Pearl, Why You Little...

Part III: Good Night, My Glove, Sleep Tight

2012-02-01T07:00:00.000-08:00

The culminating frustration of the last few months met half way up and half way down the staircase last evening in an emotional hand-clasp that made the pictures on the wall shudder in relief.

Rightie has come home.

Forced into a hand-to-hand existence amongst Minneapolis’ homeless, she was found in a snow bank outside the bus stop just two stops from home.

Rightie and Stinky: the best of gloves, the worst of glove stories. Kept apart by the complex bus-riding patterns of the homeless and an unrelenting cold front, the two gloves have reunited.

There, on the stairs near the living room, they face each other for the first time in months.

Rightie’s fingers hang dejectedly. “I – I – Stinky, you don’t know what I’ve been through.”

Stinky shakes slightly from side to side, raises his index finger. “It doesn’t matter. We did what we had to do.”

Rightie blushes, her palm hot with shame. “You don’t know.”

“I don’t need to know. Nothing will ever change the love I have for you.”

The ends of Rightie’s fingertips assume an air of hope. “Then we still have time? To be together?”

Stinky pauses, runs his thumb up the inside of Rightie’s palm. Again, he shakes slightly from side to side. “It’s too late, my love. She has new gloves now. Word on the staircase is that we’re to be washed, pressed flat, placed in a reasonably airtight container, and stored in the basement until next October.”

“A good, long nap.” Rightie smiles ruefully and sighs. “I’ve missed you so.”

Suddenly, there is the sound of a door opening; and with that, the gloves fall, limply, to the floor.

On the heel of the sound of footsteps, the woman sweeps into the stairway, laundry basket bouncing off a hip. She grabs both gloves and the circular scarf Mary has given her, and they join the load of towels destined for the washer.

And safe within the tumbled world of the laundry basket, Rightie and Stinky’s fingers intertwine.

Part II: It’s a Cold Time to be Alone, or Gloves in the Time of Collars-Up

2012-01-31T07:00:00.000-08:00

In a move that has stunned Minneapolis neighborhoods, area organization Gloves Without Partners has congregated in what many perceive to be the first real indication of spring.

The gathering of single gloves began as a way of reconnecting.

“It was sad, really,” mumbled an un-named ski glove. “Here we’d been instrumental in keeping a hand warm and suddenly we’re on the streets, being pushed around by snow plows.”

“I’d lost hope,” opined a glove identified only as “Rightie”. “One minute I’m part of a team, you know, watching our bus-riding overlord force my partner “Stinky” to pick up litter, the next minute we’re falling unnoticed to the curb while she digs through her purse for her bus pass! You can imagine my dismay when she climbed aboard without us. I was lost! Lost!”

Many gloves tell the same story: forgotten on laps and dumped upon standing, left behind at bus stops, fallen from overstuffed bags, they are forced to live on the streets, turning to each other for structure, some resorting to anonymous, one-off hand jobs to provide the protection against the cold that they were designed to provide.

“I spent three days with a homeless man before he, too, lost me,” shudders a cashmere driving glove who refuses to give her name. “All I wanted was to do what I was manufactured to do. Is that so wrong? Is it wrong to give warmth? Is it?” It is here that the glove turns away, sobbing.

And now, thanks to the dream of two gloves to be reunited with their mates, those fearful, helpless days are over.

“We’re going to stand up!” shouts one working glove. “We’re saying ‘no more! not while I have fingers!”

In other news, large gatherings of cigarette butts and discarded candy wrappers have gathered just outside of the circle of streetlamp light on the corner of Broadway and Buchanan.

Their spokesman, an empty Yoohoo bottle, hints at big things come the true thaw.

Come back tomorrow for the third and final installment on Rightie and Stinky: A Glove Story.

Part I: Local Woman Discovers Reason to Go On

2012-01-30T07:00:00.000-08:00

I’m feeling particularly Scandinavian lately. Not the pretty, blue-eyed, let’s-take-our-clothes-off-and-sit-in-the-sauna Scandinavian either but the dark, brooding type sitting on an isolated farm off amongst the fjords, throwing knives into the floorboards and whistling eerie, minor-chorded dirges.

Why go on? The world is gray, cold and lifeless. I’ve not gone outside without winter boots on for four full months and there’s at least two months to go. A short-sleeved shirt is now tantamount to flashing one’s bare breasts at passing motorists: shocking, pale, familiar yet painfully naked; and I’m now down to shaving my legs once a month – whether I need it or not.

I dreamt the other night – and get this – of fruit hanging from trees.

Fruit! In trees! Ha ha ha!

I await spring, no longer confident of what it looks like but only sure that I’ve seen it before.

These have been my thoughts for several days now. I share them because I can’t be alone in this. Because if I don’t share them my next coping strategy is to take up competitive drinking.

Because, contrary to how I feel about any given moment, there is always hope; and this time, hope comes in the form of a single, knitted glove.

Let me explain.

Two months ago, both of my favorite gloves went missing. Rightie and Stinky, I called them.

Stinky, by the way, didn’t deserve his lot in life but by default became the glove with which I picked up litter. Winter litter doesn’t literally stink, of course, as it tends to be frozen, but “Stinky” became his name, primarily because “Garbage Glove” seemed disrespectful while Stinky seemed kind of home-y.

I digress.

Whatever I named them, they disappeared. O, how I cried. I looked. I called. I tried to envision them (if I were a glove, where would I be?)

And while I stopped short of posting “Have You Seen These Accessories?” fliers, both Rightie and Stinky left a glove-shaped hole in my wintery heart.

I loved those dang gloves.

Let us fast-forward then, from that terrible morning when I realized they were gone, to yesterday, because there, in the filthy snow-plowed ridge of snow in the street outside of the house, its once five-foot mass reduced by the slowly increasing temperatures to a glacier-like solemnity with its stratified ice-snow-salt-dirt tale of the season, was one, lone, outstretched finger of my left glove: one brown, frozen, defiant finger aimed squarely at the elements.

Was it the index finger, pointing toward the sky? Was it the middle finger, taunting and insolent, a wintry "up yours"? Was it perhaps, even, the thumb, a cosmic "everything's OK"?

Is it important?

My left glove in hand, I kicked around for the other.

I have yet to find it; but now, there is hope.

I thought you should know.

Stinky the Glove has been found.

Long live Stinky!

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s installment!

The Never-Ending Whirr

2012-01-29T07:00:00.000-08:00

Apparently there are video games and movies in cars now. To some of you, I’m sure, this is not news and ranks up there with “frozen TV dinners” and this new-fangled “elastic” that’s all the rage.

You kids.

The ability to play movies in a car? Way to go, Detroit! Never mind about the gas mileage, we’ve got to work harder on giving the people more ways to distract themselves from reality!

Perhaps the thinking here was to keep the little buggers in the back seat occupied – and yes, I refer to the children. I’m aware of the frustration created by incessant cries of “Mom! Kevin’s not touching me!” while Kevin, the little bugger, runs his grubby index finger up and down his sister’s arm, very close but not quite touching her skin…

Not that I have experienced this myself.

So without purposely trying to sound hopelessly out-of-touch, what will happen with the little buggers’ imaginations without the lull of the wheels, the creepiness of the AM radio stations, the potential humor of one’s parents’ music?

Having grown up, it seems, on the road, I can tell you that it is a most excellent place to just “be”.

For example, once the novelty of the I’m-Not-Touching-You Game wears off, there’s staring out the window. Ah. Staring out the window. Whether you’re counting fire hydrants, Volkswagens, cars with one headlight or cows, it is, nevertheless, the quiet stuff of childhood.

What’s that cloud look like? Hey! What’s that guy doing over there? Mom, how come that lady looks like that? Hey! There’s a Dairy Queen over there! Mom, what if that guy has someone in his trunk? Would we ram him off the road and call the cops? Hey, Mom –

Kids quiet down eventually, right?

Which one of you kids can find a car with a New Jersey license plate?

Mom! Kevin’s not touching me again!

OK. So maybe that’s why they put the movies in the car.

Pfft. I still don’t think it’s cool.

Mary Was a Loving and Tasty Friend

2012-01-28T07:04:00.000-08:00

The following events took place a little over two months ago. The names have not been changed as no one I know is innocent.

The house seems cooler than usual. Then again, it is a rather smallish house shrouded in a rather large-ish winter.

Within minutes, the temperature in the living room has seemingly plummeted, and we have gone from putting our coats on to trying to get the dog to sit nearer, purely for warmth.

T-Bone, Black Lab of Great Sincerity, is only happy to oblige.

“What’s going on here?” Mary stands up and wanders over to the thermostat, which she eyes suspiciously. She taps its cover with an index finger.

“Good job there, Fuzzy,” Jon says.

“Shaddap,” she says, good-naturedly. “Is it me or is it cold in here?”

Mary sits down next to me on the couch, tries to pull the dog closer. “Get yer own dog,” I mock-hiss.

“Pfffft,” she says. She pulls her coat tighter. “But seriously, Jon. It’s cold in here and getting colder.” She stands up, stares out the window at the snow drifts that have covered their sidewalk, their mail box. A thought occurs to her, one in which she indulges fully.

“Holy Hannah,” she shouts, turning around, “Do you think our furnace has gone out? We can’t afford that! What’s going on here? Where are we? What year is it? WHO’S GOT THE SIGNAL FLARES?!” Mary, cracking herself up, collapses on the dog, laughing. “We’re prolly gonna freeze to death, T-Bone,” she mutters into his ear.

Jon looks at me, winks. “The furnace didn’t go out, you hysterical female you.”

“Jon,” I say, “If we’re all gonna die anyway, what do you say we kill Mary and eat her for dinner? Would that be wrong?”

Jon stares a hole through me, possibly giving it real thought. You can never tell with him. He just may be weighing whether or not I’m serious.

Mary looks me straight in the eye, a mysterious smile playing on her lips. “There’s onions in the fridge, but we’re out of taties.”

“Out of taties!” I shout, scandalized. I pause, consider our menu options. “Any corn starch?”

“Flour,” she says. “Oh, and I haven’t exercised in months, so I’m thinking you’ll want to avoid the rump.”

There is a WHUMP sound as the furnace kicks on.

Mary, Jon, and I exchange looks as T-Bone’s tail thumps.

Standing up and shaking his head, Jon heads toward the basement. “And that’s enough of that,” he says.

Mary Gets Rubbed

2012-01-27T07:00:00.000-08:00

Lurching headlong into a weekend, newly-freckled and be-blonded by the Florida sun, I return to Minneapolis wondering what will happen next…

If only we knew.

And then I smile. Because of course we know. My iPod! Why, set on “shuffle” and left to its own devices during a Friday-morning commute, my iPod tells the future!

Sic semper tyrannis! E Pluribus Unum! Eenie meenie jelly beanie, the spirits are about to speak! (Sorry, Bullwinkle.)

21st Century Schizoid Man by King Crimson
Rose Garden by Southern Culture on the Skids
Totally Nude by The Wallets
Blue Rondo a la Turk by Dave Brubeck
You Really Got Me by The Kinks
Sing a Song by Earth Wind & Fire

You see that, kids? Happy weekend.

So quickly, before I lose you to naked dancing and air piano, a quick thought…

Because there we were, as we so often are: black-pantsed and white-shirted and side-by-side. Neatly coiffed, hands clasped behind our backs, Mary and I rock gently on our heels, striving for a look that says both “I’m here to serve” and “Please don’t ask me for anything”.

We are standing in the banquet hall, just outside the swinging kitchen doors.

Church service over, a 30-minute bar/reception follows.

Christmas dinner is right around the corner.

“You look nice,” I say.

“No, you look nice,” Mary says.

Ice waters filled to a three-quarters height, butter pats and creams center-table, silverware inspected, we await the storm that will be the next four hours.

“Oy vey,” Mary says.

A man in a suit, comfortably nestled between “old” and “elderly”, is approaching with a surprisingly sturdy gait.

“Mary!” he shouts.

My head swivels to the right, where I watch a blush creep up Mary’s neck.

“You know this guy?” I say out of the side of my mouth.

“Everybody knows me,” she mutters.

The man in the suit wraps an arm around Mary’s shoulders, rubs her upper arm vigorously. “How’re ya, sweetheart? Say, I’m wondering what a guy’s gotta do around here to get a glass of ice water. Can you do that for me, sweetheart?”

Mary, ever the sweetheart, can indeed get this guy a glass of ice water.

I follow her into the back. “No, seriously,” I say, “How does he know your name?”

She shakes her head. “When I was setting up that table just outside the double doors, he was out there.”

“Did he hug you then, too?”

“I’m irresistible to the old guys,” she says, wide-eyed. “They want to squeeze me.”

It’s true. “You’ll probably get a proposal out of the evening.”

“Shaddap,” she says pleasantly.

Thirty minutes later, and Mary comes flying into the back kitchen. “Ack!” We’d just finished serving the salads: huge, glass-bowled affairs passed around tables of eight, family-style. I hold out a piece of fresh fruit to calm her nerves.

“That’s not going to help,” she says, popping it into her mouth. “Mmmm,” she says, “pineapple.”

“So what’s going on?”

She dabs at her lips, checks her lipstick in the polished steel of the hand-towel dispenser. “Do I look like I want to be hugged to you?”

“I personally find you almost indescribably attractive,” I say.

She narrows her eyes at me. “Why I oughta…”

“Why you little…”

We laugh.

“You busy? Come with me. Watch this.”

I follow her out to the floor, where she is engulfed by old- to elderly men. “Mary!” they shout.

“You gotta meet Pearl,” she says, grinning. She pushes me forward.

“Pearl!” they shout.

One of them throws an arm around Mary, rubs her on the back. “You’re nice people, you know that? You’re just nice people.”

And we smile at each other.

Because, darn it. We’re just nice people.

Nice, huggable people.

Have a good weekend, everyone. Don't forget to come back!

Wherein I Defend How I Define "Fun"

2012-01-26T07:00:00.000-08:00

A re-post, while I freckle-up and get just a little blonder before I return to Minnesota...

You know how people say “well, it’s the little things…” and somewhere in the back of your head you find yourself thinking, “Sheesh. That phrase is so old…”?

You know why it’s old?

Because it’s true, dagnabit! It is the little things; and by golly if I have to defend that cliché, I will!

And you know how I feel about clichés, don't you? Why, I avoid them like the plague...

And so I came across one of these "little things" just the other day: my leg-warmers. I’ve been encasing my legs from ankle to mid-thigh in a pair of gray, cable-knit leggings since October now and will no doubt keep them on until all threat of frost has passed, sometime in June.

I keed! I keed! We should be safe from hypothermia by May…

Think of it! Mother Nature wants to kill me. Why, at this very moment, not only am I wearing the foundation garments you would expect on any reasonable female, but also leggings, socks, pants – er, trousers – a camisole, a shirt, a scarf, and a jacket.

And frankly, I feel a little under-dressed, as the jacket’s sleeves are only three-quarters’ length.

The best part about wearing leg warmers, though?

When you finally take them off, wearing only – gasp! – pants, you feel scandalously naked.

Hee! Hee! Hee! No one knows that under my pants my legs are naked!

Oh, and that snickering you hear right now? It’s my readers from across the pond. Apparently the word “pants” to them means “underwear”.

Hee! Hee!

But you know what’s even better than cable-knit leg-warmers?

Are you familiar with driving in the winter, the massive amounts of salty snow and ice that collect within a car’s wheel wells?

Why is the snow salty? Oh, it’s a little service provided by the State of Minnesota. The salt ensures that the ice will melt and that your car will rust properly. No, no, no! No need to thank them. It’s part of what a full-service state will do.

But back to the slush.

When you drive in the snow, loads and loads of it ends up in your wheel wells where it freezes into clumps.

And those clumps, my friends, once you’ve pulled into a parking lot, are an absolute delight to kick from the car. A couple of good kicks and there it goes, hills of filthy ice and snow fall with a satisfying splat.

All across the Great State of Minnesota, parking lots fill with dirty piles of kicked-off car droppings.

So the next time you’re wondering, why in the world do people even bother living in states where the weather tries to kill them with the cold?

Now you know.

Because we love the feeling of kicking large clumps of snow off from under our cars.

And in the summer, we feel like we’re naked.

Sitting on the Couch: 1976

2012-01-25T07:00:00.000-08:00

Randy Dupree was my sister’s friend’s oldest brother, and his family lived just on the other side of the creek that ran in our backyard.

Randy was well built and good looking, particularly by trailer-park standards, smooth, with his tight Wranglers and his torso-hugging tee-shirts. He wore black leather boots, hung a black leather biker jacket across his rippling, 18-year-old shoulders. Randy sometimes kept his sunglasses on the top of his head, an unbelievably cool look in the eyes of this seventh-grade glasses-wearer.

Randy was the epitome of the tawdry end of high school sexuality.

Gail-Lynn does her best to keep the damage to a minimum.

“Now what do you need it for now?”

Sitting next to Karen and Cindy, I watch from the couch as Randy wheedles the car keys from his mother.

“The Club. Goin’ up to The Club.” He holds out his right hand, palm up, jiggles it up-and-down, up-and-down in a mute gesture of joking but impatient demand.

They have one car, Gail-Lynn and her three children. Gail-Lynn eyes him shrewdly, and I turn my attention away from Gilligan’s Island and toward the Saturday night ritual of Randy and the car keys.

“I got new wiper blades,” she says. “You’ll put them on before noon on Saturday.”

Randy grins. The hand stops jiggling. “Yes.”

“We’ve got a quarter tank now. It’ll be a half-tank when I wake up in the morning.” I had heard that Randy’s mom had been from somewhere south. Her “morning” sounds like “mawn-ing”.

Randy’s still grinning. “Yes.”

She turns to the chair by the door, fishes her keys out of her purse, drops them in to Randy’s outstretched hand. He’ll do what he says he will, or he won’t get to use it again. He made that mistake once and went without it for four straight Saturdays. That won’t happen again.

Keys in-hand, Randy moves swiftly toward the front door. The night awaits.

“Randy!” Gail-Lynn yells from the kitchen, where she is pouring her own ritual of Saturday night: a Crown and Coke.

His hand on the door knob, he turns back to face his mom.

“No pecker tracks in my backseat. That’s some good upholstery,” she yells. “You gonna have sex in my back seat, you lay a towel down.”

Grinning, Randy exits, stage-right.

Holy Hannah, Run for Your Life!

2012-01-24T07:00:00.000-08:00

A re-run, while I spend a few days in Florida, thawing. :-)

The drive-in tried to kill me when I was 12.

How, you say?

Well, I did a bit of babysitting in my youth. Of course, one had to do quite a bit of babysitting at that time to make any money, because the going rate was fifty cents an hour, regardless of the number of children.

I once babysat four kids overnight and got less than $8.

But that’s another story.

I sat for my youngest cousin, Chad, here and there; and so it came to pass one weekend that my Aunt Jewel and Uncle Keith decided to go to a drive-in, bringing me along to watch the two-year-old Chad.

You remember drive-ins, don’t you? Rows and rows of speakers on stands, the rows of piled dirt that you parked your front wheels on, aiming yourself toward the screen, the teenagers who arrived in the trunks of their friends cars in an attempt to save the $4 or whatever it was to get in…

I didn’t get out much as a 12-year-old. I was a late bloomer of a gal, someone who could easily be portrayed in the movie of her life as someone who starts out in her brother’s corduroys and granny glasses and ends up, well, giving her brother his pants back.

But we’re going to the drive-in! We’re going to the drive-in!

Jewel and Keith up front, Chad and I in the back, what movie are we going to?

Why, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, of course!

I remember, quite clearly, Chad running ahead of me to the playground, lifting and placing him on the swing. The drive-in screen was visible, just beyond a couple trees, and I pushed Chad absent-mindedly while I watched the movie, watched as the van in the film pulled over and picked up the creepy hitchhiker, the one who went on to play with a knife, the one they kicked out a couple miles down the road.

I couldn’t hear it, of course, but even a fifth grader could tell you that this was not going to end well.

A number of hot dogs, some popcorn, a small keg of pop later, and we were in the back seat of the car again.

Chad lay on the floor and fell asleep.

With nothing else to do, I began to watch the movie.

Projected onto a screen 100 feet wide and 80 feet tall, I watched, through latticed fingers, as the free-wheelin’, van-drivin’ hippies were killed in horrible ways.

I kept my foot on Chad’s back as he slept.

We went back to their home after the movie, somewhere around 1:00 a.m. and I spread my sleeping bag on the floor of the spare room and closed my eyes.

And that was when the real horror began.

I was not accustomed to sleeping there, and every sound, every creak, put in motion the leather-faced freak now occupying precious brain space.

I summoned the dispenser of fear – the alphabet – for hours that night, reciting it in English, French, and Pig Latin.

Ohway ymay odgay.

It was around 6:00 a.m., as the sun was coming up, that I finally started to fall asleep.

And that’s when the garbage truck came down the alley. The sound of the hydraulic lift on the back of the truck – sounding every decibel like a chainsaw – caused my heart to rip through my ribs, whereupon it was propelled upward and hit the ceiling with a wet, percussive slap.

I peed my pants.

And then I died of fear.

You know, every day, I try to learn a little something.

What did I learn that day?

That there’s no way to ignore a screen that size.

And that you should always pack one more pair of underwear than you think you’ll need.

I'll Bet I Can Eat My Lunch Faster Than You Can

2012-01-23T07:00:00.000-08:00

We need to do something about lunch, people.

I sat in the Skyroom on the top floor of Macy’s the other day in a rare out-for-lunch moment with friends. We sat kittycorner from a mother and son. The woman appeared to be in her early 30s, the boy maybe 9, 10.

He was eating quite enthusiastically.

“Slow down,” his mother admonished, “no one's going to take it from you.”

He tried to slow down, taking a couple of careful bites, but moments later he was back at his previous pace. Quickly, efficiently, he smiled between bites at his mother as he made short work of his sandwich. She smiled at him, love in her eyes; and he covered his mouth as they laughed good-naturedly.

That kid was what we call “a good little eater”.

Watching the exchange made me smile, too; but it also got me thinking about the casual nature with which we treat our midday meal.

Let me ask you: Where did you go to school? Did they allow you to eat with utensils? If memory serves me correctly – and I think it does – I’m pretty sure we were forced to eat whilst in line, plastic-kerchiefed women plopping ice-cream scoops of mashed-potato-lime-gelatin-surprise into our outstretched hands.

As an aside, my father swore that, when he was young, lime Jello containing free-floating shredded carrot and celery, the whole thing topped with Miracle Whip – yes, Miracle Whip – was considered a dessert.

It changed how I looked at him.

And how was your lunch hour in your 20s? Did they pay you for that time? I continually managed to find jobs where you had to punch out for lunch.

Hmm. Would I like to clock-out to eat or would I like to have another seven dollars a day on my paycheck?

Even now, I have a hard time stepping away from my desk and often eat my lunch while setting up meetings and prank-calling my friends.

I hear, by the way, that lunch in Europe is different, that it is sometimes accompanied with wine and naps. I refuse to believe that, however, as it interferes with my ability to continue to work in the United States.

Anyway, that couldn’t possibly be true – could it?

And if it is, how do we institute that in Minnesota?

Let me know if you know who I should contact. I’m willing to get the ball rolling on this one.

Oh, About Four Pounds or So

2012-01-22T07:00:00.000-08:00

Seems that my parents and Mary did some bonding whilst Mary worked her sneaky wiles around the surprise party she threw for my birthday.

“When are you picking her up?”

“Who?”

“Mary!” I can hear my mother moving around her kitchen. Putting away the silverware would be my guess. “Aren’t you bringing Mary with you for lunch tomorrow?”

“What? When did this happen?”

“Oh, you know,” my mother says. “At the party. I said you were coming up for lunch and she said she wished she was coming up for lunch and, well, you’ve seen her, haven’t you. All big eyes and – Paul! Close that door! For cryin’ out loud!” She sighs. “Your father enjoys aggravating me.”

And so I pick Mary up for the two hours’ ride north to my parent’s.

She climbs into the passenger seat.

“You look nice,” I say.

She pulls down the sun visor. “I’ll have you know,” she says, smiling at the image she finds in the mirror there, “that I am wearing lipstick just for your mom.”

“Not for me?”

Mary, a woman notoriously good at taking care of everyone but herself, has had chapped lips since we met.

She shakes her head, flips the visor up. “I used to wear it for you, but now I wear it for your mom.”

“Well whoever you’re wearing it for, it looks nice.”

It’s quiet as we let this sink in.

“You’re lucky, you know.”

I know what she’s talking about. Mary lost her mother when she was quite young, her father a number of years ago.

“You can –“

“Can I –“

We stop.

I keep my eyes on the road, hands at 10 and 2. “You can use them, if you like.”

Mary stares out the passenger window. “They know stuff, you know,” she says. “Parents and older people. Like how many cups to a quart.” She looks at me. “Do you think your mom knows that?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll bet she makes the best desserts.”

I don’t say anything.

“Does she know how many feet to a mile?”

“Maybe not, but I’m pretty sure my dad does.”

This seems to satisfy her. “Seems like a Dad question, doesn’t it,” she murmurs.

I smile. “Hey, and if you’re going to ask my dad questions, be sure to ask him about his collection of literature, in particular his henways.”

Mary frowns. “What’s a henway?”

I smile. My father, the king of the clean joke, is going to love this.

“Oh, Mary,” I say. “Just be sure to ask. My dad loves questions like that.”

Bus Stop: 1976

2012-01-21T07:29:00.000-08:00

It’s really cold today. You know it’s cold when Tammy’s hair freezes.

Tammy, the prettiest girl in the trailer park, is in the habit of washing her hair every morning before school, the better to emphasize the gleaming blue-black drape that hangs well below her waist. Because she is too cool to wear a hat, her hair has frozen solid in the six-block walk to the bus stop.

Next to Tammy is Rita Bayer. There is a wary, uneasy space between the two of them.

I know four of the Bayer kids. Their trailer is never empty of teenagers. Their driveway never has less than three cars in it - four if you include the Mustang on blocks back next to the shed.

All the Bayers are boys. Even the girls are boys. They are sturdy and box-shaped.

The Bayers aren’t built for speed; they are built to crush.

I had met Rita three months earlier at the bus stop on our first day in the new court.

“Hi,” I said.

“What’s your name?” she countered.

“Pearl,” I said. “What’s yours?”

“Guess.”

“What?” I said.

“Guess.” A demand.

“Um. Sharon,” I said.

“Pssssss, “ she said, hissing between her teeth. Clearly, she was dealing with an idiot.

“Mary?”

“You gotta be kiddin’ me,” she jeered. “Guess again.”

Guess again? No, thank you. “Um. I give up,” I said.

“Rita!” she shouted, triumphantly.

Rita? I was supposed to have guessed “Rita”? Yikes! Welcome to the first day of seventh grade.

Rita and I never became friends. Rita said things like “yank me” and, even worse, the horrifying “lick my butt”. I never knew where to look when she said that.

Tammy scowls at her in the thin pre-dawn light. The two of them are oil and water; and if Tammy had a brother, I’m sure she would’ve had him attempt to beat Rita up by now.

“Your hair is frozen,” Rita observes.

“No shit, Sherlock,” Tammy says.

“Howdja like me to break it off at the roots?” Rita asks, pleasantly. She could just as easily be asking “howdja like a three-day weekend” or “howdja like half a pizza”.

Tammy steps behind me, uses me as a shield. “Go ahead,” she says, holding my shoulders. “Try it, Lard-O.”

Lard-O is a misnomer. Rita isn’t fat. As solid as a tree trunk, and moving just slightly faster than one, she grabs the front of my coat with one hand and takes a swing for Tammy’s head with the other. She misses Tammy’s head but manages to grab her coat.

“Hey!” I shout, angrily.

“Stand still,” Rita advises.

“LINDSEY!” Tammy is screaming for her older sister. Lindsey, however, is a good block away. She sees what is going on and continues her slow walk to the bus stop.

Rita lets go of me and I duck away. Holding Tammy’s coat at the throat with her right hand, she casually licks her left thumb and smears it across Tammy’s forehead, then shoves her, hard, backwards.

Tammy falls heavily to the street. She jumps up, twisting to see the butt of her white painter’s pants. They are ruined.

“I’m gonna get you! I’m gonna get you!” she screams.

Tammy runs home, crying.

Rita looks at me. “Washing your hair in the morning is stupid,” she challenges.

“You’re right about that,” I say.

That Alarm in Your Head is Meant to be Noticed

2012-01-20T07:00:00.000-08:00

Ladies and gentlemen, cats and kittens, welcome to Friday, the day on which we ask ourselves, Why didn’t I get an education and ensure myself a better-paying job?

The answer, my friend, is that I don’t know. Everyone tried to talk to you about it, but you know how you are.

You didn’t listen.

But it’s not too late! The future is still before us. And now, through my steadfast and possibly erroneous belief in the oracle-y powers of my iPod, played on the Friday morning commute and carefully scrutinized, you, too, can predict your immediate future.

Aw, come on! Play along!

This Story by Eyedea & Abilities
What Does it Take (to win your love) by Jr. Walker
Television, the Drug of the Nation by The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprosy
House Party by The JB Horns
Will It Go Round in Circles by Billy Preston
Ramble On by Led Zeppelin
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised by Gil Scott-Heron

Hmm. Looks like a good weekend, with a decent beat and perhaps a horn section in the background. Drink lots of fluids and get plenty of sleep. Wait – that might just be for me, because, for the second time in under a month, I left work early Monday. Sick again, I took my throbbing head and increasingly stuffed-up nose out the door and to the bus stop.

Now, I would not describe myself as a paranoid person.

That said, however, I noticed the young man at the bus stop immediately.

He arrived moments after I did, but he seemed to be looking at the people at the bus stop more than he seemed to be awaiting a bus. As he approached me, I put my new Kindle in my purse, pull my bus pass from my purse and board.

It is as the bus is pulling away, that it appears he suddenly remembers that this is his bus. Waving his arms, the driver stops, the doors open, and he boards.

He takes a seat three behind me.

We are almost over the bridge when I hear him talking.

“Miss? Hello? Hello? Hellooooooo.”

I’ve got my earbuds in, but my iPod is not on. When I feel there might be something going on, something to listen to, I turn it off.

I’ve believed in my gut all my life, and my gut didn’t like this man.

I ignore him.

“Hello? Helloooooo! Miss? Miss?” The volume is somewhere between a whisper and a mutter, and I finally turn around.

He has a cell phone to his ear. He smiles at me. I turn back around. I know he’s been talking to me.

He’s not talking to anyone on the phone. I turn around, look at him again. The phone is no longer out.

He smiles.

Someone at the front of the bus pulls the cord, and I jump up and get off of it at the last possible second.

And I watch the bus, with him still in the back of it, go on without me.

I’ll catch a different one.

My Friends are Unbelievably Sneaky, or My 50th Birthday, Part II

2012-01-19T07:00:00.000-08:00

We have reservations for my 50th birthday.

“I don’t really feel like going out for dinner,” I say.

“You’re just upset,” Willie says.

I frown, stare out the car window. It’s less than a dozen blocks to the restaurant, but it’s winter, and I’m wearing a dress.

We pull up. “Maybe some people will come by for drinks,” I say hopefully. “Do you believe I’ve not gotten one single text today? Not one?”

Willie stares straight ahead.

“And where’s Mary? Why hasn’t she called back? Where’s Boggs? Where’s Amy?”

No answer.

A Dirty Bird (a vodka and olive juice martini) takes the edge off my anxiety, and by the time we’re through with dinner I’m only checking the front door every 10 minutes. No one has come.

“Let’s go home,” I say.

“Is that your phone buzzing?”

I check my phone. There’s a message. It’s Boggs. “Can u come get me at the Spring? My car won’t start! I’ll buy u a bday bloody b4 we go back to the Peacock. Pretty please? Oh & happy bday!”

I write back: “normally I would say too bad so sad what the hell are you doing at the spring without me but I’m feeling drunk and generous. Be there in 10.”

She writes back: “Thank u so much!!!”

I tell Willie about Boggs’ dead car. “Isn’t that weird? I mean, she knows it’s my birthday, plus she knows everyone at the Spring, including the bartenders. Why doesn’t she have them jump her car?”

Willie ignores everything I’ve just said. “We’ll have to stop at home first.”

“Why?”

“I have to use the bathroom,” he says.

I use that time to change into jeans. No point in jumping someone’s car in a dress. “You don’t have to come along,” I yell. “I can handle this.”

“No way,” he hollers. “I want another drink.”

And in 20 minutes, we are in the parking lot of the Spring.

I turn around in my seat. “Where’s her car?”

“We’ll just park,” Willie says. “We’ll figure it out.”

We go in through the back door, by the pool tables.

And I see Reba. What? Reba lives in Eagle Bend, four hours north.

I hear my name, followed by “hide!”, and four heads bob, then stand.

I know every face in the bar.

Mary comes rushing forward. “Surprise! Are you surprised?!” There’s Reba, and Rainy, and Amy and Boggs and Paula – from Wisconsin! And Peg and Steve and Dave and Bart and Ginny and Kathy and Kurt…

I burst into tears, hugging and kissing my way into the room.

“Paula! I thought no one remembered! Oh, Paula what are you doing here?”

Paula squeezes me. “Mary started working on this two months ago. Did you notice your parents are here?”

Two months? My parents? I turn around. My mother is smiling. My father is filming. “Hey, Pearl!” he shouts. “Over here! You’ve been found not guilty on all charges! Tell us how you feel!”

I bury my head into my mother’s neck. “I thought you forgot! I thought everyone forgot!”

My mother laughs.

My phone, in my back pocket, buzzes. “SURPRISE! Happy birthday! Love T”.

Everywhere I go there are outstretched arms, tears, and laughter.

I finally work my way back to Mary. I hug her. “Two months? You worked on this for two months?”

She smiles, tears in her eyes. “Didn’t you notice that we’ve not talked as much lately?”

“Of course I did!” I start to cry again. “I thought you didn’t need me anymore!”

Mary’s lips quiver, her bright blue eyes shine behind tears. “I was setting all this up, and you know how bad a liar I am! I couldn’t take the chance of you finding out!”

She hugs me, hard. “Enjoy yourself tonight.” She lets me go, and I start to walk away.

“Pearl?”

It’s Mary again, and I turn around.

“It was very hard, not talking to you.”

“I love you,” I say.

She smiles. “Aww, go on,” she says.

An Antique Store on your 50th is Probably Not a Good Idea, or My Birthday, Part I

2012-01-18T07:00:00.000-08:00

The morning of my 50th birthday was like so many other weekend days. Make the bed, have coffee, check FaceBook, call Mary.

“What are you doing,” Willie says.

“It’s my birthday,” I say. “Before I call Mary, I thought I’d see what’s up.” I pause. “Why isn’t anyone calling me?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s my fiftieth birthday. That’s a big deal. Maybe I should send out an invitation for drinks.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s my fault, not arranging anything and being upset that nothing’s been arranged. So I’m just going to send out a quick invite, see if people want to join us after dinner.”

I fire off a quick FaceBook invite. “Drinks?” it says. “Join us at 7:00 at the Peacock.”

The phone rings. It’s Mary.

“So how’s it going,” she says. “Excited to keep getting older?”

“It’s lovely,” I grumble.

“Fifty is nifty.”

“Shaddap,” I say mildly. “What time shall we pick you up?” Willie and I had plans to hit the antique shops in her little town, and Mary had plans to join us.

“Um,” she hesitates.

My heart sinks. “What?”

“Nancy called last night. From AA? She’s having a hard time, and I need to meet with her. At the Starbucks. In an hour. Probably for a couple hours.”

I frown. My stomach tightens. It’s my birthday. We talked about getting together days ago.

“OK,” I say. “How about I call you when we get over there and we’ll work something out?”

“OK.”

But several hours later, pulling up to the first antique store, Mary does not answer her phone.

An hour after that, she’s still not answering.

And the shopping was not going well. Sure there was a plaque for the back hall: A Man Should be Rewarded by his Deeds, Not his Needs. And I found two beautifully colored handkerchiefs.

But why isn’t Mary answering her phone?

Surrounded by the past, I consider that perhaps loitering in second-hand shops on one’s 50th birthday isn’t a good idea. There is Aunt Marlys’s velvet matador paintings. There is the foot-pedal sewing machine that Grandma had.

And then I see her: Penny Brite. A doll from my childhood. I loved her, and here she is, behind glass.

The dress. I remember this dress. I washed it in the sink, my little dimpled hands working the suds. Mom let me hang it on the line, and then she let me iron it. I can see that old ironing board, hear the squeak of it being taken down.

I wander away, dangerously close to tears.

In a glass case at the end of the building are a series of hand mirrors. Heavy, beveled, they are elaborately decorated with costume jewelry, encrusted with glittering, multifaceted earrings and brooches.

There is one in particular, white and gold and silver, butterflies and dragonflies, that speaks to me. I pick it up. I look at myself.

And I burst into tears.

This is me, all over, isn’t it? Continually reflective, attracted to the glittering and deceptive.

Smoke and mirrors.

Why hasn’t anyone called me? Where is Mary?

I put the mirror down. Tears in my eyes, I go looking for Willie. I find him by a framed original poster advertising a concert for the Mothers of Invention.

“So did you find –“ Seeing my tears, he stops, mid-sentence. He awkwardly pats me on the back.

“I found what I want,” I say.

I buy the mirror.

And I go looking for Penny on Ebay.

GAHHHH, or Now WHERE Did I Leave My Health?

2012-01-17T07:45:00.000-08:00

Have I told you my face hurts?

It is at this point in the posting where the smiling voice of my father chimes in with “Your face hurts you? It’s killing me!”

He means well; but let’s ignore him, shall we?

My ears are plugged; my cheekbones sore: and if I hadn’t already had them removed, I would say that my tonsils had grown tonsils. Tonsils that need to come out. Whatever this is that I’ve picked up, it’s not yours, is it? Because if it is – and I suspect that it is – then you can have it back.

I don’t do well at being ill. It overwhelms me, blocks out other thoughts, makes me say things like, “Hey, what if we –“ whereupon I drift off and stare at things.

Of course, it’s the very best of times to ask me to loan you money or talk me into giving you a ride to the airport. I’m quite easygoing when I’m sick.

This feeling of lethargic denseness is not going to happen today, though. No, sir. I’ve stuck a sturdy little pole in the ground (here comes my dad again with a comment about little Poles and, perhaps, one regarding whether or not we can cache a small Czech) and I’m – I’m going to – well.

Well, well, well.

Ladies and gentlemen, go on without me. No, no! I insist. Just drop a couple sandwiches onto my lap and leave me to cradle my broken head in my hands and work quietly on my upcoming album.

Pearl and The Pips Live at the Vegas Lounge. No. A Whiter Shade of Pearl. No, wait. Pearl, Live at Budachan.

If you need me, I’ll be over here. Staring.

Blankly.

Sigh.

Come On! Let's Hear You Count It Back To Me!

2012-01-16T07:00:00.000-08:00

Mary, my wee, red-headed Mary, threw me a surprise party for my 50th birthday Saturday. Having spent the day on the edge of tears (for several reasons, and no, don’t think you’re going to get away without hearing about it later), I found out the reason for the callous indifference of my so-called friends was that they were all gathered at The Spring and awaiting my arrival.

We closed the joint down.

Sunday Mary and I drove two hours north to have lunch with my parents. After we returned, I went on to a three-hour proofreading job.

I told that to tell you this: I didn’t write.

But I will! Of course, I will. Until I get the opportunity, however, a little re-worked post from almost three years ago now.

Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s nap time.

No one counts back your change anymore.

Remember that first job, probably in 9th or 10th grade? Someone handed you a ten for a $2.50 item and you counted their change back to them: 50 makes it three, four, five, and another five makes it ten. Thank you! Come again!

Surprisingly enough, it occurred to me yesterday, as the clerks handed me back lumps of cash, change, and receipts that I'd not had change counted back to me in years.

I shared this with my friend Mary.

"Ha!" she says. "I think it's because they can't add."

"You do realize," I say, "that we are of the generation that checks our calculators by working it out on paper."

She laughs. "I had an argument with someone just the other day that there was no way that six 39-cent cookies came to four dollars."

"What? That's stupid. Where did she come up with that?"

"It was what the cash register kept ringing up! I'd tell her that it was wrong, she'd zero it out, ring it up again and there it was! Four dollars! So I told her, look, let's say the cookies are 40 cents apiece. There're six of them. Six times forty is what?"

There is a slight pause as Mary and I multiply six times forty in our heads.

"So,” I say, “what'd she say?"

"She didn't say anything. She just kept ringing it up and re-ringing it up and the damn thing kept telling her that the total was four dollars.” Mary shakes her head sadly. “I finally had to leave."

"Without the cookies?"

"Do you believe it?!"

Initially, you know, I didn't believe it, but Miz Marybeth Campbell, of the Tight-Fisted Campbells, is not one to squander her money.

Nor is she one to abandon cookies.

What’s the world coming to?

It Doesn't Always Have to be Complex

2012-01-15T07:24:00.000-08:00

When I was a child, there was a strip mall a couple blocks down with a dry cleaner’s at one end; and there wasn’t a day that Danny didn’t stand outside of it.

Danny was a slow-moving and happy man, and it was written all over his face that he enjoyed his life.

“Nice daaaaaaaaay!” he’d enthuse. Danny’s definition of a nice day ran the gamut of blue sky to rainy to full-blown blizzard. As far as Danny was concerned, every day was a nice day.

My interaction with the handicapped thinned as I aged. Once grown and forced into the real world, the typical single-occupant commute becomes a lonely affair; and people you don’t know but must contend with cease to be human beings and start looking more like obstacles. Dirty, stinking, law-breaking and potentially lethal obstacles.

Then I started riding the bus.

And it was confirmed that many human beings are, indeed, dirty, stinking, law-breaking and potentially lethal obstacles.

And that many are not.

The man at the bus stop this morning, a man I’ve known by sight for seven years, a man who now requires an electric scooter and has a terrible hitch in his breathing, asked me smilingly, as we waited in the rain, if we were “having fun yet”.

“Fun is a relative term,” I shivered, my nyloned legs goose-pimpling.

Downtown twenty minutes later, I watched from my seat as this same man and his scooter were hydraulically lowered from the bus to the street. He ran his scooter up the block only to return to circle, again and again, a woman in a wheelchair, a woman who smiled and shouted something at him that I could not hear.

I watched from the warmth of the bus.

Flirt.

Downtown! For cryin’ out loud, look at all the people! People in wheelchairs, people with canes and dogs, tiny people and people who must be well over seven feet tall…

Drunk with people-watching, I have rediscovered my fascination with human beings, a fascination that had not long ago faced suffocation.

Take my recent foray into a downtown retail store. There is a man there every time I am there, a man with a determined face pushing what appears to be a tennis ball affixed to the end of what may be a broom handle, removing the scuff marks that a disrespectful shoe can leave on a shiny white floor.

From the looks of him, he is quite a bit younger than I am.

I stepped aside to let him finish, and he did. I smiled briefly at him, and he stared at me.

“Tho,” he says. “You been buthy thinth high thchool?”

Who, me?

Why yes. I guess I have been.

And that’s when I realized I was having a nice day.

Which got me thinking: I’ll bet we’ve all been busy since high school. But how many of us recognize a nice day without it being pointed out?

T's Gone Gaga, or Did I Ever Tell You About the Time I Danced to the Same Beat for 30 Minutes?

2012-01-14T08:32:00.000-08:00

I’m worried about T.

You know T, don’t you? The man who abandoned Minnesota for Florida so that he could “work on his tan”? A man who calls for his cat by calling “Who’s so sexy? Who’s so sexy?”? A man with an amusing yet inappropriate love of the slogan tee-shirt (“It’s Not Going to Lick Itself, You Know”)?

T is exhibiting signs of further silliness.

His latest foray into “What the???” territory?

Lady Gaga.

We take you now to a phone conversation already in progress.

”… and so I says to the guy, ‘purple monkey elevator’.”

“Really?” I say. “Good God man but that’s fascinating.”

“You’re just jealous,” he says.

“Me? Surely you have me confused with someone else.” Pause. “OK. I’ll bite. Jealous of what?”

He laughs. “Me and Lady Gaga.”

Now it’s my turn to laugh. “What? What are you talking about?”

“Me. Me and Lady Gaga. We got a thing.”

“A thing, huh? Have you seen a doctor?”

“Again!” he shouts. “Again with the hilarity! What, don’t you want to be one of Lady Gaga’s little monsters?”

I sigh. “I’m going to pretend that I fully understand your babbling while quietly e-mailing the authorities in your neighborhood. Give me your address. No, don’t tax yourself. I’ll look it up. Clearly a full mental work-up is in order.”

“Oh, yeah, baby,” he sighs. “Keep using the words “work-up” and “Lady Gaga” in the same breath, would you? I don’t care how mental it gets.”

I would like to say that T’s embracing of all things “Gaga-like” came out of nowhere, but that’s not true. I once saw him sing along with a Madonna song when he thought I wasn’t looking.

It haunts me.

T, of course, is free to sing along as he likes, dress in affordably priced skirt steak, and encourage large groups of similarly minded people to dance behind him while he lip syncs, while I, being his friend and confidante, quietly and discretely hire a local to set up a tiny camera in his living room.

Who’s the little monster now?

If You’re Going to Insist on Freezing

2012-01-13T07:00:00.000-08:00

Psst. Hey. Hey you! Got a minute?

What if I was to tell you that my iPod, set on “shuffle” and played during my morning’s commute, told the future? Would you believe me?

You would?

I knew there was something funny about you.

Shh. Let’s listen:

Howlin’ for You by The Black Keys
I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You by Black Kids
Suddenly… (I Miss Carpaty) by Gogol Bordello
Electric Feel by MGMT
Learn to Fly by Foo Fighters
Low Rising by The Swell Season
I Can’t Get Next to You by The Temptations

So that’s it! There’s the future! What’s it mean, you say? Sorry – that costs extra.

Yes, sir, winter’s begun in earnest; and you know what that means.

It’s time to laugh and point.

Dear Fellow Bus Rider, why? Why do you persist in your ways?

You! Why do you insist upon wearing pants belted just below your butt cheeks? Why are you wearing an overly large parka, your arms pulled in, the sleeves flapping uselessly in the driving wind? You look miserable, truly miserable. What you’re wearing is the equivalent of wearing nothing at all. True, it lacks the entertainment quality of standing at the bus stop naked; but your enormous jeans and jacket are no match for a winter gale. I can see that you are – what? – 16? 17? Allowances for your stupidity have been made. Still. Wherever you are from, you need to return there, immediately, before they find your silly, frozen body on the sidewalk and we are forced to shovel around you.

But you! Lady on the Bus! Heels? Heels?! You’re old enough to know better.

And before you go imagining an elegant woman, long-legged, fashionable, and from a part of the world that knows not the ways of the winter, let me assure you that Ms. It-Says-“Juicy”-On-The-Seat-Of-My-Pants is from here.

This ain’t her first time around the ice rink.

Part of me – the smug, warm part of me, liberally layered in wool, down, and occasionally, cats – wants the bus to break down, to be told that we need to walk to the next stop and that it’s, oh, a mile away. I, Nanook of the North, will trudge bravely forward, cracking my whip at the sled dogs and shouting encouragement while Ms. Three-Inch Heels totters down the steps of the bus and plants herself face first into a snow bank.

This is where the laughing and pointing part comes in.

It’s Minnesota. Our heating bills are sky-high, the days are six hours long, and exposed flesh freezes.

Otherwise, go about your business, fellow commuters. I have no strong feelings about this.

Wherein I Find Tim Conway in My Muffler

2012-01-12T07:00:00.000-08:00

“Tell me again,” he says. “What’s wrong with your car?”

“Besides the leprosy?”

Jon stares at me. I sigh. “Well, it sounds like a two-seater airplane.”

“One of those kinds with a woman strapped to a wing,” Mary prompts.

“Yes,” I say. “One of those.”

“And the pilot wears one of those leather caps,” she says.

Jon gives us a cockeyed look, shakes his head slightly. “Let’s go ahead and drive it around the back,” he says.

And so we’ve come to another Saturday, another day given over to the care and feeding of the car Maryna charmingly refers to as my “piece of sheet”, as in “Pearl! Ees not right, beautiful woman in piece of sheet car! You’re not ashamed?”

I laugh at her, of course. It’s a one-payment car that runs and has heat, not to mention the luxury of sporting a look that guarantees it will never be stolen.

Jon moves around to the rear of the car where he is hoping that a bit of carpeting maneuvered under the back end will entice the two of us to crawl under it, the better to see how truly damaged it is.

Not surprisingly, we are less than enthusiastic about an up-close view of the exhaust system.

“Hey, Mare,” he says, “remember when I was telling you about glasspac mufflers?”

Mary comes around to the dual exhaust and lets out a yelp. “Holy Hannah!” she cries. “You’ve got a wig stuck in your muffler!”

“That’s the fiberglass in the muffler I was telling you about,” Jon says.

Mary is not to be educated at this point, however, and alternates between crouching to look closer and jumping back. “You’ve killed Mrs. Whiggins’ boss!” she howls.

Jon stares at me.

“Carol Burnett Show,” I say.

He nods, lights a Black and Mild (Original Plastic Tip).

“So can you fix it?”

He frowns at me, purses his lips in a look that says, “Woman, please.”

We turn to where Mary is still hunkered down. Laughing to herself, she looks up. “Pearl! You’ve got a wig in your tailpipe!” She shakes her head, laughs until tears roll down her face.

I look at Jon. He nods and grins, digs an elbow into my ribs. “I’m going to need you to distract Mary for a while,” he says.

Full of Hot, Sweaty Air

2012-01-11T07:00:00.000-08:00

Here we are, almost half-way through January, and the newly reformed have yet to give up.

The yoga studio is packed. Inches away from my fellow man, I practice patience.

It’s all part of the practice, I think to myself. He/she doesn’t know an outward expression of calm is part of it, that his/her heavy sighs and grunts are distracting to others, doesn’t know to be cognizant of where his/her feet/arms are in relation to his/her mat…

It’s enough to drive me/you/one mad.

It’s a New Year’s resolution of theirs, no doubt; and I’m sure all across the world something or other is full to bursting in January only to return to normal operations by mid-February.

Not that I don’t wish our newly arrived brothers and sisters success! Of course, I do! Anything else would be stingy and mean-hearted, and I am neither of those things.

True, I once told a panhandler to “touch me and I’ll scream”.

Oh, and it’s possible that I have wished ill upon droopy-drawered men, their pants belted just inches above their knees.

And then there was this one occasion where I screamed, from my second floor porch, at a man in the park, a man who consistently failed to pick up after his German Shepherd to “…never come back here! I know who you are!”

Hmm. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen that guy or his dog in almost four years…

OK. So I’m not stingy, anyway.

Still, attendance at the yoga studio will be like last year, and the year before. They come in, riding the high of heartfelt resolutions and tingly with the excitement of that first, free week of yoga and in short measure discover that a hot class makes you sweat by the bucket, that holding a position until you tremble is hard work, and that the firm young bodies surrounding them are a blow to the ego.

In time, however, should they stay, come the discoveries of the truths in yoga: that one adapts to the heat, that the mind gives up long before the body, that the nubile youngsters lack the determination of their elders and give up easily.

And that surely there’s nothing that feels as good as successfully doing the splits next to someone half your age.

All of these things are true and will come with devotion.

And stop calling me Shirley.

Have You Considered Picking Up A Lovely Piece of String for This Evening?

2012-01-10T07:00:00.000-08:00

“Good morning, Acme Grommets and Gravel, Pearl speaking.”

“Good morning, Pearl. How are you?”

For just a moment, I am speechless. Frankly, I’m shocked. The cat never calls me at work. I look quickly toward my cube mate, an intensely sincere Marketing intern I suspect is spying on me.

“Liza Bean?” I whisper. “What’s going on?”

Liza Bean Bitey (of the Minneapolis Biteys), a small, symmetrically striped animal with a long-standing grocery-related request for “the good shrimp” and an electric violin in the pawn shop, pauses.

“Well, you see…” she trails off, uncharacteristic in a cat with so many opinions, whereupon there is the sound of the phone being dropped and four tiny paws scurrying across the floor.

I wait patiently.

There is a muffled, scrabbling noise as the phone is retrieved.

“As I was saying,” she says.

“What was that about?”

Liza Bean takes a deep breath, sighs. “Well, you see,” she says, “I seem to be having a bit of – MRRRROWWWWW”.

Again, the phone is dropped. I jam my finger into my right ear and close my eyes, trying to picture the scene at home. Again, I hear her feet go skittering across the hardwood, only this time – that’s not four paws, is it?

I swear I hear the sound of two cats running up and then back down a length of curtains.

The phone is picked up again.

“As I was saying,” she says.

“Who gave you this number?” I say.

“You did.”

I briefly consider my decision-making skills. “So get on with it,” I say a bit irritably, “what’s going on?”

There is the sound of a small cat clearing an even smaller throat.

“You see,” she says, “I hate to ask, but Dolly seems to have wound a bit of string around her tail, and every time she goes past me –“

“Liza Bean, listen to me,” I interrupt. “Shut your eyes. You need to shut your eyes or we’ll be here all –“

For the third time, there is the sound of a cell phone being dropped.

I mentally roll my eyes. The Marketing intern casts a sideways glance at me.

The phone is picked up again. “As I was -- ”

“Liza Bean," I interrupt, "shut your eyes. Right now. Are they shut?”

“Hmm,” she says. “Yes.”

“Can you make your way to the big chair?”

“Yes,” she murmurs. “You know,” and her voice has taken on the introspective, dreamy sound of someone walking with their eyes closed, “when Dolly walks by, dragging that piece of string, I just can’t seem to help myself.”

“We all have our weaknesses,” I say.

“Hmm,” she says.

I glance over at my cube mate. “Look,” I whisper. “Just go to the chair until I get home,” I say. “Can you do that?”

“Hmm,” she says. Liza Bean Bitey, of the Minneapolis Biteys, is falling asleep.

“And stay there,” I say.

“Pearl?” she purrs.

“Yes?”

“Bring home some half-and-half, won’t you?”

I sigh. “I’ll see you after yoga,” I say.

“Thanks, Pearl.”

In Lieu of a Raise, Please Accept This Handsome Key Chain

2012-01-09T07:00:00.000-08:00

And now, a brief note from our CEO and President, your friend and mine, Randolph T. Freakly the Third.

Take it away, Randolph.

Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to attend this meeting. As you know, we here at Acme Sprockets and Grommets take our meetings very seriously. First there are the meetings where we discover the need for another meeting, the meetings where we discuss the language to be used in the meetings, the meeting itself, of course, and then the follow-up meetings we have insofar as damage control and finger-pointing.

We've arrived, as you know, at the end of Q3; and once again we’ve reached the time of year when we contemplate the possibility of a pay increase.

Let us contemplate that together, shall we?

“Raise”: the word looks friendly, doesn’t it? Don’t let it fool you, though. The raise is not your friend! Why be hassled with the possibility of jumping into another tax bracket? Why worry about what to do with that extra cash? And consider this: the phonetic spelling of the word “raise” is “raze”, which, unbeknownst to many, is a word meaning “to tear down”. And isn’t that awful? Why would you want anything to do with a word like that?

I say no, sir. No! Not for my employees!

You people are like family to me.

And that’s why, this year, there will be no so-called “raises”.

The very idea is insulting.

No, sir. This year, I want you to get back to me – take your time! – and let me know: What can the Executive Team here at Acme Grommets and Gravel give you in lieu of money, vacation time, increased medical or dental insurance, or other purported “benefits”?

Want one of us to change your car’s oil? Need someone to pumice your feet? Clean your catbox? Visit your mother? Hey! What say I drop by your house later and brush your hair? These are the kinds of things we’re willing to do to keep you satisfied, motivated, and, with any luck, quiet, here at Acme Gravel and Garage Doors.

Remember: my door is always open, my ear’s always available, and my lawyer’s on retainer.

Best of wishes from Your Pal in the Corner Office,

Randolph T. Freakly the Third

Welcome to Super America! Could I Interest You in a Pedicure? No? Perhaps You'd Like to Talk to a Dream Analyst?

2012-01-08T08:03:00.000-08:00

I spent all of yesterday with Mary, while her Jon fixed the exhaust system on my car, an automobile known, thanks to my Ukrainian friend Maryna, as "piece of sheet". I had no access to a computer and was unable to write, so please to enjoy another day I spent with Mary, a day no coffee option would go un-noticed...

I picked up Mary Saturday morning. We had a full day of cooking and cleaning ahead of us, and a drop-in at the Super America for coffee was in order.

I guess it had been a while since I’d been in a gas station but boy! The lousy economy has really brought out the competitive spirit in some of these places!

What I wanted was a coffee.

What I got was an eyeful – and a seat at the Mary and Pearl Sketch Comedy Hour.

Picture, if you will, Mary and Pearl. It is 7:30 or so on a Saturday morning. They have a long drive ahead of them, followed by hours of work.

Yet they are silly.

They are each clutching a recently poured, large, black coffee; and are staring rather blankly at the multitude of coffee-related add-ons: flavored syrups, flavored creams, sugar and sugar-like substitutes.

“@#$%!” I enthuse. “What in the world is going on here?”

“I remember when this place was a gas station,” Mary mutters.

We count six kinds of coffee; six cappuccino flavors; nine flavored creams, half-and-half, whole milk, skim milk, and 2%; a dozen flavored syrups; one sugar and three sugar substitutes.

There are also eight teas.

I thought I’d fall over laughing. “Holy crap, Mary!”

Mary’s bright blue eyes get just a touch brighter and I kn0w we are in trouble. “Hey, Pearl,” she yells from one end of the Trail of Coffee, “Have you seen the whipped cream?”

“It’s over here by the sprinkles,” I say, laughing.

“Oh, tell me they have the little flavored marshmallows!”

“Hmm,” I say. “They have flavored marshmallows, mini marshmallows, extra large marshmallows, marshmallow mattresses, licorice whips, jelly beans and Swedish fish.”

“Grab me a couple mouthfuls of the Swedish fish,” Mary laughs. “Really, though, what the hell? It’s not even light outside and these are more decisions than I normally make in a whole day.”

“What are we supposed to be doing here?” I fret. “Can my coffee support a caramel syrup shot and hazelnut cream? Is it safe to mix Splenda and Equal? At what point does the coffee stop being coffee and turn into dessert?”

“Times is tough,” Mary shrugs. “I’m surprised they aren’t giving away more of this kinda stuff just to get people in!”

“Hey,” I say, laughing. “Where’s my free donut holes?!”

“Where’s my pedicure?!”

“Where's my free coffee with a purchase of a coffee?" Mary leans heavily on a counter top and wipes tears of laughter from her eyes and I can't keep this goofy grin off my face. "Can’t you just see it?” I ask. “They got all this stuff lined up, people are milling about, clumps of huddled, confused women trying to determine, now that they’ve come in for coffee, what syrup they should add, what cream –“

“—whether or not they should add a handful of Swedish Fish to it – “

“They’re going to need a therapist at the end of line, by the cashier, giving out hugs and certificates of completion –“

“—and afterward a representative from the gas station will follow you out to your car, thanking you for your business and then offering to hold you on his lap and burp you –“

“Pfft. I can’t believe they don’t offer that already. Who's gonna burp me? I did NOT come to the Super America only to have to belch on my own!”

“I know, right?” Mary says. “Sometimes I’m just so lonely!”

“I’m gonna write a letter,” I say. “Really, something must be done to further our sense of phony-baloney entitlement around here…”

It is at that point that Mary and I agree that not enough free stuff is being pushed in our direction, whereupon we pay for our coffees, are hugged and burped by the manager, and proceed to our cleaning job.

Saturday was a good day, but I never did finish drinking that large coffee.

Bob's Not Supposed to Drink Pop

2012-01-07T07:00:00.000-08:00

Mary has a soft spot for people.

The little weirdo really likes them.

Want to laugh until you fall over? She’s your gal. Lonely? Same person. Afraid that weird woman at the bar is going to come after you when you head for your car?

As her ancestors would say, “Is this a private fight, or can anyone join in?”

And I tell you that to tell you this: Mary’s been visiting an ex-coworker’s elderly mother.

Once a week, Mary takes the bus to the nursing home to check on Rose.

It is possible, on some days, that Rose believes Mary is a daughter. And isn’t she? Like a good girl, Mary brings her little treats: flowers, sugar cookies, stories, her full attention.

Rose is not the only person in the home, of course, and Mary knows most of them, brings them jokes and smiles, teases them.

She left her purse and a bag containing a gift – a two-liter bottle of root beer – in the common room the other day while she went to go get Rose. Rose likes a glass of root beer after lunch and dinner. It aids in her digestion, she says.

When she came back, however, the root beer was out of the bag and in the hands of Bob.

Bob, an 84-year-old man no longer allowed pop due to his diabetes, is almost half-way through the bottle.

“Bob! Drop the pop!”

Bob may be 84, but he’s still taller than Mary; and having found the treat, he is not to be denied. He shakes his head “no” vigorously, droplets of root beer flying, his moustache holding shiny, fragrant beads of the forbidden treat.

“Mph mphh,” he mumbles, his cheeks full to the point of explosion. Bob looks like an elderly, trumpet-free and guilty Dizzy Gillespie.

Luckily, Mary happens to speaks Mumble. “You are too!”

Bob lifts the bottle to his lips, chugs root beer as Mary swats at his arms. “You know you’re not supposed to have pop, Bob!”

Root beer runs down his chin and onto the front of his shirt as he swallows.

“I’m not,” he challenges between swallows. “I’m not having pop.”

“Oh my God, Bob, you liar,” Mary teases him. “You’re not drinking pop? Right now? You’re not drinking pop?”

“Nope,” Bob says around a mouthful. “Not allowed pop.”

The nursing home authorities were called in, of course – “He looked so happy, but I knew he wasn’t supposed to have it” – and the half-finished bottle was wrested from his happy, sticky hands.

Mary reports that Bob harbors no ill will against her.

And he’s the first one at the door when she visits now.

Mary's Been Hurty, or A Good Deed Comes Home to Roost

2012-01-06T07:00:00.000-08:00

A hush falls over the office, the kitchen, the bus, as we contemplate the completion of another week of our lives and the approach of the weekend.

If only there was some way to know what to expect. If only we could be, say, forewarned so as to be forearmed…

But wait! Didn’t I tell you? My iPod! My iPod, set on “shuffle” and played during Friday morning’s commute holds the key to all of our questions!

What? Yes, really. Oh, humor me and play along. I have so little…

Suzanne by Leonard Cohen
Tiger Mountain Peasant Song by Fleet Foxes
New Orleans is Sinking by The Tragically Hip
Province by TV on the Radio
Tiburon by Stan Kenton and His Orchestra
The Crunge by Led Zeppelin
Since You’re Gone by The Cars
Without a Fight by Janelle Monae

Uh-oh. A sense of melancholy has just slid in under the door. That isn’t you, is it? Someone’s heart is going to be broken, I just know it. Luckily it won’t be mine, as I had it removed in splinters some time ago…

So! Do we have time for a story?

You remember Mary, don’t you? Mary, the woman with believes, like me, that Zantigo’s is a proper reward for hard work, a woman whose imagination jumps immediately to the ridiculous, the woman with whom I’ve considered becoming a sit-down comedian, has had a serious problem.

Mary needs to have a tooth pulled.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But it isn’t. Not when you have no money and no insurance.

For the last two months, Mary has struggled, consuming up to 16 Advil a day.

The left side of her face eventually became quite swollen.

“Looka be,” she moaned through clenched teeth. “I ab so hurty.”

The first dentist, whom Mary feared she’d have to pay in foot rubs and popcorn hulls, diagnosed the wisdom tooth as abscessed, gave her a course of antibiotics, and sent her out the door with a figurative foot to the small of her back.

“We’ll take it out when you’ve finished the pills!”

With two days of the pills left, however, the tooth, Mary swears, slid off her jaw and deposited itself under her tongue.

I went to visit her.

“Awb tellin ya,” she slurred from between clenched teeth, tears in her eyes, “dat guy’s tryin ta kill me.”

She sipped a Fresca through a straw. “Int’restin fack,” she slurred. “Dey train cadaber dogs wif dead teef. My mouf’s lak a cadaber dog’s trainin groun’.”

Luckily, having lived with a man who believes there’s no need to move the jaw while speaking, I am fully versed in Slur.

“You think a cadaver dog would signal on your mouth?”

“Awb sure ub it.”

The next day, Mary’s friend Becky stopped in. Becky’s mother, Rose, is in an assisted living facility, and Mary visits her a couple times a week. Mary doesn’t have a car during the daytime hours, and visits Rose come hell or high water, via bicycle.

“I’m taking you to my dentist,” Becky says.

“No, no, no…” Mary says, grabbing her coat and her purse.

Pages of paperwork are filled out, but the last page stops her cold. “All services to be paid in full at time of service,” it says.

“OK,” Mary mutters, “we gotta go.”

Becky puts her hand on Mary’s shoulder. “I’m paying.”

Mary stares at her.

“It’s the least I can do. You visit my mother-in-law when I can’t. Let me do this for you.”

Mary bursts into tears. “I’ll pay you back. I swear –“

Becky stops her. “Don’t you dare.”

The second dentist’s response to Mary’s abscessed wisdom tooth is encapsulated in one word: “Whoa”. Several shots of Novocaine later, a little gas to set the mood, and his knee is on her chest and wresting the offending tooth from her exhausted and swollen gums.

The tooth – and the pain – is gone.

“Everything okay, then?” he asks her. “You feeling okay in there?”

Mary grins, her mouth packed with cotton gauze. She gives him the “thumbs up” sign, the "A-OK" sign, and an earnestly slurred “Ah luh yoo mang”.

"I love you, too," says the dentist.

And just like that, it is over.

Mary is smiling again.

Over Here! Over Here! Can You Explain to Us Just How Long You Plan on Being Ill?

2012-01-05T07:00:00.000-08:00

Don’t let ‘em fool you: it’s hard work being sick. My second day in a row of not having gone to work and so far I’ve vacuumed, made my bed, washed the dishes, and bleached both cats.

Against their will.

I have also, of course, continued to evade the make-believe press intensely interested in my health and the status of my next book.

Miss Pearl! Miss Pearl! You’ve not worn pants with a zipper for almost a week now! Can you let us know how the elastic waistband has affected your eating habits?

Their shouted questions are drowned out by my second bath of the day.

The problem is that I’m not from people who “take” to being sick. My mother, for example, the woman who went grades 1 through 12 with perfect attendance, has missed exactly two days of work in her lifetime: both days following a roll-over accident during the height of rush hour, a bit of heart-flipping excitement that nets her a spot on that evening’s news.

She moans from the couch, arm in a sling and a bruise the size of a Rottweiler on her back. The image of her on a Gurney being loaded, head first, into the back of an ambulance fills the TV screen. “For cryin’ out loud, Paul,” she cries, “would you look at that angle! Look at how big my hips are!”

There is no footage, no hip-heavy perspective of my last few days, but even if there were, I believe I’ve made my ancestors proud.

I'm on the mend, productive, and clean. Just how we like it.

Cover Your Mouth! or Lurching towards the Work Place

2012-01-04T07:00:00.000-08:00

Something has crawled up in my head and made its home there.

Naturally, I am against this.

“You’re sick a lot,” a wit recently observed.

So I blew my nose, blinked multiple times so as to clear my line of sight, and pointed out that between the bus, the 50-floor building I work in, and yoga, I probably come into contact with 200-some different people in a day and that people are notorious little germ vessels.

And then I blew my nose again.

I see a lot of people in a day; and while I love people, love to watch them, listen to them, compare their idiosyncrasies to my own, I wish more of them would cover their mouths when they cough.

Which brings me, of course, to zombies.

There’s been a lot of talk lately of zombies: how they’re made, how they’re disposed of, whether or not they represent the blue-collar man’s unspoken desire to have the social playing field leveled by something apocalyptic.

Adding my own bit of lint to all this fluffy supposition, it’s my assertion that when the zombies do come, the infestation will most likely start on the morning bus.

Who will notice?

Look around, after all. We face forward: propelled, bus-ly, toward jobs, meetings, perhaps even zombie-like futures. Sallow; wan; pale, even, we Minneapolitans have not seen direct sunlight for several months now.

I pull out my notebook, make notes regarding the possible undead on the bus.

The woman-girl that just tottered on in three-inch heels after climbing over a smallish snow mound, the one up front there digging through her purse for correct change, could it be that she is impervious to cold because she’s a zombie?

The guy in the seat across from me has not blinked for four blocks. Do zombies need to moisten their eyes?

The woman with the notebook, noting the commuting habits and dress of her commuters, the one with the dark circles under her eyes, does she look like a zombie to you?

Ahhhhhhh.

Light-headed and vague, I ride the bus to Target, where I buy Nyquil and cough drops.

And then I turn around and go home.

Yours in working toward a zombie-free world,

Pearl

Hey: You Party Your Way, and I’ll Party Mine

2012-01-03T07:00:00.000-08:00

Don’t tell me I don’t know how to party.

Why, over this last three-day weekend I not only stayed up until almost 10:00 at night, I also took daily baths.

We’ll pause while that soaks in.

The sneezing began Friday morning. From there it was the downhill slide of confusion; irritability; cranial tension/expansion, both imagined and realized; and continual napping/fleece wear.

I did not see a zipper for three days.

I, of course, feel robbed. Not by the lack of a zipper in my weekend, but because if I wasn’t wearing real pants, it means I wasn’t where I should be: out amongst the peoples, drinking in the new year, eating various tasty dishes, scribbling notes on damp napkins.

What good is a three day weekend, particularly over the New Year, if you can’t go out?

Here is where, in a good post, I would get thoughtful, line up all the things I learned about myself over 72 hours of second-floor isolation and wrap it up with something insightful about the nature of health and fresh starts.

This ain’t a good post.

My head – have I described the size of my head? Roughly the size and density of the State of Minnesota, it wobbles atop my neck, housing a muddled and suspiciously soft brain.

Hi. My name is Pearl, and I sneezed the New Year in.

Hi, Pearl.

She Still Thinks It's Funny, or Little Sisters Lie and Everyone Knows It

2012-01-02T07:13:00.000-08:00

A re-post, as I spent all of this glorious three-day weekend with a head cold the size of Canada.

I rarely do this, but the following is actually from my book "I Was Raised to be A Lert", so if you haven't bought it, here's a taste.

Happy New Year!

I grew up in a trailer, and because my father believed that “it’s harder to hit a moving target”, we moved.

Often.

Have you lived in a trailer? You are familiar, then, with the siding that goes around the bottom of it, yes?

The procedure, once the trailer’s been “dropped” is that you anchor it (thus making it harder for the inevitable tornado to suck you up and deposit you in Wisconsin) and then “skirt” it (thus making it harder for woodland creatures and/or trailer park cretins to burrow underneath and chew through wires/exposed pipes).

Some people don’t bother to skirt their trailers. This looks trashy, frankly, and bodes ill for its inhabitants, for reasons that shall become clear soon.

Some people skirt their trailers with wood. Affordable but prone to rot and the need to be repainted every couple of years.

And some people, like my family, skirt the trailer with aluminum siding. Won’t rot and doesn’t necessarily need to be painted. (As a quick aside, I was once accosted by someone who accused me of thinking my family was “high and mighty” for flaunting our aluminum siding…)

Siding is a good idea beyond just keeping out raccoons and drunks, though. It’s also handy for keeping the wind from screaming through the underside of your trailer and freezing your pipes.

Sometimes, though, despite the siding, despite having wrapped your pipes in whatever it was that Dad wrapped them in, you just can’t fight winter.

Was it roughly January or February that the Native Americans called The Moon of Popping Trees? Because that’s the kind of month that will freeze your pipes solid.

And so it was on a day where the ambient temperature was perhaps 30, 40 degrees below zero that my mother announced that the pipes were frozen.

You know what this means, don’t you?

It means the toilet no longer flushes.

There was a collective groan from my brother, sister and I.

Need to use the toilet? You now have the option of running to The Building - seven blocks away and overseen by a man who would disappear six months later in the middle of the night after charges were brought against him for sexually assaulting a fourth grader - or using an ice cream bucket.

Hmm. Walk a half-mile in the sub-zero to The Building or pee in the same bucket your father has just used.

We are all grossed-out, except for my father.

“Think of it as a new kind of camping!” he chortles.

My mother points out that it’s just going to get colder as night falls, Paul, and would he kindly just get his butt out there and thaw it out?

My father good-naturedly dons every article of clothing he owns and shimmies under the trailer with a hair dryer where he has, at least, the skirting to block the wind.

Do you know how long it takes to unfreeze plumbing with a hair dryer?

No; me, neither.

But my dad knows.

I am on the bed, playing Barbies, when my sister enters the room. She is two years young than I am and has dedicated her life up to that point to sticking her fingers in my ribs, both literally and figuratively.

“Did you know if you look down the toilet you can see Dad?”

“You can? You cannot!”

“No, really! You really can! Come see.”

In a move that will haunt me for the rest of my life, I follow her into the bathroom, where she lifts the lid on the toilet and I peer into the water; and for just a moment, I expect to see my father, lying on his back under the trailer…

“AHHHHHHHH! Kevin! Kevin! Come look! Pearl’s looking in the toilet for Dad!!!”

It’s one of Karen's cherished memories.

Stand Right Here, Part II of II

2012-01-01T07:00:00.000-08:00

There are some fascinating folks out there in the bars. Going to one of my father’s gigs was always prime people watching.

Tonight’s gig is at the Crow’s Nest, on the outskirts of town. The crowd is boisterous and tobacco addicted. It is blue jeans and flannel, teased hair and red cowboy boots.

The outside of the building does nothing to prepare you for its inside, and the first thing you notice, on entry, is how very large it is. A long, wooden bar, backed by mirror to the ceiling, runs the length of the room. Eighty, ninety people sit there easily, denim-clad butts on leather-and-duct-tape stools.

The Crow’s Nest smells like exactly what it is. Having absorbed the exhalations of decades of smokers, the head of the moose mounted firmly in the center of the mirror behind the bar is matted with nicotine residue and dust.

The other side of the room is one long, deep wall of booths. Tables are packed into the center of the room in no particular fashion, a mish-mash of big round ones and long, rectangular ones.

The floor is a pattern of black-and-white tile; and years of weather, heels, and the occasional mishandled keg have left it cracked and missing pieces.

The whole place needs a good scrubbing.

At the back of the place is a stage. Four pool tables take up space on the far corner between it and the last two booths.

Dad’s drums are already set up, and we pull in about 8:45.

The band goes on at 9:00.

We sit in the booth nearest to the stage. The place is almost empty.

“You kids want something to drink?” Dad doesn't wait for our answers but turns and shouts toward the bar.

“Hey, Joe! Get these kids a couple of Buds, would ya? Ha! Ha!”

“Ha! Ha! You got it, Paul!”

Everyone loves my dad.

He turns back to us.

“No. Seriously, you kids want something? Pearl? You want a Shirley Temple?”

A Shirley Temple is one of my father’s running gags. One afternoon last summer, he had taken me into a bar while I traveled with him on one of his sales routes. When the bartender asked if the little lady would like a Shirley Temple, I went red with pleasure. He must think I’m old enough to drink! Blushing, I explained to him that I wasn’t old enough to drink, but could I have a Cherry Coke instead?

There was just a moment’s hesitation and then both men burst out laughing.

Eventually, the bartender had to turn away, bracing himself with one hand on the cash register. My father just put his head on the bar, his shoulders shaking with laughter.

“How ‘bout it? You want a Shirley Temple?”

“Ha, ha, Dad,” I said. "I’ll just have a Coke. Thanks.”

He opens his mouth, but I beat him to the punch. “Not a Cherry Coke, Dad. Just a Coke!”

He laughs.

“What about you two?”

The front doors open suddenly; and as if a bus has pulled up, people pour in. Potato Processors’ second shift is off for the night and ready to party. Some go right to the bar, some stake out tables.

It's Happy Hour.

“You wanna play some pool?” Kevin says.

“Sure.”

“Me, too,” Karen says.

“Take her with you,” Mom says. “Don’t lose her.”

Kevin is one year younger than me, but we are pretty much of the same build, a worrisome concept from both our points of view. He puts his hands on his hips and faces Mom sullenly.

“How we gonna lose her between this table and that table?” he asks. He has been getting belligerent lately, and Karen and I tease him that he's moody because he will soon be a woman.

“Don’t get lippy with me, Kevin Scott,” Mom says. “Just keep your eye on her.”

Kevin closes one eye and aims the other at Karen, staring intently.

Mom waves irritably at him. “Go on,” she says, as she pours quarters into Karen’s hands, “Now get outta here before I call the cops.”

The Kountry Kittens take the stage and the lights in the bar dim as Karen and I find sticks, carefully rolling them across the table, looking for straight ones. Kevin plugs Mom’s quarters into the table. We decide on Cut Throat so we can all play.

A voice comes over the amplifiers.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. You, too, Joe –“ there is a loud guffaw from the bar – “and welcome to the Crow’s Nest. We’re the Kountry Kittens.” A large woman with a sweet voice, Joanne – or is it Judy? – she gives a big, saucy wink to the audience.

She purrs into the mic: “How ‘bout a little CCR?”

The band launches itself into "Proud Mary" and Kevin has to yell to make himself heard.

“I’m breaking!” he shouts.

And just like that, the bar has changed: the lighting, the music, the way the cigarette smoke hangs in blue, low-lying clouds.

Kevin pulls his stick back and breaks. The balls scatter about the table. None of us can really play, but it doesn’t stop us from hogging a table for the next hour as we take hundreds of shots to drop the 15 balls.

Kevin is using the bridge stick and balancing on one leg in a show-boat shot he calls The Deal Breaker when Karen points out our first weirdo of the night.

“There’s a guy over there staring at us,” she shouts.

“Where?!” Kevin and I yell. We turn circles, scanning the crowd.

“Over there,” Karen points with her stick at a man on the other side of the room, sitting at the end of the bar. He is openly staring at us.

“It’s your husband!” Kevin hoots at me.

“Shut up!”

We squint at him, curious. There are five big tables between the pool table and the bar, and the dim light makes him hard to see. A tall, scrawny man, he is wearing a cap, the kind you get at a feed store or truck stop; and whatever his last haircut had been, it was long past its best stage. The same could be said of his mustache. He raises his drink and nods at us in what I’m sure he considers a jaunty fashion.

“Ish!” Karen proclaims.

“He’s gross,” I agree.

“Hey," Kevin says. "You gonna play or what?” He casually brushes the 12 into the corner pocket.

“Hey, ya dink!” I yell. “That was my last ball!”

Kevin grins at me. “Then you’re not playin’, are ya?”

I go back to the table, furious.

“What’s the matter?” Mom has to shout over “Happiest Girl in the Whole USA” to be heard. I slump into the booth. “Kevin cheating?” she screams at me.

“He’s a dink.”

“Ah, who cares,” she yells. “Let’s have a toast.”

I raise my glass.

“Here’s mud in yer eye,” she shouts.

“Hear, hear,” I shout back.

We clink glasses.

We both lean back into the booth, stare at the stage, watch Dad play.

It isn't long before Kevin and Karen return to the booth. Kevin has won, and Karen is calling him a dink, but it's hard to understand why over the din of the bar. It may have something to do with the way Kevin is shaking his clasped hands over his head, the wicked grin on his face. Karen is jumping up and down, trying to pull his arms down. Kevin is laughing. Mom finally steps in, pulling Karen to her and sending Kevin over to my side of the booth.

Settling down, we sip our drinks and stare at the crowd.

From the stage: “We’re going to take a little break,” Joanne/Judy purrs. “Don’t you go away now.”

And here comes Dad, sweaty and smiling, from the stage. “I’m going to get a beer. Anybody need anything?”

Another round is ordered. Dad goes up to the bar.

“Good God,” Mom says. “Would you look at this table? Pearl, run up to the bar and get a wet rag, would ya?”

“Mom!”

“Oh, go on. Go on.”

Oh, for crying out loud, I have to go up to the bar and ask some busy adult for a rag.

I stand up, contemplate the grand weave through the tables to the other side of the room. The place is crowded now. Choosing the right direction, the clearest path, this is crucial. Make a wrong turn, and you’re facing a wall of elbows and bellies.

I jostle through the chairs and find myself blocked. This table clearly works together. The matching shirts, company logo over one breast and the wearer’s name over the other, is the first clue. The second is the matching logo-ed caps. They are arguing the merits of Ford versus Dodge.

I skirt to the right, dodging, if their shirts can be trusted, Mike, Lou, Ed, T-Bone, and Hootch. From there, it is an easy side-step past a lot of plaid button-downs and industrial-sized belt buckles to the bar. It is packed, and I have to walk to the middle of it before I find a spot to step up to.

Joe appears immediately.

“What can I get you, Paula?” He calls Karen and me “Paula”. He calls Kevin “Bud”.

“Um. Could I have a wet rag, please?"

He chuckles. “Sure. Why not.”

He reaches under the bar and hands me a heavy, wet bar towel. He winks at me. “You going to clean up?”

“No,” I sigh. “My mother is.”

I can’t resist raising the rag to my nose, and I close my eyes as I breathe in. It smells like a swimming pool.

When I open my eyes, Joe is staring at me. He has a concerned look on his face.

Embarrassed, I turn back to the walk through the crowd. Loud and smoky, the room seems to boil with activity.

I hand my mother the rag and she folds it into quarters. Taking the cue, Kevin, Karen and I all pick up our glasses. There are a number of things about our mother that are given: she couldn’t tolerate a snot-nosed child, she relished the idea of pulling a deep sliver from your flesh, and she couldn’t sit still if there was work to be done.

She runs the rag over the table four times, folding and refolding to its cleaner sides.

When she finishes, we set our glasses down together. THUMP.

“OK! So! One more round!” Dad is suddenly at the booth, a tray balanced on one hand. He sets drinks in front of each of us.

He turns to Mom. “You think you’ll be staying until close?”

“Well I don’t know how much excitement we can stand,” Mom muses.

Kevin slumps into the dark corner of the booth. “She started cleaning,” he mutters.

Dad nods. “’Nuff said. Back to the sticks.” He leans over and kisses our mother on the cheek and is gone.

Kevin sits up suddenly, pointing toward the bar. “Weirdo Alert!” he exclaims. “Weirdo #1 staring again!”

Karen and I crane our necks toward the bar where Weirdo #1 has his stool turned in our direction. His back to the bar, his whole body faces us. He smiles, raises his glass at us again.

“Ish!” Karen squeals.

Mother turns from the stage to look at us.

“What are you squealing about?”

“Weirdo at the bar, 11 o’clock,” Kevin says.

She peers over her drink at the man on the stool. ”Looks like a charmer,” she says.
There was the sound of Judy/Joanne blowing into the microphone.

“Pool table’s open,” Mom says. “Here, your father left you this.”

She holds out two quarters. Kevin and Karen both make a grab for the coins.

“Grabby, ain’t ya?” she says. “Here,” she hands them to me. “Make sure they have a good time.”

“You want me to keep an eye on ‘em, too?”

“Nah,” she says, sipping her drink.

We leave the booth as the Kountry Kittens strike up “Cab Driver”.

“Cut Throat!” Kevin shouts. Karen and I search for our sticks as he shoves quarters into the table.

I am testing the weight of a stick – I like them heavy – when I am poked in the ribs.

“Hey!” I shout. I pull my shirt away from my body to inspect a blue chalk circle.

“What’d you do that for?” I yell.

“Look!”

Karen points to the pool table, where Kevin is concentrating on the solid-stripe-solid arrangement of the balls in the rack.

Fast approaching the table is Weirdo #1.

We run to the table as Kevin straightens up.

“ – help but notice you,” Weirdo #1 is saying.

“What?” Kevin yells.

“I said,” he shouts, “that I couldn’t help but notice you.”

“Yeah?” Kevin yells. He frowns.

“Yeah,” the man shouts back. He leans casually on the pool table, Don Knotts playing James Dean. “So you wanna dance?”

Kevin’s jaw drops. He turns to Karen and I, his mouth open, his eyes wide. I am speechless.

Karen isn’t.

Her arms flail at her sides excitedly. “He’s not a girl! He’s a boy, ya weirdo!” she shouts.

“What?” the man yells.

Kevin makes a strange noise and the spell is broken. We bolt to the booth, where we descend on our mother like a wet sleeping bag. Karen’s voice carries the best.

“Mom! Mom! Weirdo #1 went over to Kevin and he was racking the balls and we couldn’t hear what the guy was saying and Kevin said what and the guy said I noticed you and Kevin said yeah and the guy thinks he’s a girl!”

Karen is hopping from one foot to the other in excitement.

Kevin looks like he is going to be sick.

“What? What? Slow down!” Mom says. She looks from one face to another. “I’m going to set my drink down and you’re going to tell me what you’re talking about.”

She sets her drink down. Karen continues to hop.

“OK,” Mom says. “Go.”

Karen explodes out of the gate. “Mom! Mom! Weirdo #1 went over to Kevin and – “

“Shut up!” Kevin screams. “God!”

But Mom has already grasped the situation. She looks at Kevin, cocks her head to one side. “Some guy asked you to dance?”

Kevin nods, miserably, looks at his feet.

She was silent for a moment. “Well,” she says. “And what did you say? Did you tell him you’d love to?”

Kevin lifts his head, starts to shake his head “no” and stops. “Heyyyyy…” he says, angrily. “That’s not funny!”

“’Course it’s not!” Mom shouts. “What makes that bar fly think he’s got a chance with a fine-lookin’ boy like you?”

Mom slides further into the booth, pats the spot she has just left. Kevin sits down next to her. She puts her arm around him, kisses his cheek tenderly. "Time for a haircut, isn't it?" she murmurs.

Mom's eyes shine as she gazes at her boy. “Shall we go home?”

Kevin smiles. “Can we have ice cream?”

“I don’t see why not,” Mom says.

Kevin stands up.

Mom finishes her drink, grabs her purse.

“Wave good-bye to your father, chillins. I think we've had enough for one night.”

Stand Right Here, Part I of II

2011-12-31T07:13:00.000-08:00

My father was a musician. Salesman by day, percussion disciple by night, he taught me the love of music. Unfortunately, the price of the education included my father’s sudden musical seizures.

He calls from the living room. “Pearl! Come in here. I want you to hear something.”

I shut my book, a Ray Bradbury collection, and heave myself off the bed, annoyed. It isn’t that I don’t like the music, but he can be so sporadic about it. Three, four nights in a row, then nothing. This is Saturday, though; and you can count on my Dad calling you from whatever you are doing to join him at the stereo on a Saturday.

The love of music can be such a burden.

I skulk toward the living room. I can hear the music much clearer in the hall. By the time I reach the living room, it is loud enough to have to shout.

My father is standing in the middle of the room. He grin at me.

“What.” I say it as flatly as I could. I had just reached a good part in the book and am testing a theory that my use of a monotone will indicate a lack of enthusiasm on my part and sway him from the inevitable, letting me get back to my reading.

My father doesn't notice. “Who is this?” he shouts pointing toward the stereo.

I roll my eyes but listen anyway.

“The Benny Goodman Orchestra.” I have to shout back in order to be heard. I try to maintain the monotone in my voice, but it is hard to do over the music. I sound like I am a little slow, maybe with a cold.

Dad nods approvingly.

“And who’s playing clarinet?”

“Da-ad!” I shout, exasperated, giving up the monotone. Why do I need to go through this? Doesn’t he know I have a bed in the other room to loll around on?

“OK. OK,” he shouts. “Everyone knows that one. Who’s playing drums?”

He likes to ask questions like that. Who is Woody Herman? What did Stan Getz play?

“Gene Krupa,” I shout.

He nods. “Listen to that. Would you listen to that?” His hands beat the outside of his thighs, mirroring the drummer.

The drum solo is coming up for “Sing, Sing, Sing”. Dad motions for me.

“Stand right here,” he shouts. “Come over here – Pearl, what are you doing? No, no, come right here. Stand here.” He ushers me to an oddly matted point in the shag. “Perfect spot. Right between the speakers. See that? Look. No, Pearl, look right over – oh, listen. Here it comes.”

Ba-DOO-bop-a-diddly-bop, Ba-DOO-bop-a-diddly-bop – the solo swings into the room fresh and crisp, a summer's day. My father closes his eyes.

“Ah,” he shouts. “Now that’s playing.”

I close my eyes.

“You hear that?” he shouts at me. “You hear that snare? Hold on a minute.”

My father, in the middle of conducting the imaginary 40-piece band in our living room, drops his arms and rushes toward the stereo.

He picks the needle up. The music stops.

“OK,” he mutters. “Let’s just –“ he trails off as he lowers the needle. The music is back.

“OK,” he shouts. “Right here. Listen. Listen.”

I close my eyes. And right there is the part, the snare part he wants me to hear.

“You hear that? You hear that sonuvagun? Man, that’s something!” My father is beaming all over.

“Yeah. I heard it,” I smile.

“Yeah!” he shouts. He walks over to the stereo, lifts the needle. He turns it off.

“Yeah,” he repeats, turning back to me. “That’s something, ain’t it? Man, I wanted to play like that.”

“You do play like that, Dad,” I say. And I believed it. He kept a tight, swinging beat when he got to play what he wanted. Not that that would happen in this town. The band he is in at the moment is called The Kountry Kittens, a local three-piece with a long and surprisingly bland song list.

As the band’s name insinuates, the Kountry Kittens is a country band. Both the bass player and the guitar player are female, an unusual thing for 1972. Big, healthy girls. Kevin refers to them as the Kountry Kitchens. One of them – Joanne or Judy? – I can never remember which, as they look the same to me – chews tobacco. I’ve never seen anything like it.

“I love the band you’re in now,” I tease. The whole family agrees on this one: The Kountry Kittens are not the highlight of his musical career.

Dad smiles.

“You love it, huh? Then you’re gonna love tonight,” he says. There is a disturbing tone to his voice, as if what he is really saying is that he suspects I would also enjoy cleaning out the car or doing the dishes. I stare at him.

“Mumma and you kids are coming to the gig tonight!” He winks at me. “Don’t you love it?”

I smile. Do I love it?

It’s Saturday night and we’re going to the bar!

Come back tomorrow for Part II!

BOOM! WHOOSH! or I Wonder if That Garage is Heated…

2011-12-30T07:00:00.000-08:00

You know, like so many people, I used to wonder – sometimes aloud! – about what may or may not happen next. As you can imagine, this made me quite a favorite amongst the feet-on-solid-ground types, leading, occasionally, to conversations regarding wood grain alcohol and whether or not it's meant to be consumed.

Well no more, my friends! For as I believe I’ve proven – time and time again – my iPod, set on “shuffle” and played during my morning commute, has prophetic qualities, not just for me, but for you as well!

No, really! I’m serious!

Shhh. Let’s listen.

Best Friends, Right? by Amy Winehouse
New Orleans is Sinking by The Tragically Hip
Believe by The Bravery
Demolition Man by The Police
Dramastically Different by The Beastie Boys
Barracuda by Heart
Effigy by Creedence Clearwater Revival

And there you have it. This weekend is so new, so fresh, that some of it has no reference point.

The rest of it is, of course, old hat. If I were you – and I believe that we’ve agreed that in some ways, I am – I’d stop at the liquor store. I’m thinking margaritas.

Oooh. And how do you feel about Pad Thai? I’ve got a hankerin’.

So! Weekend approaching and all, do we have time for a quick story? Just a little one?

Because Mary was more than a little concerned about Jon the other day.

Not that that is unusual. Mary’s a worrier, and if anybody can make you worry, it's Jon. Of course, Mary comes from a long line of worriers, and we’ve agreed, just between us, that there’s little she can do about it. Accordingly, when there’s worrying to do, we try to let Mary do it.

Makes her feel special.

So when Jon went out to the garage to turn its furnace on, and then she heard a BANG followed by a swift-moving WHOOSH, she didn’t know which way to run.

After the briefest of delays, she chose to run toward the garage.

“Jon! Jon!”

“I was frantic,” she tells me. “Am I going to find body parts? Car parts? Will it be bloody? Frankly, I didn’t think I was going to be equipped for it, if it was going to be bloody…”

She runs down the gently sloping backyard, calling his name, pulls up short just in front of the door. Not the one the car can pull into, but the door the humans walk in and out of.

“Jon! Dammit, Jon!”

“I’m ready to lose it,” she says to me. “I can’t decide if I should burst into tears or throw up or what.”

“Jon! Jon, answer me right this minute!”

“He’s not answering!” she says. “There’s no sound coming from inside the garage, but I can't bring myself to go in there! I’m yelling Jon! Jon! Answer me!”

She takes a breath. “And that,” she tells me, “is when he pops his head out the door. HULLO! he says!”

She shakes her head, smiling in that mystified way she has. Jon is her rock, her amusement, and her cross to bear.

“Pearl, there’s a great big patch of his beard missing, his eyes are blood-red, and his eyebrows look like they’re either melted or were originally part of one of those Mr. Potato Head games.” She smiles. “So I yell at him: Jon! Dammit, Jon, what the hell are you doing?”

She pauses.

“And?” I say.

“And nothing,” she says. “He just smiles at me, wants to know what’s for dinner.”

She shakes her head. “What’s for dinner,” she muses. “Why I oughta…”

I Can’t Come In To Work Today – I’ve Already Done Too Much

2011-12-29T07:00:00.000-08:00

I’d had a full day before I even got out of bed.

“… and as we wind on down the road, our shadows taller than our souls, there walks a lady we all…”

I take a hearty slap at the alarm clock.

Normally, when the alarm goes off, I, like so many others, bound out of bed, refreshed and optimistic, ready for the coffee buzz that surely awaits me; and so, of course, Wednesday started out in just this way. I lie in bed, admiring myself, a paragon of efficiency and practicality that –

“… won’t you fly-yyyyy free bird, yeah…”

What? What the -- OK. Again with the slapping of the alarm clock. So maybe I haven’t really gotten out of bed yet. Maybe if I just lay here for a second and gather my –

“… she taught me to WALK THIS WAY! Talk this way…”

I have now slapped myself 30 minutes further into the day than I am prepared for.

Hurling myself from the bed, I run in increasingly wider circles in an attempt to put a muzzle on my rising panic. Undies, shirt, hair – hey, haven’t worn these pants in a while. I pull my boots on, wind various bits of clothing about my neck and head and am out the door, yoga bag on my back, cleverly pre-packed lunch bag hanging from a shoulder. A quick two-block hustle, and there it is: the bus stop. I just need to cross. I just need to cross the road. If only the cars would let up…

Here it comes! Here comes the bus and I can’t cross! He’s a block away when I start waving my arms. “I’m here! I’m here!” my arms say. “I just have to cross the street!”

WHOOSH. This is the sound the bus makes as it goes by. The faces of a half-dozen fellow commuters stare sympathetically at me. “Awww,” their faces say.

I take a deep breath, a deep exhale, and take off running. I’m in great shape! I can catch the –

The bus reaches the red light two blocks away, pauses dramatically – the tease – and takes a right on red.

I am doomed.

I hike the six-seven blocks up the hill to catch the 10, a sweaty and ham-string pulling affair that has me making up stories about my dramatic rescue from some sort of tundra setting in no time. I am two blocks from the top of the hill when another bus shoots by.

I take a deep breath, followed by a deep exhale.

I reach the bus stop, a lonely little place on a bridge, where I stop sweating and begin to chill in a winter-appropriate manner. I am well into my imaginary interview with Good Morning, America regarding how I survived my experience in the tundra using only my iPod and my wits when the bus pulls up.

Heat. Blessed heat.

Making my way to the back, a process involving stepping around people who spill into the aisles, several live chickens and a group of men rolling dice, I sit down to discover why I hadn’t worn these pants in a while.

The zipper won't stay up.

I take a deep breath - and hold it.

What? No, I Never Watched Four Straight Hours of "Cops". Pfffft.

2011-12-28T07:00:00.000-08:00

By the time I had reached home, the TV had worked itself into a righteous, vigorous anger.

Apparently word had reached it – and I’m not blaming anyone specific here but I do strongly suspect my laptop, a sleek sexy bit of an appliance who can’t keep her damn lid closed – that I would no longer be spending time in front of the TV, butt planted, mouth open.

The TV was angry; and for reasons I still don’t understand, smelled slightly of stale cigarettes.

“Is it the screen? Huh? What? ‘Cause I’ve got a scratch? ‘Cause I don’t know from HDTV?”

“It’s not that…”

“What? I’m not big enough for you, Miss High-and-Mighty? Is that it? You think because you’ve a tub and a shower that you’re too big for the primetime line-up?”

“Hey, I never said…”

“Oh, save your breath, Miss I-Never-Heard-of-Him-Who-Is-This-Maury-Povich-Person! I know what you watch! You hear me? I know what you watch!”

“Hey, now. There’s no need to –“

“Tell it to the Marines, okay? Where’s the thanks, huh? Should I tell all your brainy friends about your Tetris addiction?”

“Wha—what?”

“Ha! You think I don’t remember that? You think I don’t remember you and your Nintendo? Hours and hours of Mario Brothers? Of Tetris? How you’d play until you swore the city’s skyline had gaps in it you thought you could fill in if the right piece ever came down?”

My face burned with shame.

The TV laughed cruelly. “Thought I’d forgotten that, didn’t you?”

“Look, that was a long time ago.”

The TV laughed again, his power indicator fever-red. “I don’t need your crap,” he spat. “I had a life, you hear me? I had a life before you!”

I lost control of myself. “You didn’t! You had no life! I paid for you! I paid for you and I dusted you and I moved you every single time I moved! Do you hear me?”

I burst into tears. “You think this is easy? You think I don’t still care for you? It’s just gotten dirty! I feel cheap! I have a callus from using the remote! The middle cushion on the couch has a Pearl’s-butt-shaped dent in it! If I’m not careful – oh, God! I’m going to end up watching info-mercials!”

The full horror of the situation hit me at that moment; and I fell to my knees in front of the TV, sobbing.

The TV made staticky, cooing noises.

“Movies, maybe? You could watch movies, right? And what about the second season of True Blood that you just never made time for? Maybe we could do that? Huh? The Dune movies? What about the Lord of the Ring Trilogy? You love that stuff."

White and black lines of contrition spread across the TV screen. "I just hate to lose you,” he said.

I sat up, wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my shirt.

“I don’t know." I hiccuped. "I don’t know if we can be friends. I guess we’ll just have to take it one day at a time.”

The TV began to hum the theme song from “One Day at a Time”.

I shook my head, repulsed.

He’ll never change.

Local Woman Tells Off Teen, Has Nervous Walk Back to the Office

2011-12-27T07:42:00.000-08:00

Despite the cocksure-ed-ness of my writing style, I, in true Midwestern fashion, do not care for confrontation.

This is not to say that I don’t have ideas about things or situations that would, say, in larger cities, cause multiple people to jump into a verbal fray, it’s just that we Minnesotans, in particular, are loathe to cause a scene.

We will, of course, purse our lips in disagreement with you, but that really only seems to work on other Minnesotans.

So it is with a mixture of pride and confusion that I tell you that I've had a confrontation.

Having recently lost my appetite, I've been told “go find something you used to like and eat it whether you want to or not”, so I found my way over to a food court where they sell braised meat on sticks. I got into a long line. Eventually, of course, I was next – only to have a rather large and thuggishly dressed teenager push her way ahead of me.

“I was next,” I said.

She ignored me.

I looked at the cashier, who shrugged.

“Excuse me,” I said, tapping the girl on the shoulder. “I said I was next.”

She turned around. “Uh-uh,” she sneered. “I was over there looking at the menu and I’m next.”

“So you say,” I said. “But the line’s not over there, it’s over here. I’m next.”

She put her hands on her hips. She was almost a full foot taller than me and easily out-weighed me, although it did appear that the clothes she had stuffed herself into were my size.

“I SAID,” she shouted, staring down at me, her neck weaving from side to side, “that I was over there, looking at the menu and I’M NEXT!”

I stared back, and for just a moment, is it possible that I actually saw red? “I see,” I said in a quiet voice. “Well that just makes it so much more interesting, doesn’t it?”

I broke eye contact, stepped off to one side and told the cashier, “I’ll have a beef kabob.”

I then turned around to the person that had been behind me in line for the last 10 minutes. “I wouldn’t let her in if I were you. She’s uncivilized.”

And I refused to look back at her. She’ll get nothing from me but the back of my head.

And I walked, shaking, to where I picked up my kabob, and walked, shaking, back to the office. I never turned around but awaited the blow that was surely coming.

It did not come, and I am no longer shaking.

Like the bus drivers who no longer tell people to “sit down”, “shut up”, or “stop that” for fear of reprisal, it seems that cashiers are powerless over the public as well.

Who are the champions of civility? Where have our manners gone? And can anyone tell me if I’m being followed by a large teenage girl?

And Yet She Looks Perfectly Normal

2011-12-26T07:36:00.001-08:00

“Acme Grommets and Sprockets, Pearl speaking.”

“Um, yes, I’d like to order a half-dozen grommets, and I'd like to set up a payment plan? Also I am wondering if I can get them delivered individually, preferably by a man in a loin cloth? If he could bring butterscotch pudding with him – the real stuff, too, not the instant – that would be great.”

“Mary, who gave you this number?”

“You did.”

I mutter a small, rather defenseless curse word.

“Well, now that we’re here, what up, girlfriend?”

She laughs. Neither of us has an ounce of ability in the urban slang department. We’ve jointly decided that listening to either of us say things like “you go, girl” or receiving any written communication from us using “U”, “R”, “B” or deliberate misspellings is the equivalent of my father once asking me if I “was taking the pot”, a genuine and drug-related question from him in the early 80s.

“Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?”

Oh, we’re funny, Mary and I.

“I’m walking T-Bone.”

T-Bone, a largish dog who would like to sit in your lap, is briefly overheard barking at what sound to be a crowd of much smaller dogs.

“Trouble?” I ask.

There is the sound of Mary grunting. “Yes. Dagnabit, T-Bone!” There is more grunting. Mary is either pulling T-Bone away from a pack of wild Chihuahuas or pushing something large and unyielding down the street.

“OK,” she says. “That’s better.”

“Where are you going?”

There is the briefest of pauses. Mary is getting ready to lie.

“No where.”

And then we both laugh. Mary is the worst liar you’ve ever met.

“No, really,” I say.

“Goan tagit ah bekkin doanit.” Mary is deliberately mumbling.

“I’m sorry, what’s that?”

She sighs heavily. “A bacon donut! I’m going to get a bacon donut!! Are you happy now?”

She is smiling. I can hear her smiling. I am smiling, too. “What kind of morning do you have to be having before you walk the couple miles it will take you to get to the shop that sells bacon donuts?”

“Pretty crappy,” she admits. There is the briefest of pauses, and when she resumes speaking, her voice is serious. “Oh, Holy Hannah,” she says, disgusted. Her tone of voice suggests that what has just happened is another crappy thing in a long line of crappy things.

“What’s the matter?”

“I think I’ve lost my phone. It’s always in my right pocket because the left one has a hole in it and it’s not there…” She trails off.

“The phone?” I ask. “Like, the phone you’re talking on right now?”

There is complete silence.

“Pearl, is it possible that I’m mentally retarded?”

“Entirely,” I say. “Oops. I gotta run. Give me a call when you find your phone.”

“Shaddap,” she says, pleasantly.

“Have a good day, Mary.”

“You, too, Pearl.”

It's All About Preparation

2011-12-25T07:00:00.000-08:00

I have several events/gatherings to attend in the next few days. But before I settle into serious party mode; I need to set some things straight.

Ahem.

Number One, should anything, shall we say, untoward happen to me between now and the New Year, please notify Pat O. The spotlight that throws a large Happy Face into the sky is up in the attic. Turn it on and leave it on. When she sees the sign, she’ll know I am dead and that it’s time to dispose of the contents of Drawers 1, 2, 5, and 6 of my bedroom dresser.

Additionally, if something dreadful does happen, the list of likely suspects is in my underwear drawer, under the bail money but not as deep as the limericks. Before you let the accusations fly, however, please cross-check against the list of those owing me money (in an envelope taped to the back of the Collie and Lost Lamb print in the living room )and try to get the money first.

To all the men I’ve loved, lost, sold, misplaced and tortured, one of you was my True Love. Guess which one. Ha ha. Just kidding. You know it was you all along, baby!

To my son, a boy what never reads his mother's blog, the insurance money is all yours. Do you remember what I said about spending it all on hookers and blow and how you should not? That's right -- Mommy will be haunting the bathroom and your car until you do right. Just so's you know.

Also, should the police inquire, the stats on my driver’s license are 100% accurate, right down to being 5’8” and 130 pounds. There may, however, have been some shrinkage throughout the years. And swelling.

Moreover, if, heaven forbid, there’s a repeat of the ’92 debacle in which I agreed that driving to South Dakota in a snow storm is an excellent idea and I fail to appear for work for more than 72 hours, please contact Officer Dreumont just outside of Sturgis. Tell him “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” and he’ll know what you’re talking about. Do what he says and I’m sure everything will be fine.

Well! I think that’s about it, don’t you?

Merry Christmas, everyone.

When You're Rich Beyond Dollar Signs

2011-12-24T07:00:00.000-08:00

A re-post. Neither Mary nor I smoke anymore, but I'd almost forgotten about the day that John replaced their front door...

“I just want you to know,” she says, “that you are free to write about us as you see fit. I mean, I know what we look like to some people, and I don’t want you to stifle anything because you feel it presents us in an unflattering light.”

She pauses to take a drag from her cigarette.

“Heck,” she says. “I know what we look like.”

I am sitting on the couch in her living room. T-Bone, a Labrador of Great Sincerity and Low-Grade Flatulence, has his head on my knees and is gazing upward with the expression of one who believes I may have greasy, cat-flavored treats in my coat pockets.

I do not.

I light my own cigarette and blow the smoke toward the candle.

It is 24 degrees Fahrenheit outside (4.4 below Celsius); and inside, we are wearing our boots, coats, and hats.

We are not wearing our gloves.

That would be silly.

I pull my hat further down over my ears. “Tell me again why today is the day to replace the front door?”

Mary sighs. “Well the new one’s been in the living room for over a month now. It seemed like it was time.”

We gaze out the front door. It is 7:00, her abnormally dark street flanked by mounds of uncooperative snow. She takes a drag off her cigarette. “Check out the headlight.”

The David Mann mural on the wall nearest the front door has been desecrated by the creation of the new frame, the headlight on the friendly trucker’s vehicle now a shattered spattering of Drywall on the floor.

I shook my head sadly. “The chick on the bike still seems pretty happy.”

“Yeah,” Mary shivered. “Well, she’s been painted that way, if ya ask me.”

Eventually, of course, Jon and Justin have the frame square and the inner and outer doors attached to the frame.

It is beautiful.

The two holes in the doors, however, the lonely and unfulfilled spaces that will house the lockset and knob tomorrow whistle aggressively with a driving Arctic wind fresh out of North Dakota.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” asks Jon. He runs a thoughtful hand through the thatch of hair on his head. “Yep, this is going to be one beautiful –”

“JON!” Mary can hardly control herself. “There are HOLES! Ya hear that whistling? Ya feel the cold? Ya smell what I’m cookin’ here, Jon?”

Jon’s eyes alight on mine, and we grin silently. She yells because she cares.

He bursts into laughter. “I’m gonna cover the holes! Don’t you worry!”

Mary pulls back a bit. “OK. So how are the doors going to stay shut all night with that wind?”

Jon winks at me. “Ahhh. See, I got that covered, too.” He pulls the belt off his pants.

“Hey! Hey!” Mary shouts good-naturedly. “This is a family show!”

Jon frowns at her. “Hey, we don’t talk like that.”

Now it’s Mary’s turn to wink at me.

Jon’s already at the door. “Ya see this,” he says, opening both doors, “I’m going to run the belt through the screen door, then through the inner door, and now I’m going to shut them so the belt is caught between the house and the door.”

He straightens up, arching his back. “See that? Minneapolis Security System.”

Mary turns to me. “When you speak of this,” she says, “and I can see by the look on your face that you will, just remember who loves ya.”

She calls the dog over, who jumps into her lap and knocks her backward.

Mary buries her face into him, talks baby talk into his neck. “Iddin tha’ right, T-Bone? Iddin tha’ right? Who loves our lives more than we do?”

Trippin' on the Bus, or Don't Talk So Fast, I'm Writing This Down!

2011-12-23T07:00:00.000-08:00

And so it is, on this Friday, that once again, our futures nebulous and hazy, we approach the iPod, hat in hand, in the hopes that its shuffled playlist will tell us our future.

O, iPod! What up, dawg?

Wait. No.

I'm so sorry. I apologize for that. My saying “dawg” is right up there with my saying “you go, girl” or ordering a cocktail listing Red Bull (or any other energy drink) as an ingredient – it's stilted and wrong and is the verbal equivalent of me going to the grocery store in sweat pants.

It's just not done.

So let me rephrase: O iPod, how’s it hangin’?

Yeah. That sounds better.

Right Place Wrong Time by Dr. John
Carry On by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
You Can Make It If You Try by Sly & The Family Stone
None Shall Pass by Aesop Rock
Never Do This Again by The M’s
Thickfreakness by The Black Keys
Funky Stuff by Kool & The Gang
Jump Into the Fire by Harry Nilsson

Hmm. The iPod suggests you stick with whatever it is that has you stumped. The break-through is just around the corner…

From my notebook: an account of why I am usually listening to my iPod – and why I always carry a notebook on the bus.

The woman in the seat two ahead of me is dressed as City Trash-Talker #3. From the tips of her talon-like and bejeweled fingernails to the way she is sprawled across two seats during the afternoon rush hour, she gives off a vibe of unpaid rent and late-night calls to the police.

“What you calling me back for? What? What?! Yes it is! Yes it is!! I’m not interested – why you frontin’?”

Me? I have no idea why he’s frontin’, but her side of the conversation is so loud that I’m hoping I’ll find out. I turn the iPod off and remove one earbud.

“What? What?! Why you callin’ me? Why you didn’t give me what I came for? Don’t even! Don’t even!”

She does her best to “slam” the cell phone.

Her left hand goes to her mouth, and she jams her thumb into her mouth.

I open my book and frantically scribble thumb-sucking on the bus!!

Her phone rings loudly.

The thumb is removed from her mouth and is replaced by the phone. “What? What?! Where you? Where you? No! No, it don’t matter!”

Repetition. I write. Why so much repetition?

At this point, she suggests a physical improbability related to his “stuffing” his “junk” and again gives the ol’ college try to slamming a cell phone.

The effect is lost, of course, but I admire her commitment to keeping it angry.

Her left thumb goes back into her mouth.

The phone rings.

The thumb is removed from her mouth.

“What? What?! No, it don’t! No it don’t! You don’t know him! It ain’t none-a your business! You don't know him!”

At this point, she pulls the cord and, still arguing, steps toward the exit, shouting. “What? What?! No, it don’t! No, it don’t!”

I watch her, hoping for some sort of resolution. No, it don’t?! But what if it do? I write. What then?

The bus pulls away, and my last view of her is as she steps into the middle of the street, one hand clutching a phone to her head, the other flat-palmed and stretched out in a stiff-armed, imperious demand that the cars stop so that she can cross.

Would I be out of line in assuming that that woman be trippin’?

And On Still Yet Another Hand, Well, You’ve Got Three Hands Then, Haven’t You?

2011-12-22T07:00:00.000-08:00

A re-worked post as I discover myself with too many things on my, if you'll excuse the expression, plate...

On the one hand, I’m glad that there are young men out there secure enough to wear their long hair up in a bun.

On the other hand, I wish they’d stop.

Once again, I am at odds with myself.

One of the coffee-slingers at the Starbucks I frequent has taken to wearing his hair in a bun. There it sits, atop his head, a confusing mass of tucked-in bun-ness. Don’t get me wrong – I’m a big fan of long hair. I’ve dated men with hair longer than my own. But had they shown up with it in a bun – well that just smacks of Mrs. Claus, doesn’t it?

Wait. Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s a seasonal affectation. Maybe there’s a movement I don’t know about, trying to bring Kringle fashion back.

Sure. That's it.

And for Easter, little chocolate eggs will drop out of a specially designed chute in his pants.

No. I don’t buy that, and believe me, I buy a lot of the stuff I make up.

I want to ask him, “What’s up with the bun? Braiding too good for ya?”

But no. I won’t. He is young and hip, and I am simply part of the early-morning coffee crush. I am “Venti Bold, room for cream, right?”

Right.

Of course, it is possible that his view of me is as skewed as I’m sure mine is of him. I see a hipster, a man with his hair tucked into a bun, a man at whom I smile as I mentally envision him in a large red velvet dress with tiny wire-rim spectacles; and he sees a middle-aged woman, one of hundreds that line up for delicious, over-priced coffee who feels pressured to leave her change because someone poured her a cup and walked it two feet to the counter…

Great. Now I’m trying to think of ways to freak him out.

The truth is that no one really knows what they are looking at. Perhaps there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for a 20-something U.S. male to be wearing his hair in a bun.

Perhaps the explanation is that it’s none of my business.

Either way, I like a bit of mystery. Loch Ness Monster, the chupacabra, the Kardashians. Who knows what is real anymore? Life is a series of discoveries in varying degrees: I may never know the reason for the bun, and he may never know the reason I grin the way I do when I see him.

I’m okay with that.

I’ll Never See Them Again, But They Have My Fervent Best Wishes

2011-12-21T07:00:00.000-08:00

There is a couple in front of me, waiting for the elevator. They know each other well and have for some time. You can see it, somehow, in the way they stand next to each other.

They are together.

She leans into him, and he puts an arm around her, runs his hand up the outside of her winter coat’s sleeve and pulls her close. She rests her head on his shoulder, looks up at him and smiles.

Ding!

The elevator doors open, and the three of us step in.

We stare ahead, politely.

“I want to tell someone,” she says to him.

“It’s too early,” he says.

“Still,” she says. “I’ll burst if I don’t tell someone.”

I turn to face them. The woman looks at me and smiles.

“You can tell me,” I say.

“We’re pregnant!” they shout. And I don’t know this couple, this smiling, hand-holding couple, and yet goosebumps go up on my arms.

“Congratulations – wait, we’re happy about this, yes?!” I smile, to show I’m joking, that of course we are happy.

“Oh, yes,” and they are talking, the both of them, at once. “We’ve been trying for a while now – we want this baby so much – we’re so happy.”

“How far along are you?” I ask. “You look fantastic.”

“Six weeks,” she says, and a blush arises from the both of them.

“A summer baby! Plenty of time to tell people!” I enthuse. “Do you have a nursery?”

And for the next five floors, they tell me about the nursery, about the grandparents-to-be who will be so excited.

The doors to the elevator open on the ground floor. He puts his arm around her, guides her out the door. “Merry Christmas!” the man says. “Merry Christmas,” she says. She steps away from him, reaches out her hand to me. I take it.

“Merry Christmas,” I say, and tears come to both of our eyes.

“And a Happy New Year,” she whispers.

I Will Never Run Out of Things to Write About

2011-12-20T07:00:00.000-08:00

The last time I saw T, he was busy showing me his owies.

“This one,” he says, pulling back the lips of a large, garish wound to the palm of his hand, “I got shucking oysters.”

I stare in a mixture of horror and revulsion. The words “Medium-rare, please” spring to mind.

“Stop it! Stop doing that!”

He laughs. This is not his only owie, and he points them out to me, one by one: blisters, cracked heels, cuts, a chemical burn. He also has a cracked tooth that he promises to reveal “at another time”.

The guy knows how to party.

“You have no regard for the flesh,” I say.

“And you, my friend, have no regard for theatre.”

I stare at him.

He smiles. “Open Wound Theatre,” he says, pulling the edges of the wound on his hand back. “It was the best of times,” he quotes, lips pulled tightly in perhaps the worst imitation of a ventriloquist that I’ve ever seen, “it was the worst of times”.

“That’s it,” I say. “Give me your phone.”

He stares at me.

I hold my hand out, open and close it impatiently. “I’m calling your mother.”

He laughs, dances back and away from me.

“Fine,” I grumble. “Then I’m going to write about you and expose your perversities to the world.”

“What, you’re going to write about Open Wound Theatre?” A hiss of air escapes his lips: pffffffft. “Man, you have totally run out of things to write about, haven’t you?”

And If I Put It Off for Another Couple Days, I Won't Have to Do It At All

2011-12-19T07:00:00.000-08:00

So help me, it’s time to get serious about my Christmas card list.

I’ve got the box of cards; I’ve got the stamps and the address book arranged around me. I’ve got the TV set to Forensic Files. I’m ready to go.

Now I just have to build up the desire necessary to address 50-some cards and envelopes.

I’ve attempted to create this desire in me by folding laundry, eating nachos, drinking copious amounts of Fresca, visiting my favorite blogs, and texting friends. I’ve made a grocery list. I made ham and bean soup. I did the dishes. I’ve considered cleaning the cat box.

Oddly enough, my cards still aren’t done.

This doesn’t surprise me. I can be ridiculously task-averse. Go ahead. Tell me what to do.

See? Whatever you just said? I haven't done it.

But deadlines. Oh, I do take a deadline seriously. The “drop-dead” date, as they say in the corporates. I’m apt to take seriously something that uses the word “dead” in the description. Seems pretty final.

And there’s no real room for negotiation on, say, a holiday card.

So here it is: I’m going to open this lousy box; I’m going to use my return-address labels rather than hand-writing my return address fifty-some times, even if some people think it’s tacky; I’m going to pull out my address book and figure out whose been naughty and nice. I’m going to get it done tonight.

Wait. Does that sound cocky? The naughty-and-nice bit? What is the expectation on cards, anyway? If I’ve sent you a card for several years running but never gotten one back, I’m perfectly within societal boundaries if I drop you from my list, right?

Right?

I must have the rules around here someplace...

Happy Seasonal Expectations, everyone!

Mom, Can I Have One of My Toes Removed at the Mall?

2011-12-18T07:00:00.000-08:00

Back when Australia was still drifting away from the continent and my dance card was full, i.e., my formative years, having your ears pierced even once was crazy, rebellious stuff.

But within just a couple of years of my having graduated high school, the soft pink ears of girls and boys across the country were being pierced repeatedly, loops and loops of defiance; and every group of kids since then has added to the loopage until now we are running out of places to pierce.

Ears? HA! Forget about ears. What’s it like, being so hopelessly old-fashioned? We’ve now got in public what you used to have to pay a carnie to see: pierced noses, eyebrows, lips, nipples, and belly buttons, not to mention the piercing of parts sure to ruin your good undies.

My son asked, in 10th grade, if he could get his ears pierced.

“No,” I said.

I’ve found that children enjoy quick, decisive answers.

“How about a tattoo then? Can I get a tattoo?”

“No,” I said.

“Come on! Why not? It’ll say “Mom”, I promise!”

Awwww. What a good boy. His freshly-pubescent forearm will be permanently marked “Mother”.

“Dylan, when you are 18, you are free to do as you like, although I’ll ask that you wait until you’re out of college. Once you’re out of college, go crazy.”

“Mom, everyone has one!”

“Yeah, everyone and their grandma. Maybe by the time you’re out of school the cool thing will be to have never had a tattoo, to be a clean slate. Besides, what do you have to commemorate with permanent ink? You have great skin. Why mess it up?”

“How about a Mohawk? Can I get a blue Mohawk?”

“Sure. Knock yourself out. If you don’t like it, you can always shave your head.”

He didn’t, of course, get that blue Mohawk, although everyone on the lacrosse team that year dyed their hair platinum blonde.

What the heck. Hair grows.

There are an awful lot of ways to be different/be like everyone else these days. Never mind the tattoos and the piercings. There are studs as well, little knobs at the temples, sharp things sticking out of lowers lips, large Ubangi-style corks in tautly stretched earlobes, contact lenses made to look like cats or goats eyes…

So what’s next?

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and make a prediction.

This prediction is valid in the U.S. only and is not to be used for the purposes of gambling.

In keeping with how we generally behave, the U.S. will go in two wildly disparate directions: 1. the trend will swing to the point where super-conservative dress will become fashionable. No piercings, tattoos. Even jewelry will be eschewed so as to make it easier for one generation to truly differentiate itself from the previous; or 2. – and this is my personal favorite – we will embrace selective amputation. People eager to express themselves will have the first knuckle/nail of select fingers removed, opening up whole new areas of exploration in the insults-via-hand-gestures realm.

Missing a knuckle or two will eventually become, of course, the tribal-tattooed bicep/rose-on-the-breast tattoo of that generation; and the next generation’s rebels will be forced to move on to having their nostrils flared or their skulls replaced with glass, maybe something that lights up when there’s a thought…

Hey. Now there's a thought.

Seriously. Just Take Your Stuff and Go.

2011-12-17T07:00:00.000-08:00

It’s Saturday. The kitties are mewling pitifully for cream (despite the fact that they rarely if ever chip in for groceries), my bed still hasn’t made itself, and the temperature has plummeted here in Minneapolis a good 20 degrees from yesterday.

And why not? It’s December, still, and no one said this was going to be easy.

Oh, sure, there was talk early on about how lovely it is to have four seasons, how pretty the snow is and how childishly excited we’ll be once we’re able to do something as novel as wear shoes outside rather than boots; but the thrill is gone, people.

I’m breaking up with winter.

In the beginning, and I do mean in the beginning, when I was a young, tender thing with proper hand/feet blood circulation and dreams of graceful ice-skate-driven pirouettes, it was good between us. Winter added a pinkness to my cheeks, and I was grateful. It’s hard being of a naturally yellowish hue, and I was tired of being asked if I was “okay”. Stop asking me that! I’m fine! I’m just yellow-y, okay?

Sheesh. Give a girl a break.

But then came high school; and the young, tender things with money were going skiing, so I saved my money so that I could go, too. Pity I didn’t know how to ski, though, and my reward for ridiculous amounts of babysitting and acting like I knew what I was doing earned me a face-plant into the side of a mountain (or maybe it was a hill – it is Minnesota, after all) and my own key to the high school elevator for a month.

That’ll teach ya!

That was the beginning of the end; and in all this time, winter has failed to make it up to me.

Lost mittens and hats, frostbite, falling on the ice? Dead car batteries? Fruitless searches for jumper cables? The gradual accumulation of turtlenecks and superfluous hip and buttock padding?

All winter’s fault.

So, yeah. It’s over, and I don’t feel bad about it.

Winter can leave my unfrozen toes and fingers at the front door on its way out.

The Beverage-y Hillbillies: I Shall Miss You

2011-12-16T07:00:00.000-08:00

Another day, another dollar, dollar-and-a-half – you string enough of those together and you find yourself at the brink of a weekend.

The weekend. Two little days, if you’re lucky, of meeting up with friends, of cooking, cleaning, errand-running, grocery-shopping, preparation for the next week…

Yikes. What was my point?

Oh, but if only we knew what to expect for those two days! How can we make the best use of our time? What shall we wear? Would going out for dirty martinis be a good idea? What about margaritas? Would that be a better idea?

If only we knew…

But we do! We do know! For right here, in my hot little hand, is my iPod, bringer of tunes and testimony, beats both exhilarating and laughable. As is well known – particularly in the space between my own ears – my iPod, set to shuffle and played during my Friday-morning commute, tells the future.

So it is written, so it shall be done.

Shh. Let’s listen.

I Can’t Get Next to You by The Temptations
The Sweet Part of the City by The Hold Steady
Getting Down by The Kills
Oh My God by Kaiser Chiefs
Glad Girls by Guided by Voices
Sincerely Jane by Janelle Monae
Fever by Peggy Lee

What’s it all mean? There’s going to be a definite challenge – one which you will rise to meet with a smile on your face. There’s also a woman who is trying to tell you something. Try to figure out what it is.

So! Got that out of the way, and here we are, having arrived at the last of our serial-Friday installments re: the Beverage-y Hillbillies.

We’ve spent the past several Fridays getting to know the family that moved into my neighborhood, a square-headed lot attuned to the ways of front-yard hootin’ and hollerin’. We’ve grown to appreciate their ability to sprint whilst shouldering two of the largest stereo speakers left in existence. We’ve marveled at both their ability to ask for help and the frequency with which they do it and a displayed prowess in the egg-hurling sports. We’ve stood in wonder over the get-‘er-done entrepreneurial spirit of a foray into parking-lot drug distribution, and we’ve seen me break down and contact their landlords in an attempt to rid the neighborhood of them once and for all.

Today's episode?

And Now, I Have a Cretin-Shaped Hole in My Heart

I would like to report that the day that brought the moving out of the curiously squat and squared-headed folk down the street was a raucous adventure of questionable folk from Minneapolis' seedy underbelly, that various pick-ups and oxen-led carts showed up to help them load up and take away the four large-screen TVs, the ping pong table and the seemingly dozens of mattresses that I witnessed them move in.

But I cannot.

They left in the middle of the night, leaving nothing but tire tracks in the front yard, a large piece of furniture that may have doubled as some sort of sacrificial slab, a broken cooler, and two horrifyingly stained king-sized mattresses.

They left these items on the boulevard in front of their house.

Oddly enough, Minneapolis' garbage haul-away policy is amazingly liberal; and all of these items could've been taken off the neighborhood's hands by simply leaving them in the alley with a note that says "Please Take".

And as enticing as a game of "What does that stain look like to you?" originally seemed, I tired of the view of their household scabs almost immediately, and called 311 (the number to the city) on the second day.

"I'd like to report a large pile of crap, please."

The woman on the other end chuckled. "Can you describe the crap, ma'am?"

I could, and I did.

"Do you have the address of said crap?"

"Well, it's four down from my house, but the house numbers seem to run by both fours and twos on my street, so I'm not sure of it right now. I can walk down there if you like."

"Let's start with your address and go from there," she said.

In minutes, she had Google Maps pulled up, had found my house and had counted down four houses.

"Is it the house with the lamp post in front of it?" she asked.

"What?" I said. "You can see that?"

"Google Maps is a wonderful thing," she said.

I had been unaware of this street-level feature. "I'm stepping outside," I said. "Can you see me? I’m waving."

She laughed politely, as one does at the clueless. "Ma'am, it's a satellite image."

There was a slight pause as I listened to her type.

"We'll have someone out to pick it up tomorrow."

"Really? Just like that, huh?"

"Just like that," she said. "Is there anything more I can do for you?"

"No, ma'am," I said. "That's plenty."

True to her word, the City of Minneapolis hauled away the residuals of the Beverage-y Hillbillies’ brief stay with us, and so it is here that our tale of inner-city excitement ends.

They came, they saw, they littered.

And now they're someone else's problem.

Actually, The Postman Doesn’t Ring At All

2011-12-15T07:00:00.000-08:00

The recent arrival of a large number of packages, all in plain brown wrappers, has the mark of Liza Bean Bitey’s fine paw all over it.

“What is Zurich Exports?”

Liza Bean Bitey, suspected international thief, supposed possessor of a collaborative manuscript between her and the late Hunter S. Thompson and small-pawed feline looks up sharply from the watch she is working on.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because it’s on this,” I say, a medium-sized box in my hand.

“I’ll take that,” she purrs, padding smoothly by. The box leaves my hand with a swift efficiency of movement that whisks her past me and out of the room.

I call after her. “What’s in the box?”

“Hmm? I’m sorry,” she says, re-entering the room, “I didn’t hear you.”

I narrow my eyes at her. “What have you been up to?”

She smiles, an un-nerving and utterly charming thing in a cat. “I can’t always take the car,” she demurs, a reference to how often she borrows the Honda, “and I do have certain holiday obligations, you know.”

I am stunned. Liza Bean Bitey (of the Minneapolis Biteys), while inaccurately described as “stingy” would nevertheless fall within the “thrifty” category. A failed investment in a Philippine oil rig a number of years ago put a sudden end to the high life she’d been accustomed to, and outside of insisting on the best gin available and a new dress collar every year, it’s a sad fact that she only half-reaches for the tab at the end of a night.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she says, almost gruffly. I hadn’t realized I’d been staring at her. She waves me away, returning her attention to the dismantled watch in front of her. “Anyway,” she says thoughtfully, lifting a tiny cog, “you’re not the only one on this year’s gift list.”

Again I am surprised. Who could she be buying for? I say nothing but raise an eyebrow.

The cat purrs. “I heard that,” she says.

Deep Inside the Bowels of Acme Grommets and Napkins, or Maybe She Has Naked Pictures of Someone in HR

2011-12-14T07:00:00.000-08:00

An unnecessary corner bit of the screen at the front of the conference room is listing the e-mails she’s receiving, and we are subjected to the ghosts of them as they fade into and out of view.

Ken wanders over, points. “If you click on this,” he whispers to her, the voice of the CEO still audible, “you can expand the screen and we won’t see your e-mails.”

Her bobbing head floats above the laptop’s keyboard. Nervously, her cursor floats above a different icon.

“This? Should I click this?”

“NO!” the room shouts together.

Incapable of stopping herself, however, she clicks; and for the second time in under 10 minutes, we lose audio contact with the CEO’s quarterly meeting.

“Aaaaaaaah.” The room moans as the video conference we’ve gathered for stutters, hangs up, and redials itself.

The conference, of course, continues without us; and 18 people bite their collective tongues as the twit with the laptop scrambles to bring it back.

I give her the fish eye. Sheri is one of those people who make you wonder how she manages to travel from home to work every day without suddenly discovering herself in a Quonset hut on an abandoned Air Force base. Outside of the ability to find anything an executive says either intensely interesting or blindingly funny, her actual skill set seems to be limited to repeatedly finding her way to her desk.

It takes several minutes to get back to the conference call, minutes I am sure contain both information regarding my long-awaited raise and my importance to the outfit (specifically) and mankind (in general).

Beep! Bee bee-bee beep-beep-beep boop beep boop boop!

“… and that is what we’re talking about, people. It’s that kind of strategic goal planning that’s going to see us through this next year. Sure the sacrifices that will be made – and now you know who you are – will be painful, but this is what we’re faced with.”

Eighteen people stare at each other, eyes wide.

I pass a note to the person next to me: Ask him to repeat that, would ya?

I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.

Three Servers On a Bed of Arugula with an Exhausted but Rather Amusing Dipping Sauce

2011-12-13T07:00:00.000-08:00

When the opportunity arises to serve, one, of course, serves. Black pants, legs creased sharply; white shirt starched to an exactitude rarely seen outside of the military; sturdy black shoes that say “I shall remain on my feet until called upon to do otherwise, madam.”

Hello. My name is Pearl. May I refresh your drink?

I take you back to last Saturday night, where you are to picture me smiling and deferential.

Paulie was there.

Paulie’s a star, you know.

“We filmed for a week,” he says, arranging the shrimp-wrapped scallops on a tray. “It’s going to be on TV this spring.”

King of the grill, maker of spoon-licking-good dressings and sauces, drinker of vodka and one snappy dresser, Paulie will represent Nye’s Polonaise on an upcoming episode of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.

“Not that it will affect how I treat you,” he says, casually, a regal wave of his hand encompassing us all. “Hey, which one of you wants to rub my temples whilst I whisk?”

We laugh. Because that’s what you do when your chef makes demands. You laugh.

Being in the presence of a budding celebrity, however, does not affect the job at hand. Gol’ dang it, people, we have jobs to do! We can’t just stand around, feeding Paulie peeled grapes and massaging his various roasts and loins!

Saturday evening’s job was a private party in a home large enough to comfortably hold a dinner party of 17.

We served, and we served well, Mary, Min, and I being the very face of cheerful diligence. We served, filled, delivered, removed, scraped, stacked, and hauled.

And then we wiped and swept our way out the front door and into the brittle expanse of stars wheeling overhead. It was shortly before midnight when we stepped out the front door. We had been on our smiling, running feet for seven hours.

“I think my spine has been compressed. Do I look shorter to you?”

I look over at Mary, who is sitting under the pile of blankets I keep in the car for those awkward moments before the heater kicks in – roughly from November to April.

“Yes,” I say.

She moans softly. “Do your feet hurt?”

“They hurt so bad that I think they might be your feet.”

She sighs. “Still,” she says, looking up through the windshield, “it’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”

I lean forward, gaze up through the windshield. We are far enough away from the city that the stars are a brilliantly winking sea of bright white and blue lights.

She’s right.

It’s a beautiful night.

Bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbblack Slacks, or It's So Hard to Get Good Help

2011-12-12T07:00:00.000-08:00

A re-post from last June, when the sky was blue, unfrozen birds sat in trees, and Minnesotans ran about half-naked (or half-naked by December's standards, anyway). Saturday's serving job wore me out, hence no writing on Sunday. I'll be back to my "normal" self in no time, I'm sure...

I got the call.

And what do we do when we get the call?

We get Mary on the phone.

“Mary!” I shout.

She likes when I shout into the phone, especially early on a Monday morning.

“Herro,” she says, mildly.

“Herro,” I say. “Hey, you still got those black pants?”

The phone line crackles. I get the impression that Mary answered the phone whilst slouching and has just straightened up.

“Yeeeeees…” she says cautiously.

“They got a crease in ‘em?”

“Yeeeeees…”

“You still got that white button-down shirt?”

“Yeeeees…”

“Are you prepared to button those cuffs? In the bright sunlight? At noon? With no shade in sight, sweat running down your back, and the keen look of a real go–-“

“Pearl! You’re killin’ me!”

“Get the starch out, baby! We got ourselves some servin’ gigs!”

It’s true. The season of working for cash is upon us.

You see the sweating chicks over there in the black pants and white button-down shirts? Yeah. That’s me and Mary, picking up the abandoned dishes at the graduation buffet, running to get your grandparents another cup of coffee, and furtively checking our watches to see how much time is left.

What? Of course I wish the kiddies all the best! Good for you, graduating from high school like that!

Could I get you some more coffee? Another frittata? How about something from the pack-your-own hookah station?

Funny how things change.

What ever happened to the good ol’ fashioned graduation party? The one where your mom put out ham sandwiches and potato salad? The one with the keg in the garage and the cigarettes we stole from your dad?

Oh, wait. I think I may have answered my own question.

When I graduated from high school, the legal drinking age was 18. The very next year the age shifted to 19, and just a couple years later it went to 21.

As Maxwell Smart used to say: Missed me by that much.

I’m sure there are still plenty of rowdy graduation parties around – which is, at least in my mind, a fitting way to finish your formative years. To hear some people speak, though, the idea of an 18-year-old drinking several beers and sitting in a garage with a number of other similarly impaired youngsters is a bad thing.

Which brings us back to the catered graduation banquet.

I don’t mind working summer parties, although I must admit I could do without the black pants. It’s hard to keep a smile on your face when you’re developing swamp-butt, although once your brain reaches a certain temperature and the hallucinations kick in it’s actually easier to keep a smile on your face, so it all works out, when you think about it.

So there you go. Well done, high school graduates. Be well. Drive carefully. Enjoy your fruit smoothies and butlered appetizers.

Mary and I are here to serve.

That's a Lot of Junk in Your Trunk

2011-12-11T07:00:00.000-08:00

Have you winterized your car yet?

Oh, sure. Everyone knows about winter-weight oil, about checking your tires and replacing your windshield wipers; but have you considered how well appointed your trunk is?

A pile of flannels, the snowmobile boots, the sensible hat with the ear flaps? Sure. Who doesn’t have those things?

And I’m sure we all grew up with the idea that a lighted candle in an old coffee can is sufficient to throw a little heat in your average four-door, so you’ve got that old Folgers can back there as well.

Jumper cables, rope, a battery-operated radio, these are all desirable items; and if they aren’t in your car, then I’m sure you’re in the process of pulling it all together.

You just look like the type to me.

But I’m concerned that you’ve not considered the finer points of enforced car squatting.

Have you considered the “Go for Help! I’ve Run Out of Cigarettes!” sign you’re going to need? Because if your car gets stuck in the ditch during a blizzard, you are definitely running out of cigarettes.

And lipstick. You’re going to need lipstick. Once that candle in the coffee can gutters out, you’re going to start to turn blue. Not many people can carry off that look.

Speaking of which, you might wish you had a harmonica with you. When People magazine gets a hold of your I-was-trapped-in-a-car-during-a–blizzard story, you’re going to regret not having worked out the specifics of that blues song you were humming.

Oh, and that reminds me. At some point you are going to wish that you had packed a pint or two of schnapps in your car. Schnapps is a wonderful and warming thing – no matter how false that sense of warmth is – but I would advise against this, as it leads to actually drinking it, which in turn may lead to over-the-top expressions of gratitude when the good-looking tow truck guy pulls you out of the ditch later.

And that’s awkward.

And winter isn’t about being awkward.

It’s about being prepared to be stranded somewhere.

Next Thing You Know, Your Toes are Black

2011-12-10T09:15:00.000-08:00

The temperature at the bus stop yesterday morning was 7 degrees Fahrenheit (-10 Celsius).

It is, by the way, shortly after declaring the temperature that your average Minnesotan is required to tell you the incredibly important facts they have gleaned over a lifetime, all of which are based on truth and specifically embellished for gruesome-ness.

Let me get you started, should you find yourself unable to come to Minneapolis this winter.

Ahem.

Did you know that at this temperature skin freezes? First the skin hurts, then it goes solid white and hard, then it stops hurting, and then it turns black and falls off. I knew a guy once, lost two toes snowmobiling. True story.

Did you know that 75% of heat is lost through the head? Would you believe 80%?

Did you know that there are stories of the settlers forced to kill, split, and climb inside an ox to stay alive when hit by a blizzard while coming back from town? Could you imagine being inside an ox during a snow storm? Could you imagine it at any other time?

My father told me, when I was 10, that it wasn’t until he was in his late 20s that he truly understood just how debilitating the cold was. A salesman for a cigarette manufacturer, he often traveled to the Dakotas; and while both Dakotas are known for their unreasonably cold and windy winters, he was in North Dakota when he first truly understood Winter's desire to kill him.

“I’ve got some promotional items with me. Cardboard signs, free lighters, drink coasters, that sort of thing. So I run out to the car for them.”

Dad takes a drag of his cigarette, looks off into the distance and shudders slightly, the cold still fresh in his mind.

“You ever been in a fifty-below windchill, Patty?”

My father, unable to recall the ages of his children (“What are you now, 16?” he asked me in fourth grade) is also unable to recall their names and often calls me by his sister's, something he does to this day.

“No, Dad. I don’t think I have.”

“It’ll kill you.” He takes another hit off his cigarette. “See, the thing is that it hurts. It hurts really bad. And then suddenly, it doesn’t. Suddenly, you’re getting warm again. Isn’t that nice?” He pounds the table with the palm of his left hand. “But no! You’re not warm! You’re freezing to death.”

He shakes his head. “As long as you’re in pain, you’re okay. The minute you start getting warm and sleepy and the pain is gone, you’re done for.”

He stares out the window. “Don’t ever fall asleep in the snow. I don’t care how tired you are. You ever fall asleep in the snow, you’ll never wake up.”

He takes another hit of his cigarette. “But that didn’t happen that time in North Dakota.”

I waited. Dad likes to take his time with a story.

“Nope. That’s not how it happened at all.”

Oh. Now I see. “So what did happen, Dad?”

“I put my coat on, right? Grab the keys to the car. I figure, hey, I’ll be in and out, no need for gloves. I’m out there less than two seconds, it seems, when I am completely chilled. Fifty degrees below zero! Think about it, Pearl!”

I think about it. I nod solemnly.

“So I’m holding the keys,” he holds his hand out, shows me how he’s holding the keys, “and I’m back at the trunk, and I drop them. Huh. I pick them up. I drop them again! I bend over, I pull them out of the snow – and I drop them again! And I can feel my fingers slowing down! My fingers won’t hold the keys! I can't get in the car! And I think to myself, man, this is how people die. First it’s the fingers, then it’s the toes, pretty soon you’re stumbling in circles, walking on what feels like someone else’s feet.”

“So what happened, Dad?”

“What happened?” He stands, walks to the fridge and gets himself a beer. “I died! I froze in the snow!”

My face betrays my shock and my dad laughs. “I didn’t die,” he says quickly. He pops the top off his beer.

He pauses, takes a drink of his beer.

“Yep,” he says. “I didn't die that time. But that’s how it happens, I'll bet.”

The Beverage-y Hillbillies: Wherein I Tattle

2011-12-09T07:00:00.000-08:00

The weekend loometh, my friends. Once again, we stand on the cusp of the weekend, a precarious and potentially sharp-edged place. Will I eat more Christmas cookies than I share? Will I finally vacuum the living room?

And what about Naomi?

Fear not! For as is well known in these parts, i.e., this particular blog, my iPod, set on “shuffle” and played during my morning’s commute, has prophetic qualities.

The iPod sees all, tells some.

Shhhh. Let’s listen.

Miles Behind by Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood
Tighten Up by The Bamboos
One Step Beyond by Madness
Ramble On by Led Zeppelin
Thank You (Falettinme be Mice Elf Agin) by Sly and the Family Stone
Space Truckin’ by Deep Purple
Rudie Can’t Fail by The Clash

And there you have it. Not the answers I was looking for, but the iPod, she moves in mysterious ways. My personal take on it? Stick to your to-do list, visit at least one friend, and for cryin’ out loud, look at all you have! Really, we’re doing quite well…

Let’s see now. We’ve been amusing ourselves the last five weeks or so with the tales of the Beverage-y Hillbillies, a motley group of State-assisted renters down the block whose brief foray into my and my neighbors’ lives has been commemorated in both verse and song (witness the ever-popular fireside sing-along known locally as “Them Local Folk-als Appear to be Yokels, or Square-Headed Terry’s Got Yer Maw”).

Today’s tale of deception and droopy pants?

I’m Telling On You!

When we first met the Beverage-y Hillbillies (not their real name), they had just moved in, a collection of mattresses and over-sized TVs, a family who quickly set up a ping-pong table on the sidewalk and a makeshift bar (AKA a “cooler”) in the front yard.

From there, we learned of the eldest son’s entrepreneurial spirit, his willingness to ask for your help and/or your cash,his incursion into the egg-hurling sports, and his venture into the high-stakes world of gas-station-parking-lot drug distribution.

Boris, as we came to refer to him, had become the turd in the Northeast Minneapolis punchbowl.

And I’d had enough.

There are websites, if you know where to look, that will tell you who owns rental property. In short order, I’d found his landlords.

Dear Mr. Tranh and Associates,

It may come as some surprise to you to find that the people you have rented to at 1136 Garfield have become a topic of heated discussion in the neighborhood.

The new sod you put in at the beginning of the summer? A memory. It is now dirt, the only remaining grass being under the couch that has been in the front yard since June.

The new cement steps leading up to the porch? If we can judge by the evidence before us, it appears a 30-gallon keg was dropped on it, taking out a good-sized chunk. The keg’s dropping, however, does not appear to have affected the keg itself, which is still laying in the front yard. Next to the couch.

I recall you adding a new screen door to the front of the house in May. While the hinges are still there, the door itself is not. Makes you wonder what happened to it.

The neighborhood has been inundated with requests from your tenants for money, rides to the store, and inquiries regarding our desire to “score some green”. I am sure that this is not what Tranh and Associates had intended when this property was rented out, but that is what you’ve got.

This is a good neighborhood. I would hate to have to go door-to-door to let my neighbors know your name and address, as I am sure that your peace of mind is as important to you as it is to us.

Please contact me at the number listed below as soon as you can. I believe we can work through this amicably.

Hugs and Kisses,

Pearl

I received a call from Mr. Tranh less than a week later, who promptly fired his “rental management company” and started eviction proceedings.

I love a man of action.

And I can’t wait to see the move-out party.

The Apres-Bar Will Be Held In the Alley

2011-12-08T07:00:00.000-08:00

Liza Bean Bitey (of the Minneapolis Biteys) turns five next Tuesday; and as you can imagine, preparations are underway. The National Guard has been alerted, anything of value has been wrapped up and stored in the basement in boxes marked “Taxes: 1990-1999”, and the catnip grown in and around Hennepin County has been bagged and marked at inflated prices.

Inexplicably, the Office of Homeland Security insists that the threat level remains at “orange”.

Liza Bean is turning five.

You remember Liza Bean Bitey, don’t you?

Liza Bean Bitey (of the Minneapolis Biteys) is a symmetrically striped, tiny-pawed catcher of mice and demander of cream, a cat with a sharp tongue and a penchant for umbrella-ed drinks.

Liza Bean Bitey (of the Minneapolis Biteys) is a cat who once returned my car with a typewritten manuscript in the trunk purporting to be a collaboration between her and Hunter S. Thompson. When I pointed out to her that Hunter S. Thompson died the year she was born, she simply raised one eyebrow and said, “Did he, now?”

That Liza Bean Bitey.

Two years ago I took her out for sushi for her birthday, a debacle still fresh in my mind, particularly since I cannot walk past any of the local police without them making clawing motions at me while chuckling the words “Meow! Meow!”

Philistines.

Frankly, the guy Liza attacked had it coming – after all, any lout suggesting that Liza Bean “go back to where she came from” deserves the restaurant-clearing brawl that he gets; and while her bail money – the money I was saving for a flat-screen TV, dagnab it! – was considerable and we still cannot show our faces at the Origami, I carry the memories fondly.

Last year’s birthday celebration was a quiet affair: a houseful of her friends over for “paw” food (trays of puree of mouse on Ritz crackers, bird bits on toast points, gin and tonics). The party eventually moved to the roof and Squeak Toy played until the police were called, but no charges were filed; and as I had enjoyed the drinks as much as anyone else and had agreed to not write about it, the details have moved into the fuzzy-and-disputable category.

Which brings us to this year’s celebration.

A pub crawl – or, perhaps more accurately, a pub slink.

The plan? She and her friends - including members of her last musical endeavor, A Band of Biteys, now that she and the drummer have settled their legal dispute - will leave the house Saturday night at 8:00. With a dozen bars in easy slinking distance, they will go to one after another, waiting for that moment when the door opens whereupon they will shoot in, four and five at a time, winding 'round ankles, dodging the good citizens of Northeast Minneapolis and pushing their fuzzy bellies up against the bar.

Ad hoc neighborhood watches are being formed as we speak.

If last year’s celebration is any yardstick for this year’s, I will awaken early to dozens of cats strewn about, on couches, atop the fridge, in the tub. I'll make scrambled eggs and ham and buttered toast. Coffee will be made and aspirin offered; and despite my protestations, I will find ten-dollar bills attached to handwritten thank-you notes tucked throughout the house after they leave.

Cats.

They know how to party.

When a Cat Leaves You a Present, Decline

2011-12-07T07:00:00.000-08:00

This week? I'll be working on my new book.

While I do, Monday through Thursday will be dedicated to Liza Bean Bitey (of the Minneapolis Biteys) and Dolly Gee Squeakers, formerly of the Humane Society Squeakers. Friday, of course, will be the continuation and second-to-the-last installment in our serialization regarding one-time neighbors, the Beverage-y Hillbillies.

As I expected it would, yesterday’s post about Liza Bean Bitey (of the Minneapolis Biteys) caught not only her eye but the eye of our little self-grooming hot-water bottle of a cat, Dolly Gee Squeakers (formerly of the Humane Society Squeakers).

Dolly Gee, aka, Here Kitty Kitty, aka Holy Crap Grab the Door Here Comes the Cat! came to us via the Humane Society. She is what appears to be a long-haired Siamese of some sort, a beautiful animal with stunningly crossed eyes.

“We think she’s about a year old,” said the woman at the Humane Society. “Of course, her eyes are a bit crossed, and she can’t seem to jump beyond, well, beyond standing on all four feet. And she does appear to have some sort of periodontal disease…” The woman paused. “She was dropped off in our night deposit box just two days ago, you know.”

As an aside, did you know you could do that? Drop an animal off via a night deposit box?

And four teeth? Well, what’s a little gingivitis amongst us beauties, eh? Perhaps she’ll grow some new ones. What do I know?

At any rate, she was just too beautiful, we thought, too friendly, too perfectly suited, size-wise. She’ll be a lovely companion to Ms. Liza Bean Bitey (of the Minneapolis Biteys).

And that was our theory.

In reality the two detected deep flaws in each other immediately. Words were exchanged, claws exposed. Dolly lobbed the first insult, derisively labeling Liza Bean an “indoor feeeee-line”. Liza Bean retorted by describing Dolly in such detail and with such vehemence that all I can recall are the words “polyester-pantsuited alley roamer”.

Liza Bean responded to the new arrival by perching herself atop Willie’s head for the next six weeks.

Dolly Gee responded by eating enough to triple her size in half that time.

How she managed to do that with four teeth, I have no idea.

And now, of course, Dolly Gee has seen yesterday’s post, knows that Liza Bean and I went out for a couple of drinks.

Look. I’d have taken her, but if you think Liza Bean can’t hold her liquor, you should see Dolly. Dolly’s got the morals of, well, a cat; and after a couple beers she’s up on tables, dancing suggestively, eventually disappearing with some Tom only to re-appear in the morning, looking sheepish and then drinking all the Fresca in the house as she nurses her hangover.

It’s embarrassing.

Liza Bean is furious with me.

“Running out of material?” she purrs viciously. “Needing to write about lunch with friends now, are you?” She narrows her bright green eyes at me. “Do you know what I deal with, every day, while you’re out, doing God knows what…”

“I hardly think that going to work constitutes God knows –“

Liza Bean is not to be dissuaded. “It’s horrible. Horrible. She sits there in those Daisy Duke shorts, humming entire Disney soundtracks – do you know she uses your eyeliner? Well she does. I have other places to go, you know. I don’t have to stay here.”

She lights a Virginia Slims – in the house! – and exhales toward the window.

I promise her I will take care of it, that I’ll find a discreet way to talk to Dolly Gee Squeakers (of the Humane Society Squeakers) about the sanctity of a peaceful home life.

“Well see that you do,” Liza Bean demurrs.

There is a brief pause.

“Frankly,” she says – and is that contriteness I hear in her voice? – “I didn’t think this conversation would go as well as it has. Hmm.” She pauses, visibly runs several thoughts through her head before dismissing them all.

She shrugs, takes a drag off her cigarette, then grinds it into the ashtray. She blows a smoke ring toward the window. “You might want to check the inside of your shoes before you go running out the door tonight.”

I cock my head at her in anticipation.

She shrugs again. “I left a little something in one of them for you.”

“Not the new ones!”

She closes her eyes, dismissing me. “The same.”

And with that, Liza Bean Bitey (of the Minneapolis Biteys) jumps down and trots over to the couch, where she curls up into a ball and falls asleep.

You Can Take the Cat with You, But You Probably Shouldn't

2011-12-06T07:00:00.002-08:00

I Have No Idea What That Cat's Up To...

2011-12-05T07:35:00.000-08:00

I'm Gonna Want Input on the Wanted Posters

2011-12-04T09:23:00.000-08:00

A re-post, as I recover from everything I did yesterday.

I went to the Laundromat with Mary Monday.

It had been a number of years since I’d had to use one, so she felt the need to prepare me.

Mary cast a critical eye at my clothing. “You may be overdressed.”

“Overdressed?”

“Well, for one thing, you’re wearing pants.”

“I wear pants a lot.”

“Yeah,” she says. “But there aren’t any stains on them. You appear to be putting on airs.”

I start to laugh.

“I’m serious! We need to maybe find you something with an elastic waistband and a cigarette burn in the crotch.”

“Hey, that reminds me," I say. "What are you doing for New Year’s?”

“Don’t try to butter me up," she laughs. "And you’re not wearing jewelry, are you??”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “I think you’re exaggerating.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But maybe not.”

A trip to the Laundromat begins with a single step, followed by hundreds of other steps. Seven loads of clothes were piled into the back of my car, detergent, hangers. Accommodations were made to ensure the availability of copious amounts of quarters.

“I just feel like I should warn you. This place is always weird.”

I start the car, put on my seatbelt, insist that Mary put hers on as well. “What kind of weird?”

“Well, a couple times ago I ran into Vince Neil.”

“Vince Neil, singer-for-Motley-Crue Vince Neil?”

“Yup. Even went up to him and told him that he looked just like Vince Neil. You know what he said? He said “Well at least I don’t look like that bastard Sammy Hagar. I hate that SOB.”

The drive to the Laundromat took just minutes. Located in a mostly-abandoned strip mall built in the 60s, it‘s the only place still doing business.

I get out of the car and walk around to let Mary out of the passenger side. My car, long known for its peculiarities, its front end held together with shoe laces and shims, no longer opens from the inside on the passenger side. Mary sits patiently while I come around and let her out. “Thank you so much,” she murmurs.

We unload the car, we get inside. We sort lights, darks, and Jon’s ridiculously greasy work duds. Mary has identified her favorite washers (“the proven machines”) and we are nearing the end of our stay at the Laundromat when He comes in.

But it’s not Vince Neil.

He is small, wiry, dirty. His matted hair juts out from under a dark blue stocking cap. There are crumbs in his beard. “Aaaaaaaauuuuuuuccccccccccccchhhhhhh.” He has cleared his throat, as he will continue to do. Our eyes meet. They are bright blue. He bares his teeth at me. “Aaaauccgheghhhh. Garbin flapping rightwing carport.”

He sets his hamper down, pulls out bedding, stuffs it into a machine. “Aaaucccghegh.” He pulls a bank bag from the bottom of his hamper. He mumbles rapidly. Coins clink audibly against each other as he finds the proper number of quarters, pumps 12 of them into the high-capacity washer.

Mary walks past me. “I had nothing to do with this,” she hisses.

The throat-clearing/gargling sounds have taken on a querulous tone. His head and shoulders disappear as he digs through the hamper.

“Aaagheccccccchh. Farflung wife! Dargun dadgum reactionary pixie stix.” The washer with his bedding in it is agitating as he leaves.

I look at Mary.

“He lives over there,” she is pointing at the large house kitty-corner from the Laundromat. “I think it’s a boarding house.”

“He left his change,” I say. I pick up the bag. There’s probably 40 quarters in it.

“We’ll run it over to him if he doesn’t come back by the time we leave,” Mary says.

Twenty minutes later, he is back. He is holding another blanket and he is angry.

Mary looks at me and I nod. “Are you missing your quarters?” Mary asks him. “Do you know you left your quarters here?”

“Aaaghcheggggggh! Farbin flippen crock bottom! Grackle copper! Stealin! Stealin!”

“No,” I say. “We didn’t steal them. You left them here.”

“Aagheeeech! Robbed! Obbin freabin robbed!”

“No,” Mary says. “Really. We wouldn’t take your money! It’s all still here, see?”

Nothing we could say was good enough to make him believe we had not tried to steal from him, despite the fact that his bag of quarters was right where he left it.

We left ten minutes later, the backseat of my car loaded with freshly laundered, freshly folded clothing.

He watched us as we drove away.

The Laundromat: Here we thought it might be a weird experience for us.

Turns out that it was weird for everyone.

Would You Believe I Have a Whole Section of my Blog Devoted to “Pants”?

2011-12-03T07:00:00.000-08:00

It’s a flurry of excitement, here at Casa de Pearl, as I ready myself for another foray into black-pantsed-and-white-shirted encounters of the catering kind. My shirt has been starched into crisp yet bland submission; my practical shoes have been located; my favorite underwear, a trusted pair with a strict no-ride policy, have been set aside.

And my black pants are ready.

Funny thing about those black pants, though: they’re actually Mary’s. We’ve decided, in that quirky, kinda endearing but kinda weird way that women have, that I look better in her pants and she looks better in mine.

There’s a joke in there somewhere, but we’ll let it ride for a bit.

I don’t think men trade pants. Then again, I’m not sure.

I text T. “Have you ever traded pants with a friend?”

“Why,” he writes. “What have you heard?”

So that’s probably the answer right there.

Serving jobs are a fertile land of stress, hustle, and humor. It is a world of shouted jokes, often in Spanish; of carefully balanced plates and mysteriously crusted and rejected forks. There will be glasses to fill with ice and water, place settings to be set, napkins to be napped. I don’t want to get too detailed here – it’s all very technical – but suffice it to say that at the end of the night, I will be several inches shorter and several twenties richer.

Hey. Who has more fun than me?

The Beverage-Y Hillbillies: Wherein the Square-Headed One Solidifies his Role as Neighborhood Cretin

2011-12-02T07:00:00.000-08:00

Ladies and gentlemen, cats and kittens, welcome to Friday, the day on which we ask ourselves, Why didn’t I get an education and ensure myself a better-paying job?

The answer, my friend, is that I don’t know. Everyone tried to talk to you about it, but you know how you are.

You didn’t listen.

But it’s not too late. The future is still before us. And now, through my steadfast and possibly erroneous belief in the oracle-y powers of my iPod, played on the Friday morning commute and carefully scrutinized, you, too, can predict your immediate future.

Aw, come on! Play along!

Grace by Jeff Buckley
Have a Little Faith in Me by The BellRays
Two-Timing Touch and Broken Bones by The Hives
Crying by TV on the Radio
Wolf Like Me by TV on the Radio
Right Here Right Now by Jesus Jones
Mister Love by The Toadies

Interesting. The presence of the elusive double-billing is curious, but we don’t question the ways of the iPod, we merely take heed. This weekend? Continued angst.

And snow.

And as we’ve done every Friday for oh, a while now, we return to our current diversion, The Beverage-y Hillbillies.

You remember them, yes? The family of lanky-framed, cranial-ridged miscreants that moved in just four houses down?

They’ve combined long-distance running with the five-fingered discount.

They’ve offered to relieve me of any spare change, which apparently is now in the five-dollar range. Unless you don't have five? Because three would work, too.

They’ve shown us how to break eggs and still not make an omelet.

This week’s installment?

The Hillbillies Turn to Entrepreneur – Entrepra – Entrepreunuri – Owning Their Own Business!

When last we saw Boris, the Number One Son of a family of square-headed, pop-eyed sons, he was enjoying his role as Neighborhood Vandal from the hood of a neighbor’s car.

Boris, Boris, Boris. How will I miss you if you won’t go away?

The next time I saw him, a week later, I was approaching the little gas station/purveyors of deep-fried foods and horribly over-priced “convenience” items at the end of our block. And while it is convenient to be able to buy, say, a burrito, at 11:00 at night within walking distance, I don’t recommend it. On top of said burrito often being, shall we say, past its prime, the smell is such that it will make its home in your pores and cause passersby to sniff the air nervously when you go by.

So I was about to go into our little store for a burrito – no! wait! Fresca – when who do I come across but Boris.

“Psst.” Boris appears to be leaking air from the side of his mouth.

“Me?”

“You wanna buy some green?” Boris’s pop-eyes scan the parking lot, spin clockwise, then counter clockwise, and finally settle on my chest.

I frown. “Some what?”

He sneers and goes back to scrutinizing the parking lot. “Yeah.” He grins, an unpleasant expression, and suddenly I can see what he will look like as a much older man. “You wouldn’t, would ya?”

It hits me, what he’s selling. “Green”? Is that what we’re calling it these days? I don’t know what bothers me more, the fact that he’s selling pot in front of my little neighborhood store or that he thinks I don’t know what he’s talking about.

Kids.

I push past him.

“What he doing, that boy?” The clerk is speaking to me, staring out the glass door at Boris.

“He’s selling pot.”

The clerk laughs, a mirthless bark, and says something under his breath in a language for which I have no reference point. He reaches into his pocket, opens his cell phone.

“I call my cousin. He is detective. Police. I am seek of that boy.”

And me? I’m getting sick of that boy, too.

And Now, A Brief Word on the Drink-Acknowledged Agreement

2011-12-01T07:00:00.000-08:00

I spend a lot of time thinking about social norms, about the fact that the expected behavior in one place is considered unacceptable in another.

Consider the act of taking your shoes off when you enter someone’s home, for example. When I was young, this was done at the front door of the trailer automatically, lest you raise the hackles of my mother, who just finished vacuuming/raking the shag. When I did it at the neighbor’s trailer, however, I was ridiculed for being, and I quote, “La-di-dah”.

After that, they called me “Princess”.

Human behavior fascinates me. While I may be scornful of the folks, say, at the Famous Dave’s in Roseville, out for lunch on Saturday, hair matted and in what was clearly their pajamas, their behavior serves me well: not only do I get to feel good about the fact that this will not happen to me in my lifetime (insert judgmentally shaking head here) but I get to make up little stories about why they couldn’t brush their hair (the directions on the tick-removal shampoo suggested that they not) or get dressed (plans to eat a whole pie in the parking lot following lunch, perhaps, and a quick nap in the back of the van).

But there is one thing I’ve noticed recently, something that tears at the fabric of human commonalities, something that must be nipped in the bud immediately.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not, but I enjoy a beer now and then. This is something I do while out with friends, a social thing. I don’t care to drink by myself; you’ll never stop in and find me having a beer while watching TV or weeding my garden; but if you’re going up to The Spring later, I’ll have three, thank you very much.

Which brings me to a most important point.

If you’re out, sitting with friends and acquaintances, and someone raises their beer and you raise yours as well, clinking the glasses in recognition that yes, we are in wild agreement, you and I, then the next step to this social dance is the drinking of the contents of said glasses.

You wouldn’t think I’d have to say that, would you? And yet I am surprised, every time it happens, by the number of people who will clink but then do not drink.

How can you clink and then set your drink down?

If you do not drink, following the clink, you have made a mockery of the system; and without the system, we have chaos.

Without the system of clink, then drink, how will we know whether you truly agree that so-and-so is a jolly good fellow or if you are just going through the motions in the hopes that my own repeated and eventually drunken agreement will allow you to, say, swipe onion rings from me later?

You see? It all falls apart.

People, we need a system.

Hooray! Xmas is Coming! or, And Now, A Word from the Curmudgeon

2011-11-30T07:00:00.000-08:00

Every year I am the recipient of forwarded e-mail chains from people who believe that we are on a slippery slope to somewhere unpleasant, in danger of losing our national identity, and vulnerable to communism through the replacing of the words “Merry Christmas” with the words “Happy Holidays”.

Me? I try not to get involved. Go ahead. Wish me something pleasant! I will wish you the same. My Jewish friends wish me a Merry Christmas, and I wish them a Happy Hanukah. And when there’s a crowd, a loud and heartfelt “Happy Holidays!” blankets the whole group in sincere bonhomie.

Unless you want to fight about it, wherein a general “up yours, heathen” is always popular.

I’m thinking, though, that if everyone wants to get worked up – and I’ve nothing against a good lather! – I suggest we contact the makers of the Toddler ABC program for iPad, whose “A is for Apple, B is for Ball” schtick includes the brow-furrowing “X is for Xmas”.

I kid you not.

X is for Xmas?! Well, why not? Don’t you remember the little baby X born in the manger?

X is for Xmas. Hmm. I would’ve much preferred “X is for Peds Xing”, but no one asked me.

So maybe there is a group of people trying to change not only the meaning of the season but our words and how they come about.

It’s not the guy in the red suit at the Salvation Army kettle hollering “Happy Holidays everyone!”, it’s the makers of “Toddler ABC” who see nothing wrong in using a written shortcut as a real word.

I saw an advertisement for “cubeicles” yesterday. Now, I’ve worked in a cubicle – which, from the picture, is what they were talking about, so why the misspelling?

Our long-distance carriers want us to ask our friends “Where you at?” clearly leaving us vulnerable around the not-ending-a-sentence-with-a-preposition thing. Why do they want us to look bad?

And now we are legitimizing the word “Xmas”.

I think we’ve all come to the same conclusion here, haven’t we?

Marketing is trying to kill us. Better for them that the hand holding the wallet be un-encumbered with the ability to communicate.

Why talk when you can spend?

Let’s all pledge to each other: this coming year, we will look up a word in the dictionary. We will use that word, we will love it, we will take it out, we will introduce it to our friends. We will learn the words of our friends, find how they mesh with our own, find the subtle meanings within the meanings and marvel at how the nuance of a word can change intent.

There is nothing wrong with mastering a language.

This message brought to you by the people who believe that words mean things.

One Thing I Know for Sure: The Kitties Must be Treated Equally

2011-11-29T07:00:00.000-08:00

I found her perched at the top of the Christmas tree.

“I thought we discussed this last year,” I say.

Liza Bean Bitey, of the Minneapolis Biteys, grins. “One can see so much more from atop something, don’t you agree?”

I pull off my gloves, my hat, my coat, my scarf, and my boots, but I leave my leg warmers on. No need to be hasty.

“I’m sorry,” I say, “but I was ignoring you. What did you say?”

“First,” she says, “shall we get the afternoon treat out of the way?” She leaps out of the tree, springboarding from my shoulder down to the couch and then down to the hardwood floor, where the sound of her soft, tiny paws fade into the distance as she trots to the kitchen.

Liza Bean Bitey gets a third of a can of cat food every day upon my return from work, and there’s no use arguing about it. She’s become quite fixated on this; and previous attempts to postpone it until, say, after one gets the mail have been met with raucous, yowling disapproval.

The kitty will not be denied.

A third of a can of Mariner’s Choice later, and there’s a knock on the door.

It’s not unusual for me to ignore a knock at the door. My modus operandi, then, is to walk into the second-floor porch and wait for the person to come out through the first-floor porch. If I know them, I will call out and run down to open the door.

If I don’t know them, they are free to move along and take their literature regarding corrective shirts for the chronically stooped with them.

“Who could that be…” I mutter, wandering toward the porch door.

Behind me, there is the small and unmistakeable sound of a cat clearing her throat.

I turn around, pupils expanding, the icy hand of inevitability crawling up my spine.

“That bit about an extra treat for Dolly last night,” she began.

I shake my head, and it just keeps shaking. “No,” I whisper.

“Now that wasn’t very nice, was it?”

“No,” I whisper, head continuing its dance of denial.

“We all suffer when you practice, don’t we? Not just Dolly?”

My mouth drops open.

There is another knock at the door.

I look toward the door, look back to Liza Bean. “Who is it?”

She yawns elaborately, a show of tiny, razor-like teeth. Raising her right paw, she flexes and unflexes her claws a number of times, gazes into its wee palm, revels in how small and deadly she is.

“It’s Ted.”

The blood runs out of my head, pools at my feet, and threatens to stay there. Ted is a neighbor, a man with notoriously bad breath and permanent spittle at the corners of his mouth.

“Why?”

“Ohhh,” she drawls. “He stopped last night while you were practicing. You didn’t answer the door, of course, so I called down to him from the porch. He wanted to know if we had a snow-removal service, but now he’s under the impression that you’re interested in video games. Don't know where he would've gotten that idea... Anyway, Call of Duty, was that it? I told him to come back today.”

I walk slowly toward the steps to the front door. At the landing, I can see Ted on the porch. One arm is holding his laptop, the other is holding a pizza box.

Ted really likes explaining stuff.

I look back up the steps, where Liza Bean Bitey, of the Minneapolis Biteys, sits.

She is smiling. “You really can see a lot from where I’m sitting,” she says.

Everyone’s a Critic, or Would Bribery Help?

2011-11-28T07:00:00.000-08:00

The kitties tire of my clarinet.

Liza Bean Bitey, of the Minneapolis Biteys, is particularly tired and has expressed this both through her actions and verbally.

“You practice your violin,” I point out.

“But it’s electric,” she says, delicately. “You see, I can turn it down, whereas…” She trails off.

I lick my reed thoughtfully. I know she’s right, but –

I blow a high C. The upper register, especially, is of concern to her.

“What’s this all about?” she says. She squints at me, cocks her head to one side. “Is it because of the earrings?”

Liza Bean had spent part of the previous evening trying to bite the earrings off my head. We’d had words about it around 3:00 a.m., ending with me dropping her off the side of the bed and insinuating that a night on the porch would do her attitude and her coat some good.

“It’s not about anything,” I say. “I take lessons now. I have to practice, every single day.”

She licks a paw, delicately winds it round and round an ear. Clearly, Liza Bean does not know musical genius when she hears it. “By the way," she says casually, "Have you seen Dolly lately?”

I frown. Dolly Gee Squeakers, a long-haired, mysteriously badger-shaped Siamese mix with a passion for string and the need to eat every 20 minutes, is not in her customary position: flat on her back in the middle of the room, limbs akimbo.

“She’s probably at her dish,” I offer.

Liza Bean smiles enigmatically. “One wonders.”

“Dolly! Heeeeeeeeere kitty kitty kitty kitty!”

Dolly mrrrrows from the other room, the quizzical, cat-equivalent of “Hmmm?”

“Come in here, please.”

“Mrrrrow?”

I set the clarinet down. “It’s okay, Dolly. Come on in.”

Dolly Gee Squeakers, still sticking to her three-cigarettes a day maximum, slinks into the room, looking as if she could use a drag or two. “You – uh, you done?”

Poor Dolly. “Practicing?” I say.

She nods. Dolly was teased mercilessly as a kitten for the lisp she still has. Because of this, she speaks as little as possible.

“No, Dolly.” Her face falls. “I’m sorry, Dolly, but I have to practice. Every day.”

Sitting primly, Dolly stares down at her front paws.

“I love to play, Dolly, just like there are things that you love to do. What if I told you you couldn’t drag that piece of string around? How would you feel?”

Liza Bean chuckles. “But the sound of that piece of string being dragged around doesn’t make the hair on one’s neck –“

I jerk my head sharply towards her, imparting a look that speaks of a kitty-treat free evening. The tiny, symmetrically striped cat draws one small paw across her lips in an I’m-zipped display of feline cuteness.

Dolly lifts her head slightly crossed blue eyes on mine. She takes a deep breath, visibly steeling herself. “We do what we are compelled to do,” she whispers.

I smile. “There’s an extra treat in it for you, you know.”

Dolly brightens. I reach over and scratch behind her ears.

“You’re a good kitty, you know that, Dolly?”

Dolly smiles and leans into me, purring. I reach into the treat drawer, near my music stand, and Dolly stands on her hind legs, watches my hands intently as I open the jar of Pounce.

"There you go, punkin," I say.

Dolly accepts the treat, chewing it thoughtfully. "Thankth," she says.

Treats make even the upper register better.

I Remember My Mom Saying They Couldn't Take Him Back to the Hospital...

2011-11-27T07:21:00.000-08:00

My last official purchase whilst still living at my parents’ house – and the mode by which I left it – was a 1968 Ford Falcon, an old car in great shape.

All it needed was speakers for its intriguing stereo system.

And when I refer to a stereo “system”, let us be clear that the “system” was a radio with a built-in cassette player.

I wasted no time in getting two used speakers at a garage sale.

For two dollars, you just knew they had to be good!

I ran the wires from the radio to the speakers in the back and fell asleep that night with dreams of how I would make this car really cool, maybe dropping the chassis, having my name etched into the glass on the driver’s side window, buying a metal clip with a big feather attached to it for a key chain and similar necessary and perfectly legal things.

When I awoke, however, and went out to drive my new car to my new job, I could not help but notice the number of things that had accumulated in my car overnight.

Sand. Lots of sand. A pair of swim fins. Several empty Budweiser beer cans. A man’s swim trunks. A woman’s bikini top but no bottom.

The mind. She boggles.

There was a note on the front seat from my brother. One year younger than I, he has been the figurative elbow in my ribs since they brought him home from the hospital. Attached to the note was a single dollar bill.

“Hey, Squirrel. Nice car. Ha ha. Nice stereo. You should get another set of used, blown speakers and double your sound quality! Ha ha. Here’s a dollar for you. Buy yourself some gas. Ha ha ha. Your loving brother, Kevin.”

My brother.

He's a funny guy.

Why Don't You Call -- Right Now?

2011-11-26T06:38:00.000-08:00

Oh, hi!

I’ve been waiting for you.

Be honest with me – did you ever think you’d find your soul-mate at a bar?

Probably not.

But on a 1-800 number? Oh, yes.

So why haven’t you called? I’ve been waiting for you, and so have all my drop-dead gorgeous friends, all luscious blondes, red-heads, and brunettes between the ages of 18 and 24. There’s just so much more to us than our beautiful faces, our firm, taut bodies, and our ability to recline seductively while talking on the phone.

What, you say? Why in the world would there be hot chicks on the phone, waiting for me to call?

Because, silly, we’re just like you. We’re lonely, we’re scantily clad, and we’re tired of the run-around at the bar, just like you! It gets so boring, being continually hit on, having men buy us drinks in the hopes of seeing us again, answering the same tired questions on what cup size we wear, what it would take, money-wise, to see us again, fielding questions about our boyfriends and whether or not they're armed.

It’s so tedious being beautiful and well built, don’t you think?

I can just tell that we’re going to get along.

So why haven’t you called?

I’m waiting.

The Boy Has His Demands

2011-11-25T07:43:00.000-08:00

The Boy, as I refer to my One and Only Son, thinks his rent money doesn’t go far enough. Given that he lives with me, I have to agree with him. It doesn’t.

For some reason, he believes, in that grinning way that the well-loved son has, that there should be perks beyond a roof, internet, and full access to the fridge.

“Mom,” he says the other day, “You forgot to fix my bed.”

Then he laughs and scratches my head, a common gesture in our home of thick-haired (and possibly thick-headed) folk.

It’s hard to keep your hands off your children, impossible for me to pass by him without pulling his hair gently, scratching him behind the ears, or putting a hand on his shoulder. He will lean his back against my hand with an imperious command: “Scratch.” I do, of course. Not only because he’s my boy and I love him, but because I appreciate the gleam in his eye when he says it: a request couched in a demand and wrapped in the knowledge that I would do it anyway, whether he asked for it or not.

I did it to myself.

I See A Little Silhouette of a Man...

2011-11-24T07:00:00.000-08:00

There are many things that constitute a yoga practice, and not all of them involve sweaty contortions.

Some of the things that constitute a yoga practice fall, as we say, off the mat.

Shall we consider Tuesday’s practice?

I don’t know if you are aware of this, but Minnesota can be a notoriously dry place. My hair, of course, having been certified a competent and reliable detector of humidity by the National Weather Service, warned me of this early Tuesday morning by flinging itself out in all directions in a crackling, static-charge display of wanton disrespect, screaming nonsense at passers-by: “Microwaveable meals are both quick and nutritious! Properly trained, your butt will expand to the size of the largest chair available!”

I had the warning. Yet I proceeded.

As a person whose train of thought enjoys spinning first this way, then that, yoga is what keeps me from hurling office chairs out of windows. Yoga is my sanctuary, a place of focused breathing and useful for getting as close to calm, pretty brain waves as possible.

It was with this in mind that I went to yoga, dropped two mats (one for me, one for Amy) only to return, 15 minutes later, to find that both mats had been moved and that another had been wedged between them.

These things happen in a crowded room.

But the mat between our mats left less than three inches on either side; and standing in the center of this mat, arms swinging wildly despite the 100-degree temperature of the room, was Jeff.

Have you met Jeff? He’s quite attractive in a Cesar Milan sort of way.

He also stands when others sit; tries to make eye contact, particularly when you are upside down; and smells like a cross between a hot wool blanket and, for some reason, salted sunflower seeds.

Frankly, I've smelled worse.

He is less than three inches from me. The walls are running wet with the tropics-imitating humidity of a room of 70 sweating people, and he’s trying to make eye contact.

And the groaning! Have I mentioned the groaning yet?

“Augh,” he moans as we hold plank position, our arms trembling, our monkey minds urging us to give up. “Auuuuuuuuuugh,” he groans.

“Ugh. Ugh. Ugh,” he grunts during boat pose.

We are in headstand when he starts to growl, and my mind starts to wail. “Ack! He’s three inches away and he’s growling! Sit down! Stop trying! Give up! It’s too hot! Why don’t you give up and concentrate on how agitated you are becoming?”

I do not, of course, listen to the chattering of my brain but close my eyes. My mind, against my will, forms a picture of a mostly-hairless biped throwing feces at my attempts to better myself.

I refuse to acknowledge my brain.

Due to the closeness of the mats, by the time class is over he has hit me twice with his arms, once with his feet, and has grunted his way – at least in my mind – through Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.

And so it goes.

My quest to defeat my monkey mind remains.

Local Turkey Seeks Hen for Long-Term Relationship, or Thanksgiving is not a Funny Holiday

2011-11-23T07:00:00.000-08:00

Are you, like me, a single bird tired of the barn scene?

Like me, do you want more out of life than rising at dawn and stuffing your gullet with corn? Do you seek ground cover with someone who can challenge you, intellectually? How about travel? Do you foresee going to Iowa someday?

Hi! My name is Tom. I have been pecking and scratching since spring and am now looking for someone with whom I can share my life.

Could you be that special bird?

Although I currently work in a farming community, I am not opposed to meeting someone from the city. And while my accommodations at the moment are of a communal/roommate-living type arrangement, I’ve got my eye on several spots in the western suburbs for when the time comes to find a place of my own.

Physically, I’m pretty big for my age. The meals provided lately have been pretty heavy on the starches but I have plans for Bikram Yoga and a kickboxing class in the weeks before Christmas.

My pet peeves include jellied cranberries, birdshot, and dogs with a retrieving instinct. Hobbies include walking through the woods, bird watching, not-looking-up when it rains, and hot tubs.

But what about you?

Tell me about yourself. The ideal mate would be well-read and attractive. No artificial hormones, no alcoholics, and no chicks, please.

I’m booked ‘til next week but should have lots of time on my wings afterwards.

Call me!

Why Is There a Saint Bernard in the Kitchen?

2011-11-22T07:00:00.000-08:00

It’s not a big fridge. You wouldn’t, for example, walk into my kitchen and say, “Well, for cryin’ out loud, check out the fridge that Pearl’s got!”

You could, but it would be inaccurate.

It’s a standard fridge, a friendly fridge. There is some unbaked cookie dough lurking in the freezer, whispering vague and imprecise promises of fat-free indulgence. There is a tremendous pot of spaghetti sauce and home-made meatballs made yesterday, sure to be perfectly aged by the time I get home. And there, on the upper shelf, the shelf that requires that I stand on my toes, behind the sour cream and the pickles and that port wine cheese spread, is a bowl.

A most unsavory bowl.

My mother would, perhaps, take this opportunity to give me that beating she claims she should’ve given me in my formative years, one possibly involving a shot of water from the hose at the kitchen sink and a Minnesota State Fair yardstick. She wouldn’t be far off the mark here, frankly, because even I, a bucket-o-bleach-water-and scrub-brush hardened cleaner of other people’s homes was taken aback.

Because at the back of the fridge?

A little bowl of fuzz.

Blue and white fuzz, to be precise, just enough to cover the bottom of a carefully covered, smallish bowl.

What was it? We will never know.

Please bow your heads.

We’ve come here today in search of sustenance, of fare both sweet and salty, and to mourn the loss of whatever you figure might’ve been in that bowl.

It wasn’t much of a bowl, a small, humble bowl, really; but it did it was made to do. It held something. It held it securely, it held it with integrity, and, apparently, it held it for a good long time.

But what it held, that’s the mystery, because like many of us, it’s not the clothes we wear, it’s what’s inside those clothes that is interesting. You and I are careful to hide the blue and white fuzz of our lives, cautious in showing our rot to the world, but the little bowl did not have that option. Tucked behind the refrigerator pickles, behind the half-and-half and the pickled herring, the bowl waited, slowly going fuzzy with neglect.

The tautly stretched plastic wrap was never disturbed.

The bowl waited in vain.

Today, using that plastic wrap to scoop out the moldy, almost experimental contents of that bowl, now dropping said bowl into the hot, sudsy water of the kitchen sink, I am reminded of my brother, the man who once bit off one of my fingernails in an attempt to get a larger bite of my sandwich.

“Hey. You gonna eat that?”

Good-bye, fuzzy kitchen leftover. Whatever you were, I should’ve eaten you.

What Am I Thinking? Oh, Not Much...

2011-11-21T07:00:00.000-08:00

“The walk to the bus may have looked like any other, but Monday was the day that changed everything.”

I’ve been known to narrate my life. Not aloud, of course, because that would be unseemly. No use in frightening my fellow citizens.

Honestly, the commentary in my head is usually more entertaining than what’s going on around me.

I don’t limit my narrations to my life, though. I’m willing to narrate yours as well.

“Little did the woman pinching the tomatoes know, but the person next to her at the Farmer’s Market, the person inspecting the turnips, then the rutabagas, was her brother Frank, the man who had left for the Navy 15 years ago only to be struck by lightning and left wandering, witless all these years, in his pursuit of the perfect root vegetable.”

My lips don’t move when I do this, so it’s perfectly normal.

Now if my lips moved…

I sometimes see people’s lips moving. They’re walking down the street, fully engaged in something or other. Before Bluetooth and teeny-tiny headphones, this was more amusing than it is now. Like the 'rahr, rahr, rahr' of a dog with a mouthful of peanut butter, one could envision any monologue one liked. Now, however, rather than imagining someone reciting the “My-mother-was-right-and-I’m-leaving-you-you-cheap-SOB” speech as they push their grocery cart through the dairy section, the odds are actually much better that the words they are speaking into the world’s smallest phone are more along the lines of “I’ll be home soon! Do we need milk?”

Boring!

So I’m going to continue to create little fantasy lives around them, what they’re saying, where they’re going, why they’re meeting.

Oh, if only they knew how happy they make me, these lip-moving people, or how much I love them.

The Squat Bald Man in My Head

2011-11-20T07:00:00.000-08:00

Comments yesterday - too cool - requesting more info on the guy relegated to the further corners of my brain -- the corner, apparently, where one is free to ignore the No Smoking signs! -- more info on the guy fond of slogan tee-shirts and lighting one cigarette with the butt of another, has resulted in this post. Here it is. And don't forget. It's your fault.

The squat, bald man in my head has a louder, and sometimes opposite view of life than I do.

He’s the one cackling with glee when the young XL woman in the M pants struggles to lift her own body weight up the steps of the bus, the guy who looks me in the eye to make sure I notice her, the one who lifts a knuckle-y finger to point out a possible gravy stain on her chest.

He’s the guy who mutters questions under his breath related to the state of our country's educational system, just loud enough to hear but not loud enough to make out while standing behind the man with 14 items in a 10 Items or Less line at the grocery store. And sometimes he meets that guy’s eye, then shoots an imaginary weapon at his gallon of two percent, grinning.

He’s the lout yelling at the guy playing the flutophone and irritating the lunch crowds down on Nicollet. Trilling madly and playing with a flourish seen infrequently since Liberace's death, Flutophone Man's upturned hat is at his feet, implying that your change would be the reasonable response to the audio assault hurled in your direction. “Would you shut up?" he bawls at him. "For cryin’ out loud, you have no skills!”

All said in good fun, of course.

The squat, bald man is not a violent man – necessarily – but he wouldn’t mind watching.

And he likes me.

“Oh, oh, oh,” he says, sitting down on the couch, square elbow to my ribs. “When you run to the store, get me a pack of Marlboros.”

“I’m not running to the store.”

“Yeah, right, but when you do,” he says, lighting one cigarette with the glowing end of another, lips curling and uncurling around the words, “get me some smokes.”

“I thought I told you I don’t want you smoking in my head anymore.”

“You did.”

There is an uncomfortable moment of silence as we stare at each other.

“Whatever,” I say, turning away. “Just don’t blow it into my sinuses anymore. I hate that. Blow it out my ears.”

I can hear him smirking. He leans against me. “I’m gonna need the car Tuesday night.”

I sigh heavily, turn back. “OK. One, why does everyone think they can use my car; and Two, where the hell do you have to go on a Tuesday night?”

He lifts his chin, blows smoke toward the front of my head, catches himself, and turns toward an ear. “The less you know – pffffffffffff – the less you can tell.”

I don’t like this, but like the cat, the squat bald guy in my head has a way of returning the car with a full tank of gas, a sure way to my heart. I worked at a full-service gas station for half a year in my late teens and have a love/hate relationship with the pump.

“Fine,” I say. “But leave the seat the way you found it this time.”

The smirk leaves his face and he draws himself up in a show of false dignity. “A man’s posture is his own,” he says, indignantly.

He grins. “You allow me full adjustment rights on the front seat, and I won’t tell anyone you had three cigarettes Friday night on that freak-out you girls called an evening.”

I lean back on the couch, rub my eyes, press my fingers against them until they explode in a Byzantine disaster of black and red.

“Fine,” I say.

At least I'll get a full tank of gas out of the deal. Plus my cigarettes from the other night are still a secret.

And I Got THIS Scar in the Great Printer Jam of '08...

2011-11-19T07:00:00.000-08:00

Ping!

A pop-up appears on my computer screen. I sigh as I read it.

“There?” is all it says.

It’s a woman I work with, ostensibly a peer.

My mother once suggested that I not say anything about a person if I’ve nothing nice to contribute. In this particular case, I can tell you that this woman has a lovely laugh and also actively and enthusiastically nods any time her boss speaks.

But I can’t just leave it at that, can I?

The interactions between the two of us, while rare, are difficult. She does not process change well; and counterintuitive to what you’d expect, Acme Napkins and Grommets is a seething caldron of change. I try to be patient, but somewhere around the third or fourth time I’m explaining something to her, the image of my forefathers, armed with pitchforks and blazing torches, comes to mind.

I look back to the screen: “There?”

I write back. “Yes.”

There is fifteen minutes of dead air. It is noon. I leave my desk, mail my bills, touch up my hair with the garage-sale curling iron I’ve installed in the women’s bathroom, and write up a draft for world peace.

I return to my desk an hour later. There’s been no response.

I can’t stand the suspense.

“Why?” I type.

Ping!

“Oh,” she types. “I was wondering if we could meet about a report that you used to run.”

“Sure,” I write. “I’m free this afternoon and tomorrow morning. Go ahead and set it up.”

Ping!

“How long do you think it will take?” she asks.

Again, with the roaring disapproval of my ancestors.

How long do I think it will take? Will what take? You’re the one with the questions, lady!

The part of my brain reserved for logical thought erupts into raucous laughter and resumes writing the resignation letter it started several years ago after I parachuted out of a plane. Dear Pearl, it has come to our attention…

“I don’t know,” I type back. “How long it takes depends on what you need to know.”

Ping!

“Oh, OK,” she writes back.

That was hours ago.

She has yet to set up the meeting.

The part of my brain that still believes that we are paid based on our abilities wants to walk over there and give her a big ol’ dope slap to the forehead. The part of my brain that knows that that is not true is weeping. And the part I keep off in a dark corner because of its propensity for inappropriate comments - a short man fond of slogan tee-shirts and lighting a new cigarette with the butt of the old one - is grinning maniacally.

I can only imagine what that guy has to say.

The Mysterious Egg Meteors, or That's No Way to Make an Omelet

2011-11-18T07:00:00.000-08:00

You see that? Over there? It’s the weekend again, isn’t it? Sure, one might say, it looks a lot like the last time there was a Saturday and Sunday directly in front of us, and yet who can tell?

Who can say?

Me! I’m to say! Or more accurately – accurately! – my iPod. You knew that, right? That my iPod, set on “shuffle” and played during my Friday morning’s commute has the red-hot power of prophecy?

It’s true. Shhhh.

Treat Me Like Your Mother by The Dead Weather
Burn by Deep Purple
September by Earth Wind & Fire
Wooden Ships by Crosby Stills & Nash
Can’t Stand Me Now by The Libertines
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised by Gil Scott-Heron
The Puzzle by Brother Ali

Hmmm. Hardship, pain, loss and broken hearts, all under the guise of making you a stronger person. Yuck.

Let the record reflect that I am against it.

But let us return to our other Friday diversion, the serial posting of the Beverage-y Hillbillies, the lurching humanoids who moved in four houses down and who quickly became a topic of neighborhood bewilderment.

As a precursor, I live in Nordeast Minneapolis, a neighborhood of artists, working folk, retired people, people who walk their dogs and plant flowers. Our lawns are small, and, for the most part, neat. There are bars and restaurants and churches and various shops in walking distance; and in a land that became a state in 1858, we are proud of the houses in our neighborhood built between 1898 and 1904. We are secretaries and writers, musicians and plumbers, programmers and delivery men.

And we’re a fairly tolerant group.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to this week’s installment of The Beverage-y Hillbillies.

First, they moved in.

Then they set themselves up as the place to go for severely discounted and recently liberated home stereo speakers.

Then they showed you just how easy it is to be a giving person.

Today’s episode?

The Mysterious Egg Meteors

It is a summer’s day like any summer’s day in Minneapolis. In other words, it is warm; and we are pitifully thankful. We’re an easy group to impress from April to August, whereupon it will get ridiculously hot.

And then we lose our perspective.

We had not yet reached that point.

I live across the street from a park; and on the weekends, I feel it behooves me to pop over there, pick up some garbage, check for bums, that sort of thing. We don’t have a big bum problem in our park, although I did once throw away the world’s smelliest pillow.

I grab a plastic bag, my trusty stick-with-a-nail-in-it, and set out to rid the world of unsightly trash.

And who should I run into, just four houses down, than Boris, Number One Square-Headed Son in a family of square-headed sons. He is sitting on the hood of a car.

“Hey!” he calls.

“Hey,” I say.

“You got any money?”

“Yes,” I say, walking.

“Can I have some?”

“No.”

“Pssssss,” he hisses, as if there had been an agreement earlier that I would be supplying him with cash.

I walk on.

“Let me know if you find anything interesting,” he calls out.

I keep walking. Sure, I think, I'll call ya.

Now, I’ve found on these walks, as has been previously disclosed, the world’s smelliest pillow. I’ve also found an iPod engraved “To Olivia, with all my love, Daddy”, large numbers of beer cans, plastic cups and plates, and a cell phone. But I’d yet to find eggs.

But there they are, less than a block away. Dozens and dozens of eggs, most of them smashed on cars, some on houses. Some are splattered impotently in the streets, others lie crushed and gooey on the sidewalk.

I am furious.

I call the police, who, in bored tones, tell me there have been several calls already. They are on their way.

I cut my garbage-walk short and go home the way I’d come. Boris is still on the car.

He looks pleased with himself.

“Find anything interesting?” he sneers.

“Not really,” I say. I am so angry I am dizzy. I’m a scary person when I’m angry – best to keep moving.

“Nothing?” he presses. He is smiling in a this-neighborhood-is-mine sort of way.

He thinks he runs this place.

I stop abruptly, turn back.

“Well now that ya mention it, someone did a really crappy job of making breakfast,” I snap, bright stars of anger wreathing my head, “but most likely that person’s got some sort of mental defect and won’t be around much longer. Ya gotta feel sorry for people that stupid.”

And while he stares, I turn and walk. And when I get home, I sit down in front of the computer. I’m going to contact their landlord, just as soon as I can figure out who it is.

It’s a tolerant neighborhood. Not a stupid one.

Something About an Ol' Ban-Joe

2011-11-17T07:00:00.000-08:00

I live in a city. I work in a city.

Everybody knows that’s where the money is.

Right?

I’ve been crowd-guilted into leaving change for a person who poured me a coffee and walked it the three steps between the pot and the cash register.

I’ve been approached by a man who asked me for $45. For his prescriptions, he said. Said he’d take a check.

I’ve been followed by an extremely drunk woman who, if I wouldn’t give her cab fare – cab fare! – wanted me to at least give her the decorative pin off my jacket.

My favorite beggar so far, though, has to be the man I saw standing at the Dowling exit, just off 94.

There he is. No sign, nothing but him and the howling wind: him, what I would guess to be an inadequate jacket for the weather conditions, and a banjo.

I turn down my radio, lower my car window. Strangely, I can’t hear him; and yet, there’s this man, just two car lengths ahead of me, a’pickin’ and a’grinnin’. His face completely expressionless, he hops from one foot to the other, his left hand running up and down the neck of the instrument, his right hand strumming madly.

He looks, as my dad likes to say, like a heckuva player.

But there’s no sound.

He certainly looks like he’s making sound.

And that’s when I see it. The banjo is made out of cardboard boxes, shaped in a very good imitation of a banjo. No strings, no frets. Everything has been drawn on. I smile as he continues to hop around at the quiet intersection.

The light changes, and as I pull up I yell at him. “Hey!”

He looks at me.

“That’s the funniest thing I’ve seen all day. That’s gotta be worth something, don’t you think?”

He comes over to the car and I hand him two dollars.

“Thanks for brightening my day,” I yell.

The light changes, and I pull away.

But he doesn’t hear me. He is back at the banjo, hopping from foot to foot, strumming manically.

Why Dream When I Can Just Make Things Up?

2011-11-16T07:00:00.000-08:00

I rarely dream. While others recount their dreams to others – sometimes at an uncomfortable level of detail – tales of flying over cities and making naked speeches before Congress and whatnot, I’ve got nothing to say.

At this point, I’ll leave you alone for a moment so as to let the idea of me, speechless, sink in.

The medical community will tell you that I exhibit abnormal brain waves, so perhaps my “dreamer” is broken.

My mother, after all, claims to have lost her “skip”.

Then again, while I fully expect that my mother could, at one time, skip, I’ve never been one for remembering my dreams.

Everyone, I am told, dreams; it’s simply a matter of whether or not we remember them. I’m thinking, however, that if I’m not remembering them, what’s to say I had them in the first place? Huh? Answer me that one!

So what’s it all about, Alfie?

Is it because my conscious life is just so darn fulfilling?

It’s true that I have a fabulous view of downtown Minneapolis – if you lean over and look right there you can see the garbage incinerator for the whole metropolitan area!

It’s true that I sometimes leave the house without my cell phone because I live my life on the edge.

It’s even true that I can get the cats to cock their heads at me and then dash out of the room as if late for a meeting simply by playing The Clarinet Polka, which, if memory serves, also works for unwanted visitors and old boyfriends.

The power of the upper register compels you…

Anyway, I still have my “skip”, which I suppose is something, but I can’t help but wonder if I’m missing out by not remembering my dreams.

Mmm. Oatmeal Raisin Worm.

2011-11-15T07:00:00.000-08:00

I don’t want to raise any red flags or anything - and this is certainly no indication of how little attention I pay the real world - but apparently we’re selling uncooked cookie dough now.

You can tell where this is going, right? That it’s recently made an appearance in my freezer?

Henceforth and forthwith, anytime I have a craving for uncooked dough, stuffing a handful or two into my face will be as easy as stepping up a pants’ size.

It’s a great time to be alive. And lacking in self-control.

I’ve always been a fan of the uncooked/undercooked. I can actually be the one cracking the eggs into the batter and still find myself licking the beaters.

“You get worms that way,” my mother says.

“From raw eggs?”

“No, that’s Sam and Ella,” she says, stealing a line from my father. “You get worms from the flour.”

“I don’t believe you,” I say. And this is hard to say, and not just because I’m saying it to my mother, the woman what bore me, but because I’m licking a spoon while saying it.

But the cookies, the uncooked cookies in my freezer. Oatmeal Raisin: cookie-sized lumps of love lie dormant, pre-oven, pre-thigh, in my freezer, nestled amongst the frozen grouse bodies and the bag of ice from my last get-together, an invitation to have one – okay, two – just because I can.

Gaining weight should be more difficult, don’t you think?

Don't forget to come back tomorrow, wherein Pearl hires day laborers to exercise her limbs while she eats various foodstuffs directly from the fridge.

Yield? The Road Signs Have a Suggestion

2011-11-14T07:18:00.001-08:00

I was out driving the other day. In a car.

Cars are so much different than buses, aren’t they? They’re smaller, for one thing. I noticed that right off. And then there’s all that “paying attention” to do.

And it was while I was “paying attention” that I saw something that I’d seen thousands of times before; but this time, I saw it with new eyes.

OK. Not really new eyes. They were my old eyes.

Let’s not get into semantics.

There was a sign on the side of the road, one of those signs with the little light bulbs in it so that you can see it at night.

“Yield Ahead.”

Good advice. There’s a certain amount of yielding that we all must do.

And that got me thinking: Those signs should be in more places.

“Stop eating now.”

“You would do best to keep your mouth shut.”

“You are wearing patterned underwear with white pants.”

But no. We don’t have signs like that. Sure, I’m a taxpayer; but apparently we’re on our own here.

Who do you suppose I could talk to to get one of those lighted signs in my house? I never turn down free advice.

Talking Loud and Saying Nothing

2011-11-13T07:00:00.000-08:00

There's a woman at the end of the bar who can't believe the way we coddle people these days.

Car seats for children. Food stamps. Half-way houses! All of these things confound this woman. To hear her tell it, allergies could be cured with repeated contact, asthma is an excuse for those who are "afraid to try", the addicted can get clean in jail and seatbelts are "stupid" because "if it's your time, it's your time".

"Nobody wore a helmet in my day," she bawled over her beer, "and we all turned out just fine!"

Sure you did, lady. Except for those of you who didn't. The ones who didn't wear a helmet and suffered avoidable traumatic brain injury because of it didn't make it to the bar tonight.

And then I remembered the girl I can't fully forget...

There was a girl in my 7th grade class. Try as I may, I cannot remember her name, not even enough to fictionalize it; yet I remember her face, her manner. She was pale and thin, looked like she didn't sleep. Her clothes were dirty and may have been from another era. She was disheveled. Not in a cool, hipster sort of way -- hipsters had yet to have been invented -- but in a forgotten and clothing-as-cover-only sort of way. Everything she wore was too big, matronly even, right down to the 50's style bra discernible under her inevitable white cotton blouses. The unfilled cups of those bras collapsed under the weight of the material, becoming odd lumps of confusion.

There she sat in the row next to me, head bowed, mute. She didn't speak, ever, even when the teacher asked her a question, something that blew my mind every time it happened.

How do you not answer the teacher?

She showed up one autumn day with a black eye. Later in the year her arm was in a sling.

I avoided her, just as, it seems, everyone else did. She was marked somehow. I think we were afraid that she was contagious.

In retrospect, I can't help but wonder about me at that age and speculate as to how much of my brain I was using.

I can't help but wonder if mandatory reporting on the part of the teachers and doctors in her life might've changed things.

The woman at the end of the bar blathers on, but I've turned her off.

She's saying nothing.

The Lady at the Bus Stop Has Her Demands

2011-11-12T07:00:00.000-08:00

Should we run into each other today – and stranger things have happened! – you may notice that the tip of the thumbnail on my right hand is black.

Or, you may just notice my sparkling eyes. I have that effect on people.

Then again, odds are just as good that you’ll notice the blackened end of my right thumb, because once again, in an effort to clean up Our Fair City, I’ve soiled myself.

Or something to that effect.

You see, I hate graffiti. Do what you like with your own stuff, but leave my bus stop alone.

That’s right. I said “my bus stop”. It’s mine. Mine! Through eight years of steady patronage, including my fight to actually have the structure put into place and including the daily litter-picking-up service that I provide throughout my neighborhood, it’s mine.

Frankly, the whole neighborhood is mine. Just ask me.

And I’m tired of it being defaced.

So here’s what I want to see happen:

Just because someone’s written/scribbled on something doesn’t mean you have to leave it there. Cover it. Right away. If it’s city property, call 311.

That mail box hanging off the post by a nail. Maybe you re-affix it, put a fresh coat of paint on it? Even that large-mouth bass mailbox you’ve been secretly coveting would be an improvement.

I want people to sweep the sidewalks in front of their houses – not just some of us! All of us. I have a neighbor that takes a knife to the edges of his yard, runs it along where the grass meets the concrete. Talk about nice-looking! Wheee-doggie. I’m not suggesting we all do that, but really, if you do? There should be some sort of tax break, don’t you think?

And window cleaning. What’s happened to window cleaning? I know it’s a drag, but dagnabit people, I want to see my face in your window!

Which reminds me: what I do not want to see in your window is your butt. While I appreciate that you work out – and frankly, it shows! – I don’t want to know that you cook in the nude. You keep that up, you’re gonna burn something that shouldn’t get burned. If you’re not going to have respect for the people walking by, won’t you at least think of the Emergency Room personnel?

I have a list of other demands, but I think you get the picture.

Winter is coming. Get yer chores done.

And put some dang pants on.

Hey! You Got Any Extra Money?

2011-11-11T07:00:00.000-08:00

Psst. You have a minute? Just a minute?

What if I were to tell you that I could, absolutely free and by way of my morning commute’s playlist, predict your future?

Not the long-range future, of course. No, no, no. That’s just crazy. The immediate future!

Saturday! Sunday!

What the heck. Indulge me.

Boots or Hearts by The Tragically Hip
Karn Evil 9 by Emerson Lake and Palmer
Oh My God by Kaiser Chiefs
Chelsea Dagger by The Fratellis
D is for Dangerous by Arctic Monkeys
Barracuda by Heart
Golden Age by TV on the Radio

And there you have it, and what it is, I can’t say here. Let’s just say that that groove you’ve been looking for? It’s comin’ for ya this weekend.

So! Where were we? Oh, yes: the Friday diversion.

If you’ll recall, the last two Fridays have been dedicated to the Beverage-y Hillbillies, a square-headed family of front-yard-dwelling yokels that moved into the neighborhood a while back.

Today’s Episode: Boris Gets a Job!

No, not really. That would be silly. But still, who’s to say that anything you do, repeatedly and in the hope of money, is not a job?

Last we contemplated the variables of the human condition, Head Number One (referred to as “Boris”) was seen running down the center of the street in front of the house, Pamplona-style, juggling a pair of home stereo speakers he had apparently stolen from the driver of a Lincoln Continental.

It was early June; and Willie and I had purchased a ridiculous number of flowers of both the annual and the perennial variety and were busy stuffing the flower boxes that line the first and second floors of the duplex.

I had just finished smearing a large swath of dirt across my forehead when I heard someone creep up behind me.

I spun around.

Boris.

“Hey,” he smirks. “Do you have an extra five bucks I can have?”

What? There’s such a thing as an “extra” five bucks now?

So I say what I always say when I’m confused: “Huh?”

Bless his heart, he repeats the request. “Do you have five bucks I can have?”

“No,” I said.

“How about three?”

“No.”

Willie comes around the house carrying a pallet of Lobelia. “No,” I say.

Boris changes tack. “How about you? Huh? You got five bucks?”

Willie’s face takes on the look he normally reserves for finding yakked-up hairballs with his bare feet.

“What?”

“Five bucks. You got five bucks I can have?”

“He doesn’t even have five bucks I can have,” I mutter.

Willie shakes his head. “I’m working in the yard, man. I got nothin’.”

“How about a ride to Target then? Can you give me a ride to Target?”

I turn away. “Willie,” I say. “Set that pallet in the porch. It’s time for lunch.”

Ha! There’s nothing so annoying that I can’t ignore it.

And to Think I Had the Eulogy Half-Way Written…

2011-11-10T07:00:00.000-08:00

I’ve been watching the tank for a good 20 minutes.

And Cuddy hasn’t moved.

Cuddy, AKA The Pleco, AKA The Itty Bitty Fitty, AKA Sixth in Line for the Presidency (Leon Panetta? HA! Let us not speak of Leon Panetta), lay atop one of two available rocks, motionless.

I peer into the three available sides of the fish tank – the back having been obscured by the double-album cover currently serving as backdrop, Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy – looking for signs of life. No movement. Not a fin, not a gill.

Nothin’.

And suddenly it all fits: the algae build-up, the listless movements of the goldfish, the eerie feeling I had the other day after eating my weight in Shepherd’s Pie…

My eyes go wide as my mouth opens in a disbelieving “O”.

Cuddy is dead.

I frown. Less than two years old.

That fish cost me four bucks!

Lady G’Agua stares at me from behind the glass, iridescent ornamental fins rippling in indignation. Impertinent fish! Does she hold me responsible for Cuddy’s death?

From my place on the couch, I lean back. So many arrangements to be made. Cuddy was, as so many fish are, a Unitarian, although non-practicing. And there should be music, of course, and a memorial with proper lamentation…

A memorial.

I run to the fridge. Surely Cuddy would want me to pour a 40 for him? There are no 40-ounce malt liquors in the fridge, although I do find a Fox Barrel Pear Cider and the last four of six-pack of 12-ounce Miller Lites.

I pour three Miller Lites into the kitchen sink.

I twist the front of my shirt in agony and lift my face to the kitchen ceiling. “Cuddy! Ah, Cuddy, we hardly knew ye!”

I return to the living room, where Liza Bean Bitey (of the Minneapolis Biteys) sits atop the fish tank.

“You smell of confusion and cheap beer,” she purrs.

“It’s Cuddy,” I say, returning to my seat on the couch and twisting the top off a beer. “He’s dead.”

“Mmm,” she says.

“Well look at him!” I say. I turn, point to the tank.

The fish is gone.

Liza Bean chuckles, stands and stretches, one back leg jutting straight out behind her, then the other. “Those Fox Barrels still in the fridge?”

I sigh. “Help yourself,” I say.

.. Starring Yvonne DeCarlo as Homeless Woman #1

2011-11-09T07:00:00.000-08:00

The homeless are leaving Minneapolis.

And I am both relieved and sorry to see them go.

They’re on the street, on the bus, belongings stuffed into duffel bags, garbage bags, lashed to dollies and carts with bungee cords and hope.

I wonder about the homeless. I want to ask them, “What happened? Did you lose your home in a fire? To the economy? To addiction? Did you burn your bridges? For cryin’ out loud, what happened to your bridges?”

Could the same thing happen to my bridges?

And that’s what the homeless do: they make you think, about frailties, about sleep, about safety. They’re the ones whose pain is visible, but many of us walk the line between being able to contribute to a food shelf and requiring the assistance of one. Add that knowledge to the dwindling heat/light/color of the rapidly approaching winter and the realization that you need to get away, away from the eye-ball freezing temperatures inexorably creeping in, and we’ve got a Cecil B. DeMille-style exodus.

To paraphrase the bartenders, you may not have a home to go to, but you’re not going to want to stay here.

In some ways, I’ll miss the color an outdoor population provides.

I’ll miss the toothless, spacey grin of the man on the corner, a man who does not seem upset by his lot in life.

I’ll miss the man with the long black hair, the man who took his shirt off and laid in the grass, the sun bouncing off a golden, hairless chest who exclaimed with a wink, “Ever been with a bum?”

And hopefully I’ll miss the man who insists on playing the recorder, empty hat at his feet, the recorder, known in my childhood as a “flutophone”, being played by a man who believes that the trill covers a multitude of sins, including an utter lack of musical talent. His rendition of “Three Blind Mice”, able to stun you tone deaf from a block away, is his go-to piece. That one, plus, so help me, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “Jingle Bells”, covered with flowery notes not always found in the key of the song, slide into one ear, eat a number of brain cells, and slide out the other, leaving a ring around the inside of the skull akin to the one left around a bathtub after washing something particularly filthy.

I would like to miss him, but how can I miss him if he won’t go away?

First the geese. Now the homeless.

Soon Minnesota will be full of nothing but Minnesotans.

Gimme a Bite of That, Would Ya?

2011-11-08T07:00:00.000-08:00

I’m a simple person.

Well, no. That’s not exactly true, but what I’m about to divulge may have you shaking your head and muttering, “That Pearl. I didn’t realize she was so simple.”

I just wanted to beat ya to the punch.

Do you remember your first encounter with cilantro? I do. There it was, adrift in a bowl of pico de gallo. “Hullo,” I said to myself, having briefly picked up a “British” accent by way of the book I had been reading, “what’s this?”

And there it was, the taste that, like cumin and buffalo sauce before it, added a previously unknown depth of flavor to my taste-budly world. Much like the first Metallica album or the stark realization that I cannot wear a “skinny” jean without my lower extremities looking like denim-encased turkey legs, the first taste of cilantro blew the lid off my little coarsely-haired head.

My mother wrinkles her nose in distaste. “Tastes like soap,” she says.

Look at her over there, all refined and ladylike, maker of the world’s best gravies and flakiest crusts. She is absolutely wrong, and there’s no way to tell her without risking my rightful share of them…

And so, it is with my being absolutely right on the subject of the deliciousness of cilantro, cumin, and buffalo sauce that I come to you with another mind-blowing foray into uncharted foods.

Salt. On an apple.

Is it wrong? Is it wrong to crave salt, to pair it with the tart, crispness of an apple, to chortle indulgently while the juice runs down your chin?

Well, yes. That last bit? Yes. That’s wrong. Let’s not be undignified.

But now that I’ve linked salt with apple and found it to be delish, now what? Is the combination of salt and apple the gateway to other odd and seemingly contradictory couplings?

I mean, my sister forced – forced! – me to slather chocolate frosting on saltine crackers once, and that didn’t affect me much, right? I mean, it’s true that the combination of frosting and crackers forced me to re-think my stance on my parents’ cream-cheese-jalapeno-Ritz-cracker offering the last holiday season, and then there was the peanut-butter-potato-chip-sandwich that was passed around at that one party…

Don’t look at me like that.

I can quit any time I want to.

Impactful!

2011-11-07T07:05:00.001-08:00

I have a conference call to dial into and I’m already late. Shoot.

This is no way to start the work week.

Beep. Beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep boop boop bee boop.

“…and thank you for carving out this time for this meeting. Who just joined?”

“Hey, everyone. Sorry I’m late. This is Pearl.”

“Good morning, Pearl. We were just playing a little catch-up on what we were doing before we called in, what we’ll be doing once we can get back to our jobs, and what we’ll be doing in the meantime while pretending to participate in this call. Who wants to go next?”

Dead silence.

“Anyone?”

Profound and utter silence.

“OK, I’ll go next then. This last week, I’ve been executing a number of strategic moves. I am also looking at orchestrating the need for you all to take a nose-deep dive into how well you think I’m doing and how this will affect your future here at Acme Napkins and Grommets. This will involve several hours’ worth of pre-work created by renowned thought leaders on the subject of obedience, conformity, and group-think.

Any questions?”

Dead silence.

“Excellent. So does anyone want to update us on what you’ve been working on this week?”

More silence.

“Anyone?”

“I guess I’ll go.” It is Celia, working from home out of our Boston office. “Um, this week I’ve been logging in on time but have been unavailable on e-mail, taking two-hour lunches, and leaving early for various “appointments”. I’d encourage everyone to leave messages on my voice-mail if you need me and I’ll get back to you when I can.”

“Excellent. Thank you, Celia. Did everyone catch that? Did everyone catch the apostrophes around the word “appointments”?”

Various static-y sounds of assent are heard.

“Good. Thank you. Anyone else?”

Silence.

“Please?”

“Hi, this is Mark from the Tucson office, working from home. And I just want to say what a great idea these meetings are. My multitasking during meetings is up dramatically, frankly; and I’m procrastinating well into the next fiscal year. I owe it all to this bunch.”

The ether comes alive with the sound of agreement and the working-from-home people finishing their dishes and letting their dogs in from the patio.

“It’s a great time to be alive. Anyone else?”

Silence.

“OK. That’s it then. Everyone have a – oh, one other thing. Remember when we talked about raises and how they would be limited to the monetary equivalent of a pack of smokes a week? Well you’ll find that pack of smokes in your mail slot later this week.”

Nothingness crackles across the phone lines as various people silently consider taking up smoking.

“Anything else? Everyone good?”

Silence.

“Excellent! Have a great week, everyone!”

Bee-boop!

And Is That Marlon Perkins Over There On The Swings?

2011-11-06T07:10:00.000-08:00

I live in the city. The houses are close together, the lawns are small. Things are rather orderly on my side of town: thugs and wannabe thugs alike are identifiable by their droopy drawers; bums sleeping under pine trees are required to clean up when they leave; dogs are on leashes, for the most part; cats creep along life’s wooded edges, eyeing juicy birds and untended grills; and children run free until curfew.

City wildlife.

Winters in the city are much quieter than the summers, of course. The bums go to Florida, the thugs lie on couches in their moms’ basements, dreaming Kool-Aid-and-cough-syrup dreams; and the downstairs folks' cat, a stray who used at least one of his nine lives last January by nearly freezing to death, now lies in the sun that pours through their living room window, eyes closed and smiling.

But outside of the luckiest kitty in the world and the wily city bunnies, the odd raccoon, and the occasional park-bench drunk, there is little in the way of city wildlife.

Until now. Because now there are turkeys.

Friday evening, I watched a turkey hen run past my house and down the street, a large and rather ugly bird, strikingly out of place.

This was actually quite exciting. Not as exciting as the raccoon I surprised whilst he was rooting through my garbage a couple years ago, but then again it wasn’t 2:00 a.m., I wasn’t pleasantly inebriated and walking down the alley, and the turkey didn’t rear up on its hind legs and show me all his teeth.

Wild life in the city! My sister – who claims to see enormous “dinosaur” birds in the open fields around her house, by the way – wanted to know if I had plans to trap and eat it. I do not. I have no idea where that bird’s been, what it’s been eating, or who it’s friends with.

You cannot be too careful.

It is the city, after all.

Of Course, Running in the Opposite Direction is an Option as Well

2011-11-05T07:00:00.000-07:00

The woman on the elevator turns to me. “I have a very serious illness you know,” she says.

No. I didn’t know that. But soon I will, and do you know why?

Because I have the face that launches a thousand confessions.

“I wanted to name my first dog Bowser,” says the man on the bus.

“Is that right,” I say.

There is a silence.

“You want to know why I didn’t?” he says.

“Sure,” I say. “Hit me.”

“Because my mom thought it was a terrible name.”

I look at him. His mom? By all appearances, he appears to be firmly entrenched in his 60s.

“Well what’s it to her?” I ask.

“EXACTLY,” he shouts. Heads turn and he leans in to whisper angrily. “Exactly. What the bricken bracken fargle raggen was it to her?”

He didn’t really say “bricken bracken fargle raggen” of course. He was a bit more vehement than that.

But you get the picture.

I assure him that Bowser is a perfectly reasonable name for a dog, and I get off the bus two stops earlier than I need to.

It’s good for my legs.

My father has this face as well, this tell-me-your-secrets face. “Does it hurt to listen?” he says. “No. You nod, you take them seriously, you let them speak. People just want to be heard.”

And so I let them speak. Because it doesn’t cost anything to listen. Because the more people there are, the fewer voices we hear.

And because it is the way of my people.

I Know A Guy Who Can Get You A Deal

2011-11-04T07:00:00.000-07:00

You know, if you’re going to continue to rise when the alarm clock says to, if you’re going to persist in showing up to work every day like you do, then the next thing you know –

It’s the weekend.

Never fails.

And boy, do you deserve it. Look at you over there, all hard-working and responsible. You never fail to amaze me.

So what’s coming, huh? Saturday? Sunday? What can we expect?

Lucky for you, I’ve got the answer. You may not know this about me – and why would you? – but I own an iPod that, set on shuffle and played during my Friday morning’s commute, tells the future.

Hey. It could happen.

Tell the Lie by the BelRays
Say It to Me Now by Glen Hansard
Shocker in Gloomtown by Guided by Voices
Jungle Boogie by Kool and the Gang
I Was A Lover by TV On The Radio
Ball of Confusion by Love and Rockets
21st Century Schizoid Man by King Crimson

Whoa! This is looking suspicious, is it not? This weekend may not be your friend. Get your groceries after work, go home and stay indoors, I say.

Now where were we?

Ah, yes. Last Friday we had just started a little serial posting, an every-Friday diversion regarding the Beverage-y Hillbillies.

When last we spoke, the New Kids on the Block had just moved a dozen mattresses, several large-screen TVs and an ottoman into the duplex down the street, gone on to set up a ping-pong table on the sidewalk, and had settled in for a solid evening of hootin’ and hollerin’.

And there was much rejoicing.

The cans littering the boulevard in the morning bespoke their affinity for Ice House, a lower-cost, higher-alcohol-content beer known for its ability to cause fist fights and impregnate at 50 paces.

After the christening of the new digs, things were quiet until the following weekend, when I happened to be in the front yard in time to see the oldest of the boys come running down the middle of the street.

As a quick aside, I’d like to interject that following their move-in, I never again saw the parents, but I did see the children, ad nauseam. All boys in that family, all with abnormally large, square heads. This is not an exaggeration. Those boys had big, square heads, particularly noticeable over the brows – which wasn’t so much a forehead as it was a fivehead.

Ba dum bum.

So there I was, as the old saying goes, minding my own business, when I see Head Number One – we’ll call him Boris – come running down the street carrying two large wooden stereo speakers. Remember the 70s? Remember those huge speakers in that one guy’s basement?

Well these are them.

Boris is running down the middle of the street with them, one on each shoulder. He is panting.

Clearly he has been running for quite some time.

A quick look over his shoulder, and he is satisfied with what he sees – or does not see – and continues to run at a somewhat slower pace.

He runs past our parked car, abruptly stops and backs up.

“Hey!” he yells.

I turn to him, my hands full of the flowers I am moving from one location to another.

“You wanna buy some speakers?”

“What?”

“You wanna buy some speakers?” he repeats. “I’ll give ‘em both to you real cheap. Fifty bucks for both.”

“No, thanks,” I say, turning.

“Thirty bucks!”

I shake my head.

He may be speaking to me, but he is staring down the street in the direction he came from as he does so.

“Twenty bucks, and this is my last – oh! Shit!”

A Lincoln Continental comes tearing down the street, and Boris loses his grip on reality and the speakers and one of them crashes to the tar, wooden splinters everywhere. He juggles and manages to hold on to the remaining speaker. Dodging the speeding car, he cuts through our neighbor’s front yard and into the alley, where he yells his parting offer:

“Ten bucks! Ten bucks for the one speaker!”

I return to my flowers.