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August 5, 2005 by editingevan.
Just as common as sand stuck on the feet after you’ve cooled off in the water and traipsed back to the blanket, there are sights that are staples when going to the beach. They could be obvious, they may not be – but I’m here to point them out:
1. There is the token old person, often with a full head of hair (the woman’s is bleached blonde like Marilyn Monroe, while the man’s is combed back in gelled streaks of white). The old person is always wearing a black bathing suit and they rub on gobs of skin cancer – I mean tanning oil.
2. There is the token nasty couple – both horrendously pale. The girl is always wearing a bikini that’s too small and constantly releasing it from the grips of her butt crack, while the boyfriend has a tattoo – all black, some kind of bird or Picasso design on the right arm. They stay in the water and grope, grope, grope probably thinking we can’t see them. He often picks her up and throws her in the water, they straddle, make-out uncontrollably. And, they’re always minors.
3. There is that one seagull that roams around the litter, guarding it? But looks relentlessly pissed, beak open, feathers ruffled.
4. There are the over-dressed teenager in all black, who also swims in the black t-shirt and shorts while lathering on SPF 45 suntan lotion.
5. And we can’t forget about the obnoxious “watch me” kid doing bad cartwheels into the water, building sand castles that resemble nothing but a mound of dirt, catching little waves in the water, etc.
6. There is never soap in the restrooms nearby – like lake weed removes germs, or the green lake discharge that itches as it grazes the leg.
7. As you take off your sunglasses and notice the entourage that brings everything and the kitchen sink, the family members throw down the 15 chairs, the grill, all the toys from the outdoor section of Target, bags and bags of chips, 100 coolers, 17 umbrellas, 18 types of suntan lotion and leave it all unguarded as everyone of them play in the water.
8. Ugh, and the smokers because the beach is the perfect ash tray.
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July 26, 2005 by editingevan.
The first set of seagulls huddled around indented sand littered with cigarette butts and broken beer bottles, like they were excavators of a deep terrain, mysterious, dark, moist, infected – which they were, since they were of Lake Michigan. They trotted by a large crater that was dug haphazardly by children early in the day. It was a hole that was about to head to China, Beijing to be exact, but the little diggers with pink backs and exfoliated hands grew exhausted and left it to be filled by the moon-tide.
The seagulls cackled and floated down like fallen angels, pissed they had to clean up after the sloth humans. They did not come equipped with vacuums or dust busters, only their beaks, which they used to pick at twigs, cigarette butts, popsicle sticks, twine and female hairs that were accidentally ripped out by a sex-ravenous pre-teenage boy.
“Damn people,” one of them said. “We always have to clean up after them.”
Not college educated and angry at the world, these seagulls were the Merry Maids of Lake Michigan. They were missing their yellow station wagon, but they continued to distribute jobs among each other.
“Hey you,” the ruffled one cawed out. “You go and pick up all the cigarette butts that are just orange – you know – the filters. Sue, you go and pick up the half-used cigarettes and pile them up over there, next to that sand castle that looks like a pile of dung.”
“What am I going to do with the half-smoked ones?” Sue asked.
“We’re going to finish them off once these dunes are spic and span, stupid.”
One with beady eyes wobbled around with ruffled feathers on its head. It was either a really old man, struggling without his cane, or a young-girl seagull who had come to work with her mother.
The Merry Maids continued to fly in from the blue, early evening sky claiming their birth right – all the people spending an overdue amount of time at the beach, pieces of left behind Fritos and Alka Seltzer.
“Whatever you do, stay away from the chalky chunks while you clean,” Sue said, adding to her pile of half-smoked cigarettes. “You all remembered what happened to Betty, stupid bird busted open and vomited out her insides for ten minutes because of that Alka Seltzer.”
The same little seagull kept trotting by lost, with its ruffled feathers. It walked this way and that. It must’ve been the runt of the group because it did not have an assigned task. Another seagull, light gray, but with fire in its step, trotted by Steph and I.
It looked like it wanted to say, “Hi, my name is Mike and I’ll be taking care of you today,” but it just opened its beak and stopped, looking at us and only us. When any of the other Merry Maids crossed our vicinity, Mike chased them away.
As the sun continued to hang still in the gray-hazed sky, the seagulls continued to scatter and gather their cigarette butts, chewed food and pulled-out hair as they maintained their punctual efforts to clean the beach before nightfall so the lovers that crept onto the dunes could make love on a clean, sandy beach.
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July 18, 2005 by editingevan.
I get married in an hour and a half. So far the disasters have been slim, especially since I’ve been secluded to the “prayer room” with five groomsmen/body guards. I am away from all social gatherings until 6:25 p.m. when they shove me in a closet with the offient.
But I do get to send the groomsmen around to do piddley tasks for me – go get me coffee, you need to stir my coffee because I’m wearing an ivory tux, unzip my pants because I can’t tuck my shirt in because my fingernails are dirty, etc.
“You can’t leave this room…ever,” Erik, the groomsman escorting grandmas up to the alter, said as he walked in with his own small cup of java.
First of all, I must ask permission to leave – in lieu of seeing the bride prancing about the hallways.
“I need to pee, who is going to take me?”
So, Erik volunteered and I put my hand around my eyes, afraid of witnessing the bride before she made her presentation at the tip of the isle, and Erik led me to the bathroom. It was down a handicap slope and around the corner.
He led me into a wall.
As I peed, the groomsmen called out that Eagle One’s hose was watering the grass acting like the secret service, wearing sunglasses.
It’s 5:09 p.m. now.
I am currently sitting in a grandma-styled room with velour chairs, circled around each other, listening to golf stories from the groomsmen. Each groomsman has had a dilemma with his tux and so I handed the cell to my more angry groomsmen, Tom, to handle the problems with After Hours, where we rented the tuxes.
Erik, the groomsman who will escort the grandmas, has pointy shoes, while the rest of us aren’t aerodynamic with our square-toed.
Tom spun around like Linda Blair from “Exorcist” and ripped the side of his pants.
Daniel, the eleven-year-old usher, popped the button off his jacket on accident.
So, Tom got on the phone with his angry voice and told the subservient workers at the tux shop what we needed and to deliver it right away. Or else.
5:15 p.m.
While sitting in the prayer room, the best man, my brother, opened the Bible and on the first blank page was a drawing of a penis with legs.
“That’s what I learned about in Sunday school – banana Jesus,” Brad said.
“Oh, it’s probably a Veggie Tale…or Jesus,” Erik said.
And then I had to leave to get my picture taken with the bridesmaids and the groomsmen all decided to write a Harlequin Romance passage:
“And then I mushroom-stamped the lot of them, and, glory be, the resemblance to the picture in The Book was incredible! I smote them with my divine scepter, leaving Brad’s head a quivering mound of love pudding!”
5:25 p.m. and I’m left alone to listen to see if the tux shop calls – even though the phones are on silent and Tom has missed three phone calls as he was standing in the room. As much as I would like them to look as good as possible, I can’t leave the room to find someone to take the phone call.
5:34 p.m. and I sip coffee through a stir stick as the man from After Hours fingers thread to re-sew a button on Dan’s tux jacket, and my dad walks in and declares that my mom had a shot of wine before arriving at the church to calm herself down. I’m the baby of the family and we decided she should’ve taken a shot of vermouth instead.
5:47 and Erik asked what time is it and half the groomsmen rush to the bathroom ready to pee, knowing it takes fifteen minutes to unleash the beast over the urinal since tux pants are loaded with two hooks, a zipper and – wait, Brad corrected me to say that there were buttons on the pants, and even though the button’s on the inside, he realized his fly was down, probably during pictures, especially the one where he was right next to my future wife.
5:49 and Brad left, remembering the groomsmen are also ushers with only ten minutes before they start shoving people into the pews – and I cannot leave to go to the bathroom, and I need to, I really, really need to because I don’t want to fart during the service. Its candlelit and the church will catch on fire – and remember, I’m drinking coffee.
5:50 and the wedding photographer (a good friend of mine) walked in and took a snap shot with me in my tux, writing.
5:53 and the groomsmen are asking Dan, the 11-year-old usher, if he picked out his bridesmaid yet. Dan said no, but Brandon suggested that we all get a little Smirnoff in him.
The candles are being lit. The ushers are in line to throw people in the pews and I will wait another half-hour before I’m shoved into the closet.
After the closet, I’ll be a married man.
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May 30, 2005 by editingevan.
Details
June 2005
We at Details decided to ask an upcoming artist-of-sorts to let the public know what he thinks is sexy as summer comes into bloom. From ultra-hip, to the subways of the underground, he lets on why one hyphenated word could bring the style gods to their knees.
Although I am not well versed in my travels abroad, sometimes local style is neglected, and it needs to be broadcasted on the bodies of all skinny, model-esque individuals that won’t go anywhere near a cat walk, but down a dark trip through Hades where they will become henchmen of the fast food world. Here’s what to look for this summer:
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April 21, 2005 by editingevan.
She laid there as the student of cosmetology lathered hot wax on her face and then patted a little piece of fabric and then tore loose, making the woman wince. I watched all this happen as my own cosmetology student began pushing back my cuticles.
“Are you going to tear them off?” I asked.
“No, I just push them back. Do you want me to tear them off?”
I wasn’t sure what that was going to include, pain-wise, so I said no. He continued to rub a little bit of cuticle cream on my finger tips and used a wooden pick to lead the cuticles back to their homeland. I just rested my hands on the overused white towels (with holes and dye stains) and just let the cosmetology student have his way with my hands.
I should’ve been afraid. He had plugs in his ears – not earrings, but plugs – large pieces of wood or metal that are large enough to stretch out the cartilage. I wanted to ask if he had done a work-study with an African tribe in the Congo. His right fingers had “hope” tattooed on them, and I though that was quite the positive thinker in him, but then he whipped out his left hand and “less” was tattooed on those fingers. My heart sank. I was about to feel hopeless too, because not only did his fingers have tattoos, but his arms looked a bruised blue from the ink stabbed into his arms. His hair was a bleached blond on the top, while the sides were shaved a very short ¼ inch.
I didn’t catch his name, but he ended up being fairly nice. His hands shook the whole time while he gave me the manicure, but I couldn’t blame him. I figured I’d have a woman doing my nails, not a guy. Unless he thought I was going to yell at him. He could’ve been nervous because he was used to working on plastic hands that have fake nails that grow at the push of button – a fake body part from the makers of “Pat,” the dummy on which you learned CPR and rescue breathing.
I wasn’t alone. Steph was sitting next to me getting her nails done, ready to float away with about eight balloons for her birthday, and my sister-in-law was many chairs down as her own sister gave her a final exam manicure.
All was going well. Steph and I talked to our cosmetology students, but our conversation was interrupted when the woman who was getting her face-hair torn out with hot wax obnoxiously and loudly displeased with the work her student performed. She called one of the instructors over and held a mirror up to her pink, swollen face.
“We can’t really fix that,” the teacher said.
“Well, how about this, I’ll just pay for my eyebrows,” the customer said. The woman had faux-ripped jeans, a lime green and pink shirt she stole from her daughter’s closet and eyebrows that arched like McDonald’s M’s. Her face was blotchy and as they walked to the cashier, the woman rolled her eyes, totally disgusted that they couldn’t make her look 18 because of the crows’ feet.
What did she expect? She was at a beauty college. It takes an hour to get a simple trim (as I found out later, because I got bored while the other two continued to get their manicures) – there’s a reason they are cosmetology students.
I sighed and looked at the guy doing my nails and said, “You know what? I’m not very happy with the way you’re working, so how about this – I’ll just pay for my middle finger.”
We all laughed, but deep down, I’m sure he wanted to shove the cuticle crowbar in my eye.
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March 21, 2005 by editingevan.
“Had it been aborted, it wouldn’t be in the driveway,” she said.
A dinner conversation has never been so uncouth. A few seconds before, I was being coaxed by my future sister-in-law to eat a 26 oz. hamburger with her so we could have our pictures placed on a wall of champions at a local restaurant, but then someone mentioned the fetus nonchalantly, and how there was one in the drive way.
It was Thursday night, but the specimen was found Monday – and there it stayed, until accusations were passed from 16-year-old daughter and father about who ran over it.
Father had to leave to take Dan, one of the twins, to basketball practice, and he was already throwing tantrums, screaming how late they were. Something had to be done, because it was going to be run over again if somebody didn’t do something.
“Do you want me to pick it up and put it in a container?” Steph asked. Agreements passed around the table to what should be done.
“We need something to pick it up with,” Steph said. “I don’t really want to pick it up with something and then wash it, knowing that a fetus touched it.”
“Do we have any brown lunch bags?” Dad asked.
“This is disgusting,” Hannah, Dan’s twin, said.
Once surgical tools were found, Steph danced out the door with a spatula, along with Kendra, excited to play the roles of crime scene investigators looking for clues. A few seconds passed and in they came with the so-called fetus in a plastic baggy.
“I couldn’t tell you if that was an animal—not an animal, human—not a human,” Dad said. Dan was outside. His screeches were heard through the window, “we’re going to be late,” and I heard him stomp his feet on the February-chilled sidewalk. Steph held the fetus-baggy, and the next question (after the unanswered, “what is it?”) was what do we do with it?
“Is there a biology teacher you can take it to at school?” Dad asked.
Kendra held out her hands, holding an invisible plastic container and said, “Mrs. Moore – there’s something in my driveway.” She got up and looked at the specimen again. “That can’t be an abortion – it doesn’t just fall out.”
“I think the best thing to do would be for Kendra to take it to school,” Steph said.
“I don’t know if you want to take a fetus to the school,” Dad interloped, and everyone nodded in agreement, thinking twice about walking through the halls with the plastic baggy.
“This is so cool,” Steph said, making her biology minor evident. “It’s like CSI.”
“Can I see it?” I asked.
“Hold on, I need to get rid of the scraper,” but she continued to hold it.
“It looks like a smashed dog terd,” I said.
“A squished kidney bean,” Steph corrected me.
Hannah moaned out a long “ew.”
The plastic baggy moved around to each set of eyes. Dad gave into Dan’s screams and left to take him to basketball practice, while the rest of us needed a magnifying glass to observe. It had a rather large “head” and it curled like a fetus would, a black dot sat higher in the “head” region and a brown bunched up string curled out away from its “belly” – which made us all wonder, is that the umbilical cord, and if so, is it really a fetus?
“It’d been so much easier to tell if it didn’t get run over,” Steph said.
And just when the conversation couldn’t get any weirder:
“Should we stick it in the freezer?” Mom asked.
“What am I supposed to do with the spatula?” Steph asked.
“Dad said to leave it,” Kendra said. “He’ll get it when he comes home.”
Mom frowned. She was having none of that.
“I don’t want no fetus-spatula on my kitchen table,” she groaned.
After they set the Ziploc container in the freezer, next to the ice cream we were about to eat for dessert, the CSI team began searching online to see if it could’ve been an opossum fetus instead. They didn’t stop there, they also checked squirrels and bunnies.
“Those are very different,” Kenra said, scrolling and double-clicking.
Rabbit fetus? No. Opossum fetus? No, the head just wasn’t round enough.
“How about a bird fetus?” Hannah asked.
“Could it be a bird fetus?” I asked.
“Birds,” Steph said, correcting the both of us, “birds come in eggs.”
“Oh,” Hannah said. “Well, it looked like it had a pointy nose.”
“It was run-over, of course it would be pointy,” Steph said.
Then Kendra swiveled around in the black computer chair. Kendra, a junior in high school, has already taken biology, chemistry, anatomy, microbiology, genetics and zoology. She began her analysis.
“It was still in its first stage,” she said, slowly gaining her PhD as she spoke. “It was too large to be a mouse. I believe a mouse’s gestation period isn’t very long. Plus it’d have a pointy nose.”
And we already came to the conclusion why it had the pointy nose. The ice cream was scooped out and everyone gathered back at the dining room table, still able to eat, regardless of what was found on the driveway.
“I so want to tell people this, but I don’t think I should,” a giddy Kendra said.
“I don’t think you should share this with too many people – we’re not sure if it’s human, but we’re pretty sure because we looked on the Internet,” Mom said.
As we ate ice cream, conversing over the fetus, Mom picked up the phone.
“Should I call Barb?” she asked. She was already through denial and wonderment about what was found on her driveway, but now she wanted to call one of her good friends.
“Mom, Barb calls you for answers,” Steph said. Which was true – but Mom dialed away. We all listened as she talked and cackled away into the phone.
“…right now we put it in our freezer,” she said, laughing hysterically. “I just thought I’d run it past you to see what you would do. My assumption is that it could’ve been thrown away and an animal dug it out of the trash,” she continued to laugh – hard, but she continued. “It wasn’t bloody – it might’ve been washed, or licked. I’d hate to call the police…but the girls scooped it up. You know my girls.”
We all listened and continued to eat ice cream, still unsure what to really do about the situation, letting it sink into out being that it just might have been a fetus laying in the driveway, waiting for someone to discover it.
“…it’s just the weirdest thing,” Mom said.
And to that, we all agreed.
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March 11, 2005 by editingevan.
A minute of your time, please.
It’s cold outside, which makes me think of the greatest sweater I ever bought. I was walking around Circle Center (the swanky Indy downtown mall) and passed the posh Banana Republic. It is store I peruse, but do not often buy from. After receiving a gift card to Simon Malls, I decided that it wasn’t my money that I was spending – so I could go in and take a look, and perhaps, even buy something.
I will admit that my sense of style at times takes a long journey off the beaten path, and this trip to Banana Republic was no different, because low and behold, there it was: the perfect sweater.
It was the anti-amazing-technicolored-dreamcoat. It was striped in puke greens, faded blues, mossy browns, and barf oranges. It matched nothing in my wardrobe, and therefore, it went with everything. I could wear a paisley tie with the striped sweater. I could wear a bright orange shirt under it. I have even been a fashion victim and worn it with plaid pants. It was the sweater for me, and it was a costly $70. At that point in my life, I didn’t know clothes could be that expensive.
Now that I am an avid connoisseur of GQ, $70 is a drop in the bucket – there are brands out there called Fat Horse that sell loafers with little tassels on them for $5,000. I will never buy them, not because they’re $5,000, but because old men wear loafers with jeans. On sailboats.
So, I spent my $50 gift card and then some on the sweater of the century – the plush, wool and mohair cardigan with amber buttons. It is like wrapping the skin of a werewolf around my body. It is ferocious, with a mind of its own, and needs to be combed with a dog brush. That last sentence is. The fuzz balls off of in such giant clumps that it looks like small, vast planetary systems. Once a couple of flecks are picked off, the carpet needs re-sweeping.
The hairs that drift off the sweater on their own, too good to be part of a clump, stick to my shirts underneath and look like pubic hairs. They cling to my shirts and drift off onto the tops of soda cans where big mouths roam.
My sweater could cause civil lawsuits of disgust.
The first night, before the sweater had its initial washing, I ate at Steph’s parent’s house. With every move, hairs from the sweater drifted in the air. It filtered onto the food, all over the plates and landed on the table cloth.
It looked like Adam and Eve ran through the dining room and shook their nether regions all over the table. It was in my mouth. It was in other peoples’ mouths.
“My shredder is shredding,” I said, pulling the pelvic lint from my mouth.
I started laughing hysterically because no one had a clue to what I was talking about.
“I didn’t say it right. My shredder,” I said slowly, trying to pronounce it correctly. I started to laugh again.
“Suh-weh-ter,” they said.
“Shred-der,” I repeated.
“Your sweater is shedding,” they said.
“Yes. My shredder is shredding.”
It took about ten minutes, but I was finally able to twist my tongue around that phrase. Now, regardless of how many times I wear the dang thing, it sheds all over the place like a dog just sat on my lap. I wouldn’t be surprised if the sweater started barking, or moving around, or was actually made of pubic hair.
It has been notoriously named the “pube sweater” and anybody who knows me, knows I own this disgusting article of clothing.
It goes quite nicely with my chocolate condom hat, but that’s another story of phallic fashion for another day.
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March 3, 2005 by editingevan.
“Mr. Williams it smells like poop,” one of my students told me the other day. He came up to me concerned and the smell must’ve been quite awful to disrupt his typing for the student newspaper.
“Well, someone probably farted,” I said.
I enjoy middle school kids because you can be quite frank with them – you tell them how it is and they don’t flinch.
“No, it really smells like poop,” he said.
“Well, sometimes farts are pretty bad.”
“No, it’s in the corner,” he said.
“Which one?”
And he pointed to the cardboard cut-out of the large Campbell’s Soup Man. Oh, I thought, that corner, the one where the boxes of old yearbooks collect dust monkeys. I walked to the corner and the faint smell of poop did fill the air. I looked down. Dismayed, I asked the students next to me, troublemakers no doubt, what happened that poop could have been deposited in the journalism room.
“It was me,” the student with white high tops admitted. “I can clean it up.”
“Yes, go. I have Kleenexes on the desk, clean it up.”
He didn’t grab the loose crumbs, only the large chunks with rock and grass chips. I’m not sure what happened, but apparently the kid walked to school and walked through a muddy section outside where a little doggy made a happy poopy. What I don’t understand was how the happy poopy found its way under the happy Campbell’s kid.
I retrieved my can of linen-scented Lysol spray and hosed down that corner of the room. I looked at some students and said, “great, now it smells like someone pooped in freshly cleaned sheets.”
I could understand if it was first period and the kids clomped the terds into my classroom. I could understand if it was second period. But fourth period is a good length of time into the school day for a bunch of clumped-up muddy deposits to engage stank warfare in my room.
“What did he do? Find out he stepped in something and began to Riverdance on my floor?”
My first period laughed at that joke – especially since I added my poor representation of a professional clog dancer.
The student probably doesn’t like me and purposefully brought the yuck into my classroom.
I’ve heard of a teacher up north that has the ability to fart on command – granted, I know some of my students who have intestinal control, but they’re all boys and the teacher I heard about was a woman. I’d never heard of a colon contortionist that was a female – not to discriminate, however, because I believe a good woman can leave a fine bunch of streak marks in her undies better than any man. This teacher, much like the student, would stand next to students she didn’t like and silently fart on them.
I’m assuming they were Silent But Deadlies – the kind that make eyes water and noses bleed.
I couldn’t believe it. If my student clomped dog terds into that woman’s classroom, it would be an all-out war. Not enough linen-scented Lysol could save that room from that fecal matter. She would be constantly lecturing by the one student, he would always smell, and he would be tap-dancing dog doo all over the carpet.
What a mess. The worst part is, I’m not sure which is worse or which one is funnier.
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January 27, 2005 by editingevan.
I am teaching a remedial English class this semester – oddly, the reason I wasn’t accepted at the other middle school where I applied for the position is because I didn’t have any remedial background. Today I sat with the kids and we talked about what they think about when they read. We began about prediction.
“Who here has read a book…”
They all raised their hands.
“…and tried to predict what happens next?”
Their hands were still up.
“Well, we’re going to definitely touch on that this semester, along with many other things that will help you become stronger readers, but prediction doesn’t only happen in books – I’m sure some of you have watched mysteries or horror films and tried to guess the whole way though,” I continued.
Kids raised their hands and exclaimed what movies they’d seen and how they tried to predict the ending.
Someone even gave away the ending to “The Village.”
He was scowled at, even by me.
“In ‘The Chainsaw Massacre’ a man cut off people’s heads and then wore their faces.”
“I liked ‘The Ring’,” another student said.
“Has anybody seen ‘The Sixth Sense?’,” I asked, trying to steer away from gory details of horror movies they shouldn’t be watching. I have to remember, these are sixth graders – to some parents, these are children – not young adults.
To me, their just a bunch of squirrels stuck in a windowless room without any acorns.
“I loved ‘The Sixth Sense’,” another student proclaimed. I asked who all had seen it and made sure nobody gave away that ending.
I wanted to pull their attention to how they actually do predict the outcomes of stories, whether it’s on television (“CSI is the best”), a movie (“I can’t believe the man actually wore people’s faces, that’s so gross”) or a book. After I was done using all the pop culture features I could, the bell rang and the weekend started. That was when it occurred to me that, even though I understand and know how to predict in literature and movies, I realized I turned that feature off inside my head.
I go see mysteries or movies that have bizarre plot twists and I just sit there and wait for them to spoon feed me the answers. I am completely drawn into ABC’s super-hits “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” and those both have story lines that try to keep you guessing – but I try not to.
Here I am teaching kids this excellent technique of metacognition, when I try not to practice it myself.
Who came up with practice what you preach anyway?
I probably have to die, because people only practice what’s been preached after the preacher’s been offed.
Great. Now I’m paranoid. Do you have to have a license to own a taser gun?
The reason probably has to do with how my mind works and how it is constantly running. I think, therefore I am, therefore when I watch a show that keeps me guessing, I don’t guess, so I guess I’m not. Is that right? Does that make sense? Did you have to read that sentence twice?
Steph didn’t get it.
“That’s not what I said,” she just told me. “Don’t lie on there.”
But I’m going to let her just try to predict my next move and what I will write next.
The same with you too.
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January 21, 2005 by editingevan.
I am downstairs with my animals right now. The Yorkshire terrier sits on top of green pillows on the sofa – only the green pillows. She will not touch the salmon ones or the floral ones, but only the green ones. Both couches have them, but she steps on them until they slide down and her small body can sit on them.
After one pillow is conquered, she will jump to the other couch, hop on that standing green pillow and stand on it while it slides down and then pops-a-squat, watching the laundry room door.
It’s like watching a dog version of Qbert. She hops from square to square. I’m sure strategy is involved, but I think it goes along with Chaos Theory. Dazee seems to be good at that.
The other dog, a black poodle, sits on “his” pillow. It disturbs him when one of the other animals sits down on this pillow – he doesn’t growl at them, because he’s very passive aggressive. He’s never been one for confrontation – except for the time he accidentally got hold of a chicken bone and I tried to lodge it out of his mouth and, instead, he lodged his sharp teeth into my pinky, piercing all the way through.
When one of the another dog takes the giant green pillow that covers the heat vent (this would be the same as having a heat-up seat in the car, but only fancy rich people have something like that to keep their butt warm) he just lies away, feeling dejected. You invite him on the couch with you to keep him warm – because, you know that whole body-heat-thing, but he looks at you and just begins licking himself and nibbling at his itchy dry skin.
“Mom, Rudee keeps licking himself, isn’t that why his skin is so irritated?” I ask. “Rudee,” I then shout, “quick licking yourself.”
“He’s not licking, can’t you hear his teeth? He’s scratching.”
“Does he have psoriasis?”
“No, he’s just suffering from really dry skin,” she says.
“Can dogs get psoriasis?”
“Rudee, quit that, quit licking your weiner!” shouts my mom. She’d nudge him with her feet, but her legs are too short and Rudee can’t hear anyway – he’s 14-years-old.
We’re becoming a nursing home for small dogs. We have two 98-year-olds living here and a 70-year-old.
Dazee, the terrier, has already claimed my mom as her life support. When mom walks forward, so does Dazee. If mom walks backward, Dazee tries, but mom ultimately steps on her and as my mom stumbles around the kitchen cursing at the dogs, she keeps stepping on Dazee. Dazee is such a shadow to my mom; she can’t help but step on Dazee constantly before she takes her foot and pushes her out of the way.
It’s like they know. They’re old, little, ratty animals with bad hearing and poor eyesight and with nothing better to do they use their dog radar and figure out where we’ll place our foot next to make sure we step on them so we can go down.
I’ve done it numerous times. There’s Rudee right in front of me and then there I go. Down. Down. Down. And then he yelps, like he’s the one in pain – uh, hello – I fall down and get rug burn – who’s the real victim?
It would be the cat, but she’s too fast and leaves a poof of fur as she shoots upstairs and then glares down at all of us. She hides it from us, but I know she has a PhD in something. She must be a feminist of some kind; she only lets my mom touch her. My dad and I are not allowed near her unless we have a kitty treat. If Tink is a feminist, she’s going to be getting letters soon – she hates men, but will gladly take a cat treat from their hands.
Gloria Steinem will throw a hissy fit when she finds out.
Speaking of feminism, I dated this girl in high school and she had this belief that dogs had no personality and only cats did. She never met Tedee.
Tedee is the fourth animal. He’s the other dog that’s 98. He also needs a cane, bifocals, hearing aides and an upped dosage of his arthritis medicine. He was a white poodle at one time, but his little white curly hair isn’t as thick as it used to be. The poor thing started thinning – it runs in the family – but he’s more of a pink poodle now.
This little guy has personality and would give that old high school bag a run for her money. Tedee is moody, quite possibly bi-polar, but that’s just me being overdramatic without Steph’s psychological-diagnosis-book-thing. I probably need to call in a pet psychic, but I think Oprah booked her. Regardless of his mental conditions, Tedee is like watching a Jekyl and Hyde movie:
SCENE. LOW LIT LIVING ROOM. TELEVISION PLAYS SOFTLY IN THE BACKGROUND. YOUNG MAN IN HIS TWENTIES LYING ON THE GROUND WITH A BLANKET WRAPPED AROUND HIM LOOKING DASHING AND OH-SO-SEXY. SOFAS WRAP AROUND YOUNG MAN AND HIS HEAD LEANS AGAINST THE BOTTOM OF ONE AS A LITTLE WHITE DOG ENTERS THE ROOM.
Sexy Babe: Tedee, come here, I want to pet you and give you love because that’s the only thing I am capable of.
Tedee: You dropped me when I was a puppy, why should I trust you?
Sexy Babe: That was ten if not thirteen years ago, can’t you just let go of it?
Tedee: That drop made me forget who my parents were.
Director: Cut! What the hell is this? Quit acting sexy, and Tedee, quit talking – you’re supposed to be silent so we can’t read you very well. You need to come across as more mysterious. Places everyone! Dammit, where is my Diet Coke!
SCENE. SEXY BABE LAYS ON THE FLOOR AS TEDEE APPROACHES HIM AND NUDGES SEXY BABE WITH HIS HEAD.
Sexy Babe: His movements say ‘pet me,’ but I am hesitant (pauses dramatically) because I dropped him when he was a puppy and doesn’t like me very much.
TEDEE CONTINUES TO NUDGE AND THEN SEXY BABE BEGINS TO PET HIM. TEDEE BEGINS TO GROWL, GROWLS MORE, GROWLS SO MUCH THAT THE LITTLE BUGGER IS PISSED OFF AND BITES SEXY BABE. TEDEE SHAKES HIS BODY WITH FEROCIOUS VIGOR AND THEN STARTS NUDGING SEXY BABE’S HAND AGAIN.
END OF SCENE.
Not only does Tedee have horrendous mood swings, he’s a spastic time-bomb waiting to go off every night. His little internal clock knows when it’s 9:30 p.m. at night, because every night at the same time Tedee will fetch my dad, hop on his lap and begin yelping his high pitched yap at him. He’ll jump off my dad’s legs and then dance around like a midget ballerina without a tutu and dance and spin and yelp and hop and prance and bounce and screech and waddle and hula.
Dogs don’t have personality?
All living things have personality, even ostriches. All they need are some dangly pearl earrings and a flowery hat and they’ll resemble a bunch of old women ready for church.
The last time I checked, the only living thing without personality was Harrison Ford.
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