One time Angela was driving on a freeway interchange and had a tire blow-out. Her car spun and shimmied and eventually she found herself at the center of a smoking mess of twisted metal violently halted by a concrete median. For months, when describing this mild catasrophe she referred to it as her “blow-out on the freeway.”
On a related note, we have a whole gaggle of nieces and nephews. Many of them are toddler age or younger. They trot around in diapers, make incoherent pleas to be held, and acquaint themselves with new objects (such as my now water-logged cell phone) through direct and heavy application of the object to their tongues. Occasionally, their parents will share horror stories about just what is to be found mashed into the cottony paper of their kids' diapers. They habitually refer to the truly massive and disgusting discoveries—especially those too large for the diaper to fully contain—as “blow-outs.”
As soon as this term is mentioned by one of the parents, I make a point to matter-of-factly note to all present that Angela once had a blow-out. On the freeway. And it was so bad that it made her crash her car.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Sunday, January 9, 2011
preparation.
As my personality predisposes me for procrastination and forgetfulness, Angela sure loves it when she finds me prepared and ready to go in a prompt fashion. If, for instance, on Sunday morning I am standing at the bottom of the stairs, dressed in white shirt and tie, slacks ironed, and shoes shined a full ten minutes before church is scheduled to start, she exudes appreciation and delight. This is why I was really surprised the other day when I was closing in on Angela to kiss her and, in the very spirit of preparation that she so enjoys, stuck my tongue out while still some twelve to fifteen inches away from her face; as I continued my tongue-out descent towards her mouth, I was shocked to see her grimace and turn away, gagging.
I must say, I just don’t understand women. So darn fickle.
I must say, I just don’t understand women. So darn fickle.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
angels.
There is an old myth—you’re probably quite familiar—that whenever a bell rings, an angel gets its wings. To me that is one precious notion. Whenever my push to the aluminum-framed glass entry door at my local Ace hardware causes the string of attached bells to jingle, it doesn’t just indicate to the clerk that a customer has arrived, but also that a messenger of God in some distant corner of the cosmos has had two new and oddly inhuman limbs added. A young child, freshly free of training wheels, may fall from his or her bicycle and in the process break a clavicle or severely chip the one adult tooth that has already arrived. It’s utterly dreadful, right? Well, not if the young child’s thumb or arm happened to graze the bell affixed to the handlebars on the way down. If that’s the case, this mild medical emergency is actually a cause for heavenly choirs to break into million-part harmony.
Being struck as I obviously am by the link between bells and angel promotion, I long ago invested a meager few dollars in a teacher’s bell. It sat right next to my computer monitor. With the flat of my palm I descended upon its shiny, top-loaded button multiple times each day and basked in the high tone that it produced. It was nice to know that even when I had writer’s block or had grown too weary to continue my study of real estate, I could at least accomplish something by ringing that bell. Sure, I might not have remembered offhand the sequence of quantitative adjustments or the differing costs associated with split-faced concrete block verses slump block, but maybe with one of my many rings, I told myself, I had helped my long-deceased great grandmother Opal finally attain senior status amongst the many other less fortunate and flightless spirits of heaven. Sometimes I’d ring the bell a lot. I’d dedicate minutes at a time. It was mostly due to my notion that if some departed legend like Jimi Hendrix or John Lennon was going to get angel wings, I wanted to be the one to grant the privilege. That way, when we finally meet, they’ll owe me one—redeemable in the form of a celestial jam session employing cloud guitars and drum sets made from leftover halos.
I do have to wonder, however, if my ringing hasn’t been a little on the excessive side. At its height, I was ringing that bell a few dozen, maybe even a few hundred, times a day (at which point my wife left to find less compulsively tintinnabulative company). I think that it’s a distinct possibility that at some juncture all my ringing caused heaven’s supply of qualified angel candidates to become entirely depleted. After that crucial breaking point, the surpassing of which was unknown to me at the time, I imagine that each of my rings subsequently forced heaven’s hand, compelling it to obey its own laws, dictating the promotion of heavenly beings that, in some cases, might not have been ready for the duties of angel. I think the proof of this theory’s veracity can be seen in the recent and corresponding up-tick in accidents the world over. Car wrecks, spilled milk, twisted ankles, random impalement of individuals by formerly roof-bound icicles, diarrhea, balding, hemorrhoids, sunburns, bad haircuts, bad jokes, the unintended announcement by the guest of a future surprise party the existence of said party to the subject of said party, the proliferation and misspelling of the word “dog” to refer to one’s close associates, or whatever else—would all be the direct result of inexperienced guardian angels missing their vital cues in preventing bad things from transpiring. I am ashamed to say that, unfortunately, during mid- to late-2007 I was doing a whole heck of a lot of bell ringing right before the onset of the sub-prime mortgage crisis and can’t help but feel a little bit responsible.
The bell is gone now. I never ring it anymore. I’ve seen too much carnage. Maybe some day, when the work force of qualified candidates for angel-hood are not in such short supply, I will fetch the bell from its perch in the closet atop all the boxes of still-in-cellophane board games we got ourselves a few Christmases back when we were briefly convinced that board games are fun. But for now, I’m on a quest. It’s a quest to find the antithesis to the bell ring. If the beautiful, chimey noise of bells can grant angels wings, there must be some opposite noise, some direct reciprocal whose acoustic characteristics are entirely contrary to the splendor of the bell ring, a sound that can perhaps serve as a sort of aural antidote if you will, a sound that has power to dispossess angels of their wings in an similar, though inverse, fashion. So far, my hunches tell me that farts just might do the trick.
Being struck as I obviously am by the link between bells and angel promotion, I long ago invested a meager few dollars in a teacher’s bell. It sat right next to my computer monitor. With the flat of my palm I descended upon its shiny, top-loaded button multiple times each day and basked in the high tone that it produced. It was nice to know that even when I had writer’s block or had grown too weary to continue my study of real estate, I could at least accomplish something by ringing that bell. Sure, I might not have remembered offhand the sequence of quantitative adjustments or the differing costs associated with split-faced concrete block verses slump block, but maybe with one of my many rings, I told myself, I had helped my long-deceased great grandmother Opal finally attain senior status amongst the many other less fortunate and flightless spirits of heaven. Sometimes I’d ring the bell a lot. I’d dedicate minutes at a time. It was mostly due to my notion that if some departed legend like Jimi Hendrix or John Lennon was going to get angel wings, I wanted to be the one to grant the privilege. That way, when we finally meet, they’ll owe me one—redeemable in the form of a celestial jam session employing cloud guitars and drum sets made from leftover halos.
I do have to wonder, however, if my ringing hasn’t been a little on the excessive side. At its height, I was ringing that bell a few dozen, maybe even a few hundred, times a day (at which point my wife left to find less compulsively tintinnabulative company). I think that it’s a distinct possibility that at some juncture all my ringing caused heaven’s supply of qualified angel candidates to become entirely depleted. After that crucial breaking point, the surpassing of which was unknown to me at the time, I imagine that each of my rings subsequently forced heaven’s hand, compelling it to obey its own laws, dictating the promotion of heavenly beings that, in some cases, might not have been ready for the duties of angel. I think the proof of this theory’s veracity can be seen in the recent and corresponding up-tick in accidents the world over. Car wrecks, spilled milk, twisted ankles, random impalement of individuals by formerly roof-bound icicles, diarrhea, balding, hemorrhoids, sunburns, bad haircuts, bad jokes, the unintended announcement by the guest of a future surprise party the existence of said party to the subject of said party, the proliferation and misspelling of the word “dog” to refer to one’s close associates, or whatever else—would all be the direct result of inexperienced guardian angels missing their vital cues in preventing bad things from transpiring. I am ashamed to say that, unfortunately, during mid- to late-2007 I was doing a whole heck of a lot of bell ringing right before the onset of the sub-prime mortgage crisis and can’t help but feel a little bit responsible.
The bell is gone now. I never ring it anymore. I’ve seen too much carnage. Maybe some day, when the work force of qualified candidates for angel-hood are not in such short supply, I will fetch the bell from its perch in the closet atop all the boxes of still-in-cellophane board games we got ourselves a few Christmases back when we were briefly convinced that board games are fun. But for now, I’m on a quest. It’s a quest to find the antithesis to the bell ring. If the beautiful, chimey noise of bells can grant angels wings, there must be some opposite noise, some direct reciprocal whose acoustic characteristics are entirely contrary to the splendor of the bell ring, a sound that can perhaps serve as a sort of aural antidote if you will, a sound that has power to dispossess angels of their wings in an similar, though inverse, fashion. So far, my hunches tell me that farts just might do the trick.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Thursday, January 6, 2011
bloody gulch.
Those stalwarts of all Mesa-dom, the women at I Heart Mesa, asked me to write an Arizona-themed piece for their blog. I did. Here it is:
When I was in fourth grade, my teacher, a lovable woman whose skin was strongly reminiscent of alligator flesh, initiated a program to broaden her students’ limited horizons. It was her idea for our class to correspond with another fourth grade class—nine- and ten-year-olds just like us, except from a strange and exotic place. That’s what she told us. I imagined receiving envelopes with elaborate postage stamps on them, stamps featuring the tiny, unframed portraits of crowned monarchs the likes of which my scant decade of life experience as an Arizonan child would hardly allow me to conceive. I wondered how we were to communicate with our pen pals, considering that they probably wouldn’t speak very good English, and I didn’t know a lick of Swahili (or Burmese or Gaelic or whatever wacky native idiom our counterparts would employ). However, it was to my utmost chagrin when our teacher ultimately informed us that the exotic place to which she had alluded was to be Moundsville, Ohio.
My elation dashed, I found little to talk about in my first letter. I figured life in Moundsville was probably pretty similar to life in Mesa—modest homes arrayed in rows, gathered around churches, schools and parks, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So in my letter I asked about favorite television shows, recess, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and what their grocery stores were called in Ohio. When I received my pen pal’s first response, I was a little surprised. The student, whom I will, for lack of actual recollection, refer to as Martin, didn’t answer a single one of my questions. (To this day, the void that is my ignorance regarding eastern Ohio supermarket chains still lingers.) Instead, his letter consisted of one wild, misguided inquisition after another:
“Are there ever gunfights?”
“Do you have a rattlesnake as a pet? Has it ever bit you?”
“Is your house a cactus?”
In no more time than it took me to read these questions, I developed a very poor opinion of the Ohio public school system. I mean, what kind of school produces fourth graders that are unable to tell reality from Hollywood fiction? How ineffective the local educational process must be to allow nine- and ten-year-old children to still harbor such cretinous notions. Even to me—a peer—Martin’s obtuse perception of Arizona seemed laughable. Did he realize that it was a mailman that dropped his class’s letters off at our modern, air-conditioned elementary school? Or did he imagine his letters sandwiched between dozens of dusty others, placed within the dark confines of a cracked leather satchel that bounced rhythmically across the lap of a Pony Express man riding horseback along ill-defined dirt roads lined with cow skulls and intersected by tumbleweeds, en route to places with names like Vulture Creek or Bloody Gulch?
I responded to Martin. I let him know that Arizona wasn’t the cryogenically frozen Wild West that he hoped it to be. I assured him that, no, I had never seen a gun fight, nor did I work part-time cleaning glasses at a saloon, nor did high noon have any particular significance except to indicate lunch. I did my best to convince him that I was a normal kid, interested in shooting hoops, playing video games, pulling pigtails, and planning the construction of elaborate forts that typically turned out to be a rotten sheet of plywood leaned up to a concrete block fence. After a few more letters from Martin, all of which lacked the enthusiastic curiosity and southwestern drawl of his first, the correspondence between the two classes fizzled.
And then a few years ago, more than a decade after my correspondence with Martin from Moundsville, I was in a grocery store parking lot. It was a windy day, one of those Arizona days when the whole sky looks pink like an impossibly vast mass of spilled grapefruit juice. I noisily wheeled a cart of processed food across the asphalt and towards my car, my pants pocket made musical at every step with the jumping of loose coinage. The cart’s front passenger side wheel was disagreeing so vehemently with the direction I was trying to push that I almost missed it when it happened. Between me and my Honda Accord, silhouetted in the bright pink sky, before the backdrop of the Superstition Mountains, rolled a tumbleweed. With each bounce and roll it left a trail of small, dried and crackling branches to memorialize its path. It looked out of place, the way it tumbled across newly paved asphalt, passed the still-bright yellow paint striping and hybrid cars parked in rows—like a phonograph amidst the plastic and aggressive-looking stereo equipment in the home audio section at any big box retailer.
I wanted to take my cell phone from my pocket and capture with photographic evidence this unique clash of old and new worlds. I wanted all to share in the anomaly that was the tumbleweed in the Fresh n’ Easy parking lot. I removed my cell phone from my pocket and aimed it. Through the viewfinder I again noticed the mountains just a few miles off—the Superstitions, with their stark precipices and their brown-turned-purple hue in the pre-evening. Beyond the parking lot and the adjacent road, up to the mountains’ first subtle inclines there was really nothing, just cacti spread with seemingly no pattern across otherwise bald earth. I wondered, wasn’t it these very mountains that served as the setting for a legendary Dutchman’s lost goldmine? There’s gold in them there hills. That’s what my dad used to say when we drove along US-60 past those mountains on our way out of town for the weekend. What’s more, I thought I’d heard that the famous Indian Geronimo—whose name I had sung playfully many times in my youth, holding the last syllable for seconds on end while jumping from high dives or while throwing oversized rocks into canals—was known to gallivant upon those mountains. I kind of recalled learning in school about a cave there in which he obscured himself while eluding the U.S. army. As the wind caught and emboldened like a sail of a tiny boat the plastic bags in my cart, I mulled it over and realized that, yes, I had heard each of those stories all while growing up and each did indeed refer to the Superstitions just a few miles away. Then I remembered that the road that goes past those mountains—Ellsworth Road—leads right to the remnants of a historical gold-mining town, portions of which were known to have been abandoned due to recurrent hauntings. I’d been there once as a kid. I remembered the town as a fully functioning tourist site, with an old-fashioned ice cream parlor, a saloon (complete with those dwarfish swinging cafe doors), mock gunfights every weekday at high noon and twice on weekends, and handle bar mustaches as far as the eye could see.
By this time, I’d now been lingering in the parking lot, trailing the tumbleweed with my cell phone camera, absorbing the view of the desert-scape, for what a casual observer would likely characterize as an abnormal amount of time. I thought to myself, “Holy crap. I live in a place with tumbleweeds. Tumbleweeds! And saloons. I live in a place with innumerable cacti. Lost freaking gold mines. And gunfights every day at high noon and twice on weekends.” I stood a moment longer and continued to watch the tumbleweed labor on southward. Now, it was the asphalt and the finely manicured green grass in concreted planters and the hybrid cars and the Auto Zone just north of the Fresh n’ Easy that looked out of place, not the tumbleweed. It all seemed to interrupt the generally dusty, cow-skull ambience created by the nearby herd of saguaro cacti and the looming Superstitions. Perhaps if the nearby Auto Zone had been rumored to be a haunted Auto Zone, things would’ve jived better, I thought. I was fairly certain, however, that no such rumors existed.
Lest my milk warm unnecessarily, I resumed pushing the cart towards my car. But I am pretty sure that on my way there and almost without trying, my legs starting to bow ever so slightly. The rattling of change in my pocket sounded less like currency and more like the tinkling of spurs at my heel. I could see how Mesa could just have easily been named Bloody Gulch or Cow Skull Trail or whatnot.
And now, I kind of want to write an amendment to my original response to Martin. I’d apologize for all the times I’ve chuckled when the thought of his obtuse little letter crossed my mind. I’d confess that as I’ve come to know my home, I’ve come to realize that his conception of a wild, western Arizona was at least as real as my conception of Arizona as a suburban haven of normalcy. I’d explain that part of what makes this state awesome is that my house is literally closer to a lost gold mine than it is to a public library, roller skating rink, or Thai restaurant. And I’d let him now that, yes, there are at least nine gunfights a week.
When I was in fourth grade, my teacher, a lovable woman whose skin was strongly reminiscent of alligator flesh, initiated a program to broaden her students’ limited horizons. It was her idea for our class to correspond with another fourth grade class—nine- and ten-year-olds just like us, except from a strange and exotic place. That’s what she told us. I imagined receiving envelopes with elaborate postage stamps on them, stamps featuring the tiny, unframed portraits of crowned monarchs the likes of which my scant decade of life experience as an Arizonan child would hardly allow me to conceive. I wondered how we were to communicate with our pen pals, considering that they probably wouldn’t speak very good English, and I didn’t know a lick of Swahili (or Burmese or Gaelic or whatever wacky native idiom our counterparts would employ). However, it was to my utmost chagrin when our teacher ultimately informed us that the exotic place to which she had alluded was to be Moundsville, Ohio.
My elation dashed, I found little to talk about in my first letter. I figured life in Moundsville was probably pretty similar to life in Mesa—modest homes arrayed in rows, gathered around churches, schools and parks, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So in my letter I asked about favorite television shows, recess, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and what their grocery stores were called in Ohio. When I received my pen pal’s first response, I was a little surprised. The student, whom I will, for lack of actual recollection, refer to as Martin, didn’t answer a single one of my questions. (To this day, the void that is my ignorance regarding eastern Ohio supermarket chains still lingers.) Instead, his letter consisted of one wild, misguided inquisition after another:
“Are there ever gunfights?”
“Do you have a rattlesnake as a pet? Has it ever bit you?”
“Is your house a cactus?”
In no more time than it took me to read these questions, I developed a very poor opinion of the Ohio public school system. I mean, what kind of school produces fourth graders that are unable to tell reality from Hollywood fiction? How ineffective the local educational process must be to allow nine- and ten-year-old children to still harbor such cretinous notions. Even to me—a peer—Martin’s obtuse perception of Arizona seemed laughable. Did he realize that it was a mailman that dropped his class’s letters off at our modern, air-conditioned elementary school? Or did he imagine his letters sandwiched between dozens of dusty others, placed within the dark confines of a cracked leather satchel that bounced rhythmically across the lap of a Pony Express man riding horseback along ill-defined dirt roads lined with cow skulls and intersected by tumbleweeds, en route to places with names like Vulture Creek or Bloody Gulch?
I responded to Martin. I let him know that Arizona wasn’t the cryogenically frozen Wild West that he hoped it to be. I assured him that, no, I had never seen a gun fight, nor did I work part-time cleaning glasses at a saloon, nor did high noon have any particular significance except to indicate lunch. I did my best to convince him that I was a normal kid, interested in shooting hoops, playing video games, pulling pigtails, and planning the construction of elaborate forts that typically turned out to be a rotten sheet of plywood leaned up to a concrete block fence. After a few more letters from Martin, all of which lacked the enthusiastic curiosity and southwestern drawl of his first, the correspondence between the two classes fizzled.
And then a few years ago, more than a decade after my correspondence with Martin from Moundsville, I was in a grocery store parking lot. It was a windy day, one of those Arizona days when the whole sky looks pink like an impossibly vast mass of spilled grapefruit juice. I noisily wheeled a cart of processed food across the asphalt and towards my car, my pants pocket made musical at every step with the jumping of loose coinage. The cart’s front passenger side wheel was disagreeing so vehemently with the direction I was trying to push that I almost missed it when it happened. Between me and my Honda Accord, silhouetted in the bright pink sky, before the backdrop of the Superstition Mountains, rolled a tumbleweed. With each bounce and roll it left a trail of small, dried and crackling branches to memorialize its path. It looked out of place, the way it tumbled across newly paved asphalt, passed the still-bright yellow paint striping and hybrid cars parked in rows—like a phonograph amidst the plastic and aggressive-looking stereo equipment in the home audio section at any big box retailer.
I wanted to take my cell phone from my pocket and capture with photographic evidence this unique clash of old and new worlds. I wanted all to share in the anomaly that was the tumbleweed in the Fresh n’ Easy parking lot. I removed my cell phone from my pocket and aimed it. Through the viewfinder I again noticed the mountains just a few miles off—the Superstitions, with their stark precipices and their brown-turned-purple hue in the pre-evening. Beyond the parking lot and the adjacent road, up to the mountains’ first subtle inclines there was really nothing, just cacti spread with seemingly no pattern across otherwise bald earth. I wondered, wasn’t it these very mountains that served as the setting for a legendary Dutchman’s lost goldmine? There’s gold in them there hills. That’s what my dad used to say when we drove along US-60 past those mountains on our way out of town for the weekend. What’s more, I thought I’d heard that the famous Indian Geronimo—whose name I had sung playfully many times in my youth, holding the last syllable for seconds on end while jumping from high dives or while throwing oversized rocks into canals—was known to gallivant upon those mountains. I kind of recalled learning in school about a cave there in which he obscured himself while eluding the U.S. army. As the wind caught and emboldened like a sail of a tiny boat the plastic bags in my cart, I mulled it over and realized that, yes, I had heard each of those stories all while growing up and each did indeed refer to the Superstitions just a few miles away. Then I remembered that the road that goes past those mountains—Ellsworth Road—leads right to the remnants of a historical gold-mining town, portions of which were known to have been abandoned due to recurrent hauntings. I’d been there once as a kid. I remembered the town as a fully functioning tourist site, with an old-fashioned ice cream parlor, a saloon (complete with those dwarfish swinging cafe doors), mock gunfights every weekday at high noon and twice on weekends, and handle bar mustaches as far as the eye could see.
By this time, I’d now been lingering in the parking lot, trailing the tumbleweed with my cell phone camera, absorbing the view of the desert-scape, for what a casual observer would likely characterize as an abnormal amount of time. I thought to myself, “Holy crap. I live in a place with tumbleweeds. Tumbleweeds! And saloons. I live in a place with innumerable cacti. Lost freaking gold mines. And gunfights every day at high noon and twice on weekends.” I stood a moment longer and continued to watch the tumbleweed labor on southward. Now, it was the asphalt and the finely manicured green grass in concreted planters and the hybrid cars and the Auto Zone just north of the Fresh n’ Easy that looked out of place, not the tumbleweed. It all seemed to interrupt the generally dusty, cow-skull ambience created by the nearby herd of saguaro cacti and the looming Superstitions. Perhaps if the nearby Auto Zone had been rumored to be a haunted Auto Zone, things would’ve jived better, I thought. I was fairly certain, however, that no such rumors existed.
Lest my milk warm unnecessarily, I resumed pushing the cart towards my car. But I am pretty sure that on my way there and almost without trying, my legs starting to bow ever so slightly. The rattling of change in my pocket sounded less like currency and more like the tinkling of spurs at my heel. I could see how Mesa could just have easily been named Bloody Gulch or Cow Skull Trail or whatnot.
And now, I kind of want to write an amendment to my original response to Martin. I’d apologize for all the times I’ve chuckled when the thought of his obtuse little letter crossed my mind. I’d confess that as I’ve come to know my home, I’ve come to realize that his conception of a wild, western Arizona was at least as real as my conception of Arizona as a suburban haven of normalcy. I’d explain that part of what makes this state awesome is that my house is literally closer to a lost gold mine than it is to a public library, roller skating rink, or Thai restaurant. And I’d let him now that, yes, there are at least nine gunfights a week.
Friday, November 19, 2010
dream home.
We’ve been thinking about our dream home lately. Angela wants wood floors and corner windows and hundred-year-old trees. She’d cope with a small kitchen if it was charming and historic enough, but under no circumstance is carpet to be tolerated.
I, on the other hand, have spent most of my imaginative energy thinking about the wardrobe. We would keep it in a rarely visited (and sometimes misty) room in the house. The wardrobe needs to be big—tall and wide enough for a person to stand right in it—and kind of majestically creepy, maybe a little ominous, and, most importantly, built right next to a wall. Its hinges will creak. A decorative lion’s head the size of an apple may or may not be carved into each of the two French doors.
We’ll have friends over for lunch. It will be a little cold inside and I’ll be busily stirring the spaghetti—too busy to stop and fetch myself one of the furry coats we keep in the wardrobe.
“Can I do anything to help?” our guests will ask.
“Why yes,” I’ll reply. “It’s a wee bit chilly. Greg, could you grab a coat or two from the wardrobe in the room down the hall. Get me the grey-ish one from the very back if it’s not too much trouble. Third door on the left.” He’ll head slowly off, a little perplexed at the unorthodoxy of the response to his generally insincere offer. He’d expected at most to have been handed a slimy-wet potato and a peeler.
A few minutes will pass and Greg’s wife Laura will ask where Greg went. Angela and I will shrug our shoulders in unison. The three of us decide as a group, now that the spaghetti situation seems to be fully under control, to set off in search of him. We’ll reach the wardrobe. The inch-wide crack of the open wardrobe door will be emphasized by the warm light squeezing through it. We’ll approach slowly and perceive the sound of Greg’s voice. He’ll be shouting.
“Greg,” Laura will say as she quickens her pace to the door and opens it. She will peer in, push aside furry coats and step a few feet forward, into and through the wardrobe, only to see Greg galloping about on a unicorn.
“Hey honey,” Greg will shout with wonder in his voice while his steed tromps about between the many lush trees that constitute a real-life thicket.
“What is this place?” Laura will ask, thoroughly mystified.
Angela and I will share a glance and silently convey to each other our deep satisfaction at insisting that our home be built with a wardrobe with no back, that leads directly out of doors to our tree garden where we keep our horse to whose forehead we’ve rubber-banded a birthday party hat—all so that we could watch every one of our guests have their minds blown and wonder, if only for a second, if they have found a whole other world inside of our wardrobe.
Monday, October 4, 2010
no.
Me: Hey, can I borrow the stapler real quick?
Receptionist: No.
Hmm. That’s interesting. Enduring a long and uncomfortable pause, here I stand, a loose-leaf stack of papers in my clutches. A few seconds ago, my objective was to simply fasten them together. Now, I find myself engaged in some sort of weirdly psychological game of chicken with a gum-smacking receptionist. Rather than simply sliding my tidy stack of bright white, still-warm-from-the-inkjet-printer paper between the stapler’s protruding metal arms, stamping down, and proceeding on my way, I am faced with the challenge of deciphering this receptionist’s clandestine motives. Oh, fun. The situation requires me to start right at the top of the list of possible explanations for her inconvenient deviation from normal office etiquette. I would surmise that the most basic, though somewhat unlikely, possibility is that she is truly some sort of twisted malcontent, hardwired for domination of the communal office stapler, sincerely bent on preserving exclusively for herself its utility. Her somewhat guarded expression, however, does not seem to exhibit the wildness that I would expect to behold were she indeed the sort of psychopath that would so jealously harbor an office appliance like it was the final crumb of food to be shared between Himalayan plane crash survivors immediately before devolving into cannibalism. No, her expression is much more cloaked in Wednesday afternoon boredom than it is unfettered derangement. Perhaps, then, the stapler is out of staples. Perhaps she is simply denying me usage because the stars have aligned at this particular juncture as to produce a stapler void of staples at the very moment in which I am in need of the quick, firm fastening that only a stapler can reasonably provide. I think it’s probably best for me to inquire regarding this particular matter before jumping to any conclusions.
Me: Oh, is it out of staples?
Receptionist: No.
I wait for her to offer some sort of explanation, but she offers none. I note that her retort smacked of a faux sort of curtness. Her brow is crinkling, her eyebrows bobbing almost imperceptibly. I now see that it is sarcasm with which I am forced to wrestle on this busy Wednesday afternoon. I’m glad someone here is amused because I certainly am not. These papers have a destiny. And it’s not to wear out their respective existences in singularity. No, it is to have a single, collective existence as a bundle, a unit, a family. I straighten the already straight stack by tapping them like face cards on her desk. I clear my throat. She shows no sign of budging. But a smile is starting to surface on her lips. She pops her gum. Here I am, standing like an idiot, with a stack of unstapled papers in my hands and she's smiling. I’d make a lunge for the stapler if she were not sitting, so broad-shouldered as she is, like a soviet tank before the westbound entrance to West Germany, between me and it. I think this behavior is inappropriate for the workplace. I might even go as far as to say that this juvenile form of pranking is downright inconsiderate. Certainly, not professional. What if a blast of air-conditioned air was unleashed at this moment from the vents just a few feet above? The sheets would surely fly from my grasp, scatter all over the office floor, un-collate. Un-collate! Page seven would settle right atop page two and page thirteen would fraternize not with its natural and immediate kin but with page nine. Oh, all the sorting that such a scene would necessitate, the man hours wasted, the paper cuts that lay in wait. And where’s page eleven? It’s missing. Where the bloody heck is page eleven?! It's really inhuman and debasing the sort of maltreatment she is subjecting me to. I don't like being subjugated and I am pretty sure I am being subjugated. I’m sure she would just watch from her perch on that squeaky office chair as I bent and crouched and scrambled to collect the debris, her one hand still protectively stroking the stapler’s smooth black metal, its hard lines and soft curvature.
Me: So, can I use the stapler?
Receptionist: No.
I am going to run you over with my car. That is what I will do. And then I will staple my stack of paper with the utmost satisfaction and not the least inhibition by office staff. She is smiling now, smiling unabashedly. It’s sick the satisfaction she gains from this. It’s all a big gag, a big hilarious joke. Don't worry, I get it. I ask politely to use the stapler. You reach into your bag of comedic genius and pull out a morsel of unique brilliance: you will defy convention and expectation by denying my polite and reasonable request; you will wait and wait and wait until the discomfort grows so unwieldy and clumsy like untrimmed hair before finally relenting and allowing me use of the stapler that is just as much mine as it is yours—maybe even more mine, because I would never establish such unrighteous and discriminatory regulations to its handling; and you’ll chuckle because that’s all your life is; that’s all you have going for you. It’s clever I must admit. It’s right up there with tapping a person on the shoulder in trying to get them to look the wrong way or with your finger identifying a spill on a another's shirt only to flick them in the nose as they look down to investigate the purported stain. It’s all part of your jocular shtick. Real cutting edge stuff, definitely pushing the comedic envelope. Great. I get it. But give me the stapler. Give it to me before I explode. Because I will explode. And though it will not be the type of explosion that ends with my blood and guts splayed all across this office foyer, it will end very badly. It will end at a high decibel and you will be crying because I will have dismantled you. You will be a puddle on the floor and I will walk right through you and place my stack of paper in the stapler's path and calmly squeeze the arms together. If you do not give me the stapler, that is what will happen. I grit my teeth and ask one final time.
Me: May I use the stapler?
You look a little concerned now. Is it because of the tick that has formed above my left eye? I think it might be. Your smile is gone, likely because no smile of mine was ever party to this perverted interchange. Who’s feeling awkward now? Huh? Not I. The tables have turned. We both know that now. In fact, the tables aren’t turned. They are brand new tables. Tables you never could have anticipated when you started this little charade of yours. You’re moving slowly, cautiously swiveling for the stapler. That’s right, nice and slow. You’re wise to concede. These papers cannot wait another moment. These have to be filed now, sandwiched by manila in a lack of space behind the sliding drawer of a metal cabinet, not to be looked at for years, and maybe never. Give it to me. Give me the stapler.
Receptionist: Here you go.
Me: Thanks.
Receptionist: No.
Hmm. That’s interesting. Enduring a long and uncomfortable pause, here I stand, a loose-leaf stack of papers in my clutches. A few seconds ago, my objective was to simply fasten them together. Now, I find myself engaged in some sort of weirdly psychological game of chicken with a gum-smacking receptionist. Rather than simply sliding my tidy stack of bright white, still-warm-from-the-inkjet-printer paper between the stapler’s protruding metal arms, stamping down, and proceeding on my way, I am faced with the challenge of deciphering this receptionist’s clandestine motives. Oh, fun. The situation requires me to start right at the top of the list of possible explanations for her inconvenient deviation from normal office etiquette. I would surmise that the most basic, though somewhat unlikely, possibility is that she is truly some sort of twisted malcontent, hardwired for domination of the communal office stapler, sincerely bent on preserving exclusively for herself its utility. Her somewhat guarded expression, however, does not seem to exhibit the wildness that I would expect to behold were she indeed the sort of psychopath that would so jealously harbor an office appliance like it was the final crumb of food to be shared between Himalayan plane crash survivors immediately before devolving into cannibalism. No, her expression is much more cloaked in Wednesday afternoon boredom than it is unfettered derangement. Perhaps, then, the stapler is out of staples. Perhaps she is simply denying me usage because the stars have aligned at this particular juncture as to produce a stapler void of staples at the very moment in which I am in need of the quick, firm fastening that only a stapler can reasonably provide. I think it’s probably best for me to inquire regarding this particular matter before jumping to any conclusions.
Me: Oh, is it out of staples?
Receptionist: No.
I wait for her to offer some sort of explanation, but she offers none. I note that her retort smacked of a faux sort of curtness. Her brow is crinkling, her eyebrows bobbing almost imperceptibly. I now see that it is sarcasm with which I am forced to wrestle on this busy Wednesday afternoon. I’m glad someone here is amused because I certainly am not. These papers have a destiny. And it’s not to wear out their respective existences in singularity. No, it is to have a single, collective existence as a bundle, a unit, a family. I straighten the already straight stack by tapping them like face cards on her desk. I clear my throat. She shows no sign of budging. But a smile is starting to surface on her lips. She pops her gum. Here I am, standing like an idiot, with a stack of unstapled papers in my hands and she's smiling. I’d make a lunge for the stapler if she were not sitting, so broad-shouldered as she is, like a soviet tank before the westbound entrance to West Germany, between me and it. I think this behavior is inappropriate for the workplace. I might even go as far as to say that this juvenile form of pranking is downright inconsiderate. Certainly, not professional. What if a blast of air-conditioned air was unleashed at this moment from the vents just a few feet above? The sheets would surely fly from my grasp, scatter all over the office floor, un-collate. Un-collate! Page seven would settle right atop page two and page thirteen would fraternize not with its natural and immediate kin but with page nine. Oh, all the sorting that such a scene would necessitate, the man hours wasted, the paper cuts that lay in wait. And where’s page eleven? It’s missing. Where the bloody heck is page eleven?! It's really inhuman and debasing the sort of maltreatment she is subjecting me to. I don't like being subjugated and I am pretty sure I am being subjugated. I’m sure she would just watch from her perch on that squeaky office chair as I bent and crouched and scrambled to collect the debris, her one hand still protectively stroking the stapler’s smooth black metal, its hard lines and soft curvature.
Me: So, can I use the stapler?
Receptionist: No.
I am going to run you over with my car. That is what I will do. And then I will staple my stack of paper with the utmost satisfaction and not the least inhibition by office staff. She is smiling now, smiling unabashedly. It’s sick the satisfaction she gains from this. It’s all a big gag, a big hilarious joke. Don't worry, I get it. I ask politely to use the stapler. You reach into your bag of comedic genius and pull out a morsel of unique brilliance: you will defy convention and expectation by denying my polite and reasonable request; you will wait and wait and wait until the discomfort grows so unwieldy and clumsy like untrimmed hair before finally relenting and allowing me use of the stapler that is just as much mine as it is yours—maybe even more mine, because I would never establish such unrighteous and discriminatory regulations to its handling; and you’ll chuckle because that’s all your life is; that’s all you have going for you. It’s clever I must admit. It’s right up there with tapping a person on the shoulder in trying to get them to look the wrong way or with your finger identifying a spill on a another's shirt only to flick them in the nose as they look down to investigate the purported stain. It’s all part of your jocular shtick. Real cutting edge stuff, definitely pushing the comedic envelope. Great. I get it. But give me the stapler. Give it to me before I explode. Because I will explode. And though it will not be the type of explosion that ends with my blood and guts splayed all across this office foyer, it will end very badly. It will end at a high decibel and you will be crying because I will have dismantled you. You will be a puddle on the floor and I will walk right through you and place my stack of paper in the stapler's path and calmly squeeze the arms together. If you do not give me the stapler, that is what will happen. I grit my teeth and ask one final time.
Me: May I use the stapler?
You look a little concerned now. Is it because of the tick that has formed above my left eye? I think it might be. Your smile is gone, likely because no smile of mine was ever party to this perverted interchange. Who’s feeling awkward now? Huh? Not I. The tables have turned. We both know that now. In fact, the tables aren’t turned. They are brand new tables. Tables you never could have anticipated when you started this little charade of yours. You’re moving slowly, cautiously swiveling for the stapler. That’s right, nice and slow. You’re wise to concede. These papers cannot wait another moment. These have to be filed now, sandwiched by manila in a lack of space behind the sliding drawer of a metal cabinet, not to be looked at for years, and maybe never. Give it to me. Give me the stapler.
Receptionist: Here you go.
Me: Thanks.
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