hiding it than I am, and I hate you for it.  No, hate's a strong word.  I detest you.  No, I adore you.  It's going to be okay.  I love you.  I love you all the time.  I love you in the top, right-hand corner.

 

I am Number 16. 

 

It was suggested to me today that I use my anxiety, channel it, use it as a springboard to thrust me into the work that I have to do.  I liked that suggestion.  I don't know how to do it, but I liked it.  As I may have said before, I like suggestions, and I often take them.  So don't suggest that I go fuck myself.

 

That was a joke.

 

That joke is symbolic of JUNK!

 

My mother used to love planning for tomorrow.  She had a clothing chart that she would make every Sunday-- she'd sit herself down in the living room, cross-legged on one of those stupid marshmallow chairs that they just got rid of, and she'd take a spiral notebook and she'd make a list of what she was going to wear to work, Monday through Friday-- the navy blue blouse with the green leaves and the big orange blossoms with the green linen pants and the beige sandals.  She even wrote down which earrings she'd wear, too.  I don't know if my mother still makes clothing charts anymore.  I don't know anything about her anymore.  Not really.

 

If I had to guess, I'd bet that she doesn't make clothing charts these days.  These days her life is filled with mourning the loss of her son-in-law, and helping to bring up her grandson and, when there's time, squeezing my babies in for a visit every now and again.  She's tortured by ghosts, tormented by a very painful reminder that life blows-- a reminder she hadn't received in many decades.  The seventies, eighties and nineties were good to her-- no, great.  They were great.  But it's been crash-and-burn time lately.  Who can plan for tomorrow when you don't know what the fuck is going on today, or what the hell happened yesterday?

 

I became anxious in second grade.  64 math problems in 5 minutes.  I wasn't Number 16 anymore, and I had to put my name, my real name, on the top of this paper and do 64 math problems in 5 minutes. 

 

It never happened.

 

I always shut down.

 

Shivered.  Shook.  Ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong.

 

Ring-a-ding-ding.

 

DING!

 

Time's up!

 

One time I got a zero.  Didn't even try.  Couldn't.  Or, wouldn't.  I don't know.  Still.  Ever get a zero on something?  It's hard to get a zero, even in second grade.

 

Second graders shouldn't have to know anxiety.  My thing is, if it's a thematic element in any given Woody Allen film, you don't need to be experiencing it at seven years old.  But there it was. 

 

And we always knew when the tests were coming, because that corduroy pants-wearing Nazi would tell us, and so I knew.  But I couldn't plan.  For tomorrow.  There was only dread.  No nightmares because there was no sleep, not for years. 

 

These days, as the full-time workerbee father of twins, I can't help but fall asleep moments after I scoop my wife up in my arms.  There's lots of waking up way before the alarm clock says, "Number 16?  Time to shine," but, for a few moments, there is peace.  Peace.

 

Let us have peace, in the top, right-hand corner. 



Knight Terror

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 27, Verse 9

"Friendly suggestions are as pleasant as perfume."

 

--

 

CHIPPED WISDOM:

 

I remember when I was younger, people used to come to me for advice.  About issues.

 

Issues, man. 

 

And it's funny that that happened, because, as things went, I was a pretty sheltered kid and, later, a pretty sheltered guy.  Even today, there's much of the world I haven't experienced.  Sure, I've dated a Catholic girl and I've been to Indonesia, I've owned maybe thirteen cars or so, but, all in all, that's not saying very much.  Those aren't things that necessarily qualify one as "worldly". 

 

And yet, people came to me.  They sought me out.  I didn't set up a fucking lemonade stand and sit there looking erudite.  It kind of just happened.

 

Maybe it's the glasses, or the tucked-in shirts.  The conservative haircut.  The way I'll look you in the eye.  There's something in there that people trust.  On my good days I think, well, yea-- they should.  They should trust me.  On my bad days, well, my bad days are bad. 

 

I have bad days.

 

I can remember back in high school, my peers would come to me asking for relationship advice.  I was answering questions about and giving advice on relationships before I'd even had one myself.  It was pretty ridiculous.  And sometimes the advice I gave wasn't half bad.  I never said anything outlandish like, "To spice things up, wear underpants made of Fruit Roll-Ups," or "Show up to the prom in blackface and a kilt".  It was all pretty run-of-the-mill

 

---

 

So.

 

I started this post around twenty minutes ago. 

 

My son cried.  It stopped after a minute.  I re-initiated blog 2.0.  Then my daughter started.  She did not de-escalate.  She did not calm down.  She did not nuzzle her boo-bear bankie and drift off into that good night.  She didn't descend into the ether.  She screamed. 

 

Fucking screaming.

 

That's what I remember most about those first few weeks.  Okay, months.  Incessant, unholy screaming.  They were bananas, those kids.  And you had no idea what the problem was.  Even if you knew and could fix it, it didn't matter.  It was too late.  Always too late. 

 

YOU ARE ALWAYS TOO FUCKING LATE A CHILD NEEDS TO BE SERVED YESTERFUCKINGDAY DON'T YOU GET IT YOU DUMB SHIT

 

?

 

She's quiet now, so I'm writing again.  About that now.

 

When they would both go off at the same time, I would close my eyes and silently pray for my own death. 

 

I've only really ever prayed that I would die one time in my life before, and it was when I was a sophomore in college, and I was dating that Catholic girl.  She had some kind of bizarre allergy to sugar.  To lots of things, but sugar?

 

Come on.

 

Anyway, I bought her a birthday cake from Dairy Queen.  A diet birthday cake.  Or pie.  It was a diet ice cream pie.

 

Why do such abominations before the Lord exist?  For weird Catholic chicks, I guess.

 

Anyway, this diet ice cream pie was really, really good.  So I ate A LOT of it.

 

An hour later, I was curled up on the toilet of the all girls dormitory with sweat streaming down my entire body.  My hair was soaked.  Head, body hair, pubes, ass hair-- sopping wet.  I was shaking.  Shivering.  I was so cold.  My intestines felt like they were warehousing an intoxicated worm colony dancing the cucaracha down to my colon.  I prayed, quite earnestly, for death.  I wanted nothing more than for the floor beneath that girls dorm toilet to open up and send me down the shit-n-slide to hell. 

 

Please, God, make it come now, I thought, give it to me.  I can remember that feeling coming back holding two infants, screaming the bejesus out of themselves, directly into each of my ears. 

 

The sickening helplessness, the impotence, the blinding fear.  They would scream so loud sometimes I would see colors.  Spots.  Stars.  Things. 

 

I saw things.

 

When my children are sick, I don't know what to do.  I think I do, but then my wife thinks something else, and I don't know.  I doubt her.  I doubt myself.  The websites.  The chatter.  My instincts.

 

They're not so good.

 

I don't know that I have instincts sometimes.  I have what people tell me and then I feel like I blindly go with something. 

 

She's screaming again.

 

Oh my Christ. 

 

Maybe it'll stop this time.  I don't know.  I don't think so.  Maybe she had too much diet ice cream pie.  Maybe she's having her first nightmare.  When do they have nightmares?  Oh, you don't know.  Nobody knows.  You can't get inside a 19-month-old's skull.  You wouldn't want to.  It's weird in there.  Applesauce and milk.  Who knows.

 

On TV, you pick a screaming baby up and it nuzzles up against you and it goes instantly silent, like somebody pushed the mute button on the remote.  In real life, there is snot and hot, steamy tears and back arching and thrashing and it's horrible. 

 

It's funny to me that this post started out being about advice.  Some people who have children turn into experts and anyone remotely associated with them who has kids has to be subjected mercilessly to their endless pontifications about parenting. 

 

If I may?  Don't ever, ever come to me for advice about parenting.  Or anything.  I don't know anything anymore-- I don't remember.  I am Sir Knownothing.  I am Lord High Asksomeoneelse.  I am broken and funny and desperate and hanging in there kid and supplied and demanded and hungry and aching and I can play six chords on the banjo and make polite conversation and garlic marinated broccoli. 

 

That's it.

 

That's all.

Good Old Sergeant Chevalier

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 27, Verse 20

"Ambition and death are alike in this: neither is ever satisfied."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

"The Pink Panther Strikes Again" is, arguably, his best Panther.  Peter Sellers absolutely shines in what is a pretty poorly-constructed film.  Its plot is outlandish and ridiculous, though criticism of the plot of "Pink Panther" films is, in itself, as ludicrous as critiquing the plots of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, or, frankly, soap operas, but the slapstick comedy is some of the best you'll sever see on film.  This film boasts the quintessential Cato vs Clouseau fight-- it's as long as it is hilarious, and very creative-- and one of the best pratfalls performed by one of the best prat's (and the best prat's stuntman, too, no doubt).  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you 33 delicious seconds of Sellers: 

Beautiful, wasn't he?

One of the quieter moments of the film takes place on the pastoral grounds of a psychiatric hospital where Chief Inspector Clouseasu's former boss and rival Chief Inspector Dreyfuss has been involuntarily committed after Clouseau made him crack.  I know, I know, no one can make you crack.  Anyway, Clouseau and Dreyfuss are making a painful attempt at congenial small-talk, and Dreyfuss asks after some old colleagues.

"Sergeant Chevalier sends his regards," Clouseau says, trying for conversation.

"Sergeant Chevalier?  Ha ha ha-- good old Sergeant Chevalier.  How is he anyway?" asks Dreyfuss.

"Ah, well, you know, there are some who will be leaders, and some who will be followers.  Sergeant Chevalier, I'm afraid," opines Clouseau, "will always be a follower."

Dreyfuss can't help laugh at this, with a maniacal twitch of his eye.  

"And you, Clouseau, a leader?  Eh?  Always a leader?  Onward and upward to the top?!"

"It is my destiny," says Clouseau, "my karma."

I believe more in Peter Sellers than I believe in destiny or karma-- at least I know he existed once.  My mother is a big fan of "everything happens for a reason" which is kind of like the poor man's destiny.  I can remember, a short time ago, interviewing for a job and telling the Executive Director, "Look, I don't have designs on your job.  I just want to come in, and do a good job for an organization I care about.  I don't mind being a cog in a wheel.  I just want it to be a good wheel."  And don't you know she offered me the job?  I told her that "I basically have no ambition", and she offered me the fucking job.  Gotta love America, right?

Ambition is a funny thing.  Those of it who have too much scare the shit out of everybody, and those who have too little everyone writes off as an ass-scratch nail clipping.  I'm somewhere in the middle, but definitely closer to the ass-scratch nail clipping than, say, Mussolini.  In everything except theatre.  If there was a part in a show I wanted, I prepared for that audition.  I am an aggressive auditioner, and I will try everything I know how to do to charm my way into a director's heart.  Pants.  Whatever.  And, unlike smarter actors, I won't take another part if it's offered to me.  I am a child.

I want THAT one.

WAAAAA!

And, usually, I get what I want where the footlights are concerned.

Life is a different story.  Since college, I haven't run or walked so much as crawled.  My occupational path hasn't been linear or logical or luminous.  It's been what it's been, and I'm tired of apologizing for it.  There is a cadre of boys with whom I was very friendly back in elementary school, and they're all doctors.  They all went to the same college, and the same medical school, I think they fucked some of the same chicks and now they're all doctors.  And that's fine for them.  That didn't happen to me, partially because I didn't want it to, and partially because I can't do math without counting on my fingers and the scientific extent of my life is occasionally contemplating watching an episode of "NOVA".  But I went off that show when they re-did the theme music. 

I suppose I'm a little bit like Sergeant Chevalier-- a follower, but I'm not always sure who I'm following, and I don't know if that makes me better or worse off than the fictitious Surete police sergeant spoken about by Herbert Lom and Peter Sellers on that insane asylum bench.  I got a new position at work-- a promotion, we can call it, because I suppose that's what it is.  And I am extraordinarily grateful for it but I'm also terrified of it.  I know that I will disappoint a lot of people if I fail to perform my duties-- not that I'm even all that sure what exactly my duties are at the present moment-- and I know that the stakes, for me and for my family, are too high to crash and burn on the runway. 

Things change as you get older, and I'm not just talking about the cartilage erosion in your knees. It used to be that my ambition was to not say something idiotic during a date, or to get through a shift on the ambulance without ripping off the light-bar at a drive-thru restaurant.  Back then, that was a big fucking deal.  Today, everything feels like that.  Every second of every moment of every breath of every footstep is terribly, dreadfully important, and my ambition now is to make it to the next moment, the next foothold, the next sip of coffee and we're striving and it's furious and the wind burns the cheek and the desert goes on forever, at least, I hope it does.  Because good old Sergeant Chevalier will always be a follower.  

And I was known as the Pavlova of the parallels.     

Goddamn Crows Are Laughin'

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 27, Verse 19

"A mirror reflects a man's face, but what he really is like is shown by the kind of friends he chooses."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

Lion looks at Max and says, "Boy, some partner I picked."

Max replies, "You didn't pick me.  I picked you."

Sometimes you forget.  You know-- you forget which way it went.  Time does its thing and you forget things.  That's how it is, you know.  And, of course, in the end, does it really matter?  Who picked who-- who said what when and how.  The inflection, the silences, the good mornings that pass between.  Who picked up the check and who drove.  

It doesn't matter, I suppose.  Not all that much.

I've been very fortunate in my life as far as friends go.  I've lost many of them, but it's been a gentle loss, an easing away, like they're all out there together in some canoe and I'm standing there on the dock and I can see them and the water isn't really moving but they're sort of out there, just floating, floating listlessly away and it's so gradual you don't even really notice it and you wave, and they even wave back once in a while.  Once a year.  On your birthday.  They do the Facebook thing.  They Like pictures of your kids.  Facebook is the canoe.  I'm on the dock.

Good morning, my friends.

I'm in many people's canoes, too.  I don't just stand there on the dock.  Maybe I'm in your boat, out there on the water, occasionally waving back at you, or just sitting there, staring, waiting to re-enter your life.  And maybe that'll happen, because you run a successful theatre out in Des Moines and you're a doctor in Philly and you're a scientist of some kind and you're living in Israel and you're a lesbian and you're selling something to someone and you just had a baby and isn't life grand?  

Isn't life funny?  

But to return to that idea, briefly, of being fortunate-- well, I've been fortunate.  I guess that's all you need to know about that.

You know how you're anxious when it comes time for your girlfriend to meet your friends?  I never had that. My friends are the salt of the earth.  My friends are mature even when they're not.  My friends are intelligent and kind and gracious and, in their company, I am better.  Better behaved, even when I'm not, improved in spirit and outlook, honest, earnest and direct.  

What's scary is that I'm not too often around my friends anymore, so I wonder what I am without them.  Am I all of those things all or even some of the time?  How would I know?  

I'm always a bit surprised whenever I've made a friend.  The sensation of success isn't altogether familiar so, when the thing clicks, it's a bit jarring.  Like an airplane crash.  Like Hiroshima.  

But I suppose I'm getting used to it.  I was never friendless, and that's nice.  I don't really know what that feels like, to walk the earth with no one beside you.  That would be difficult, I think.  After all, a scarecrow needs crows.

Or at least another scarecrow.  

Skippy's Mom

CHIP OF WISDOM: 

Proverbs 11, Verse 28

"To quarrel with a neighbor is foolish; a man with good sense holds his tongue."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

We live next door to a real bitch.

And it is what it is, as far as that goes, because she lives next door to two goddamn Jews who don't mow their lawn enough.  So, in that respect, I feel for her.  That can't be fun.  We lower property values.  We are swine of the worst order: swine who won't eat swine.  

Anyway, this lady's what you might call a battleaxe.  Or a bully.  She's more of a bully.  She's my mother's age, probably, mid sixties and she has a dykey haircut, and that's fine as far as that goes, and her flowers and her garden and her grass are all pristine, and that is what it is, you know-- people make choices about what they invest their time in and horticulture is kind of her thing and I respect that but to be terribly and brutally honest with you it doesn't really interest me at all-- no real green thumb to speak of, no, not on these hands clacking away here at the old keyboard, no, not really interested so much in trimming the hedges every two weeks or edging the lawn so it's as crisp as a new Marine's hairline no that's really not for me but it's really important to her and so I'm like, if it's so important to you LESBIAN HAIR, then MAKE YOUR OWN FUCKING PROPERTY LOOK LIKE ONE GIANT TOPIARY AND LEAVE US JEWS ALONE.

So, there's that.  

When we first bought the house in 2008, my mother (who knows everything about everyone because she works at the local public library and they've got more shit on you than the NSA so don't be fooled) was all like, "Oh, Mrs. So-and-So lives right next door-- you went to school with her son Skippy (not his real name-- I mean, what is he, a fucking jar of peanut butter, for Christ's sake?) didn't you?"

DID I?  

Of course I did.

I went to school with Skippy.  

How did I, let alone my mother, remember that, all these years later?

Because Skippy DIED back when we were in elementary school.  

Everyone remembers the kid who DIED in elementary school.  

Always one, isn't there?

You probably had one, too.  A Skippy, all of your very own.  

To shape your formative years.

To bring mortality to your doorstep before you know about pimples or pubes, drunk driving or raves.  

Skippy had a hole in his heart.  Or he had half a heart.  Or his left vena cava was eating his right ventricle.  I have no idea.  When you're a kid, you half-hear something and you make up the rest.  You play Scrabble with words like "Hat" and "Boot" and you invent little stories to explain away the unfathomable because it's fun to pretend, isn't it?  

So, anyway, Skippy had swallowed a porcupine at age 2 and it was slowly eating his heart and, when it was done eating, one day Skippy would be dead.  He was small and blue and he was in a wheelchair and one day he died, and that's very sad as far as that goes.  I didn't know him.  I don't think I ever said a word to him that I know of.  But I remember seeing him and then one day I didn't see him anymore and they told us that he'd died.  And we had a walk named for him.  The Skip-a-thon (not its real name).  

Then, many years later, I moved in next to his mom.  And I thought to myself, "Wow, this woman went through a real tragedy all those years ago and I'm going to be very nice to her."

And I was.  

And she wasn't.  

She's always out there, watering something or pruning something or tending to something.  Giving life.  And I get it, she's giving life and nurturing and that's fine as far as that goes but, see, she's mean.  She's passive-aggressive and sarcastic and it took me a while before I realized that she just plain up and decided that she didn't like me.  My first clue was when I was out one day trimming the hedges and she looked my work up and down disapprovingly, eyeing me with the same disgust one might have looked at me if I had just walked into the Oval Office with my penis hanging out of my opened fly and she said to me, 

"You know, Mr __________ (the old asshole who used to live in my house) used to come out with a stool and sit on it and check the height of those hedges with a ruler every other week."

And I looked at her.

And I wanted to say, "Funny, he wasn't so fastidious about paying his 

MORTGAGE

or his 

REAL ESTATE TAXES

or his 

SCHOOL TAXES

or his 

SEWER BILL

or his 

ROOFER BILL

which, I might mention, all hadn't been paid for years forcing the bank to take possession of the house and necessitating that all those bills be cleared up before we could close.

There were other comments to follow.  She got nastier with us.  I grew more sycophantic.  I'll kill her with kindness, I thought, and hopefully not slowly.  I will be the sweet porcupine incessantly eating away at her coal heart.  The kicker was one day, when I wasn't home, my wife let our basset hound, who had just been in the doggie E.R. with a bad back, walk through her yard (not to pee or poop, but just to get to our backyard without having to navigate steps) and the skank (who must have been watching like a hawk from her window) bounded outside and said to my wife

"NOT in my yard."

And my wife stammered some sort of explanation about the dog's ill health and the Nazi repeated, more sternly this time, probably,

"NOT in my yard."

And when my wife told me about this incident, she was in or close to tears and I was all set to storm out of our house, bang on that bitch's door and say,

"WHEN YOU TALK TO MY WIFE, YOU'D BETTER USE A GODDAMN PREPOSITION, SUBJECT AND PREDICATE."    

Because I'm a sensitive fucking guy, okay?  I know what tragedy and loss does to people.  I know it can turn you into a stone cold botanical psychopath who can't relate to people of differing religious beliefs on any meaningful level, but boy oh boy any sixty-ish year old woman with a dykey haircut who can hold down a job can speak English like a civilized person, even when they're a little peeved, for Christ's sake.  

There are people who weren't meant to work for other people.  People like my father.  My father was meant to command troops, he wasn't meant to be a private.  I'm not sure who his time as a private was worse for, him or his superiors, but it ended soon enough.  And not without theatrics.  There are also people who weren't meant to have neighbors.  

You're reading the tome of one of those.

One day I know we'll be able to afford relative seclusion, but it's not going to be for a long time.  And we'll pretend to be nice for our children's sake so they think we're nice people, which, really, we're not.  We're just a couple of dirty Jews who are too cheap to buy a weed whacker, and too scared to operate one if we owned it anyway.  And, boy oh boy do we live next door to a real bitch.  

And that's fine as far as that goes.