Stranded in the Toothless Belt
It was 4:00am and my husband was underneath the pickup with a die grinder, cut-off saw, and a flashlight. That wasn't supposed to happen. What was supposed to happen was that he'd backed the truck gently up to the fifth-wheel, and things would go click! Then we'd be on our way.
We rarely take family vacations, mostly because of fear. But despite our completely justified apprehension, we'd decided to take the kids to Florida. It was to be a trip to the keys for some deep sea fishing on my brother's boat with plenty of lazing around on sandy beaches. We'd hit Disney and Sea World on the way back.
Everything was already packed into our gigantic, 35ft. long fifth wheel; all that was left was to hook the trailer to the truck. We'd peeled our children off the walls and duct taped them to their beds, then set our alarm clock so we could get an early start.
But no. Instead, the truck was leaking stuff out of its rear end. After several hours of banging, grinding, and bleeding, the husband declared that the truck was good to go. He aired up a mysteriously flat tire, then we hooked the trailer to the truck and set out on our family vacation. Finally. Yay, us!
Halfway to Ann Arbor (about 12 miles from home), the truck started making scary grindy noises. My clue circuit told me that we were in for an adventure. Since we were dragging a 3.5 ton lump of metal behind us and like to live, we quickly found a convenient place to stop. We didn't want to leave the trailer unattended in an enormous hotel parking lot, so I stayed behind to be rubbernecked at while the husband and four children limped back home in the truck at 15mph. Eleventy-billion hours later, they were back and we were (yet again) Florida-bound! I could actually see extra grey hairs in my husband's receding hairline, and I'm pretty sure I didn't want to know why.
We whipped through Ohio then dragged ass across Kentucky, finally landing in Tennessee. Then everything went wrong all at once. In what could only have been a cosmic effort to ruin our family vacation, the air conditioning in the truck stopped working and the brakes on the fifth-wheel went out just as the scary noises returned. Louder. And grindier.
Again, we stopped. My husband crawled under the truck with a large collection of impressive, manly-looking tools. He reemerged, not having used any of them. This couldn't be good.
Stuffing several dozen tools, a wad of baling wire, and a roll of duct tape into the magical little universes he calls pockets, he pronounced, "We need a new rear end, but I got the brakes fixed - the wire was loose." I ignored what he said and focused on the pockets. They weren't even bulging! "Since we're screwed anyway, I vote we keep driving as far as we can. Or until we get to a place that's more convenient to be screwed in." I couldn't fault his logic, so on we drove; the scary whiney-grindy sound threatened us with impending catastrophe. We exited Tennessee with a sigh of relief. And that's when Georgia grabbed hold of us and refused to let us go.
So there we were, stranded in the middle of the toothless belt at an RV park owned by a three hundred year old woman and her brotheruncledad, pretending everything was ok for a night. I'm pretty sure I heard banjos dueling in the night. In retrospect, I believe that Tennessee had only been trying to warn us.
It took hours to find a junkyard with a rear differential that would fit an F-350 with duallies. Luckily, one junkyard in the entire Atlanta area had exactly what we needed. Three sweaty, unairconditioned hours later, we were a little bit poorer. When my husband found out that the owners of the junkyard were Nigerian immigrants, he amused himself telling jokes about email scam letters. It was only a little disturbing that everyone there was well versed in the subject, even the 11 year old boy who was playing with our kids.
Renting a car so we could continue on to Florida, we dropped the truck (and another wad of vacation money) off with a local mechanic. So we drove down to Orlando.
Two days later we picked up the truck and tried again; five miles north of the Florida border the brakes on the fifth-wheel gave out. The RV never made it south of the Georgia state line, but at least the truck was fixed! We spent the next few days having a terrific time at the various theme parks in Florida.
Several days later, and with only two more break-downs under our belts, our family (and the stray cat we'd picked up along the way) arrived home tired, hungry, and reeking of sweat. Once the kids were fed, everyone had showered, and the police had left, the husband and I curled up with the kids to watch The Incredible Hulk before passing out from exhaustion. We woke up the next day happy to see the children had survived the night.
We think the kids had a good time. It's hard to tell. They haven't asked to go on vacation since. We suspect they're afraid.
The Sixth Sign
The signs were all around me; the Fates were fed up. Unfortunately, I never notice these things until I’m either smack in the middle of, or recovering from, a Cursed Event.
Sign Number One: It was 6:00am, I was on my way to Los Angeles for a much-needed vacation, and I wasn't coffeed up. That’s always a mistake; it makes the world hate me.
Checking in night before, I’d printed out my boarding passes specifically so the system would know my bags were coming. That's really the only way you can ensure they'll lose them properly.
Sign Number Two: I’d followed the rules, checking my bags with 45 minutes to spare. The attendant directed me to gate A5, handed me my claim check for the bags, and I made a beeline toward security.
The feeder line was wrapped around no less than a dozen bends, and the TSA people looked annoyed to be awake. Sleepy, crabby TSA people indicate that not only are the gods mad at you, but so is the Federal government. And the Feds are way more scary.
Despite being patted down and scanned twice with a wand, the guy in front of me kept setting off the alarm; apparently, he was related to Wolverine. This cost me another five minutes. Then I had to run my bags through twice for no particularly obvious reason. Five more minutes. Luckily, they didn't take me in the back room for a routine violation like they did to a friend of mine once, at Kennedy.
Sign Number Three: I got through security and did the OJ run to gate A5, as instructed. Gate A5 was going to Philly. I was going to Los Angeles LAX. I and my two exceedingly unwieldy (and heavy) bags were then directed to a different gate, on the other end of the concourse.
Thanks to Tae Kwan Do night before, I needed to work my stiff legs and arms anyway, so the run actually served the purpose of efficiently providing exercise. Doing things efficiently is another bad omen—it means the universe will balance it out with some kind of needless churn.
With 11 minutes to departure, I tried to run, lurching with the momentum of my carry on bags: an enormous laptop-backpack filled every gadget known to Man, and a duffle bag containing random clothes and an extra pair of shoes for when the airline lost my luggage (I'd thought ahead this time). Luckily for me, my calf muscles cramped up, hobbling me.
When I got to the gate, there was one person still waiting to board. Good thing I was there 45 minutes early so I could board the plane last!
Sign Number Four was sporting a pair of shiny, black Ropers, shorts that could double as butt-floss, and enough silicone to pay Dow’s legal fees for a decade, the woman in front of me was a perfect hybrid of Daisy Duke and Joey from Friends’ LA manager. She blocked the aisle of the plane because she was unable to properly to match her boarding pass seat number with the numbers on the aisle. Maybe the different fonts threw her?
Eventually, a nice flight attendant came along to do Daisy’s thinking for her and found her seat for her. Daisy stepped into the row, ass in front of her seat, planetoid-sized “breasts” jutting over the poor guy assigned next to her, and stared vacantly into space. Daisy’s pink, glittery bag sat in the aisle, untouched; she stared expectantly at the flight attendant, who stared back. This left me stuck in the aisle, bags digging ravines into my shoulders and I waited nearly five minutes for the staring contest to end.
That's when my alter-ego took over. Deftly twisting my hips and shrugging my right shoulder, I kicked her big, pink bag out of my way and glared at her. I'm not sure if it was because I'd subconsciously used my duffle bags as a secret weapon or if it was the pair of freakishly large, blimp-like objects embedded in her chest that did her in, but with a tiny gasp, Daisy Duke toppled over.
Arms akimbo, and nearly bludgeoning the guy cowering beneath her torsal protrusions, she stared frantically at the flight attendant. I think Daisy expected her to arrest me and take me to the back room for a violation. Somewhere, someone snickered, lifting my mood a bit. Glaring at Daisy one last time for good measure, I stalked off toward my seat at the back of the plane.
I had a back row all to myself where, for the next 2 hours, I watched as three strange men several rows in front of me took turns hanging over each other to gape out the window. Despite it being only 7:15am, one of them was drunk and sweaty. (It's always 5:00 somewhere!) Eventually, they passed out.
From that point, everything was great. Until about 20 minutes after everyone ate. (Thankfully, they'd already run out of food by the time they got to me.) It wasn’t the line of people waiting to use the toilet that bothered me; it was their emissions that made the experience unpleasant. And all of those methane producers kept trying to talk to me, as if the talk-to-me-and-die look on my face wasn't enough indication to leave me alone. Yup. This was Sign Number Five.
As a last desperate attempt to keep the never ending line of farting people from trying to talk to me, I slipped my Level 2 Happy Bunny shirt ("Your anger makes me happy”) on over the one I was wearing.
Note to self: farts on a plane last much longer than you'd expect.
We arrived at LAX pretty much on time (Sign Number Six), and I went straight to baggage claim. Apparently, despite the fact that I (and my luggage) were all checked in together, at the same time, one of my bags had taken a later flight. While waiting an hour and a half at the airline's business office for it to arrive, I examined the bag that made it with me. It wasn’t on a different continent; something had to be wrong!
Sure enough, my name was misspelled.
The universe spent the next two weeks getting even.
Sneaky Hungarians
Despite my constant ragging on the state of New Jersey, I do miss my house sometimes. Large and well-maintained, it sat secluded on nearly two and a half acres of entomologists’ nirvana. Aside from the eleventy-billion ticks, most of the insects were harmless. Which is more than I can say for the crazy people who lived across the street.
I never managed to make a single friend during our four-year tenure there, but who needs people when you have the internet? The whole, miserable Jersey experience drew me closer to my imaginary friends. Being socially awkward can really make you appreciate your internet friends. So much so that, upon occasion, I’ve been known to issue open invitations to friends visiting my area.
Note to self: keep track of such open invitations.
It was three o’clock in the morning, and there I was: climbing around in a maze of boxes, stacked almost six feet high and cluttering up the sun room. Like most people at that time of day, I was also in my underwear. Which was perfectly normal.
I was enjoying the peaceful quiet of my children sleeping when I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. Figuring it was nothing more than sleep deprivation, I ignored it. The I saw movement in the yard.
The windows to our sunroom opened to a view of our little forest. All we ever saw back there was the occasional deer hanging around, looking desperate; I expected to see a terrified meal on legs. Instead, there was a strange man in my yard, and he was waving at me with huge grin his face.
You haven't lived in New Jersey if you don't know that someone smiling and waving at you from a forest at three in the morning is crazy dangerous. He moved closer to the window, still waving. Naturally, the situation required that I panic. Immediately.
Unfortunately for me, I was completely surrounded by boxes. Heavy boxes. My husband had packed them, which pretty much guaranteed that they were probably filled with flesh-melting poisons or sharp, heavy objects. This makes proper panicking more difficult, but I did my best.
Ping-ponging between the stacks of deadly containers and flailing uncontrollably, I vaguely recall seeing the stranger's face at the window; he looked... concerned. Eventually, I tripped and fell away from the windows, into the hallway.
Naturally, I did not call 911. Instead, I ran upstairs to yell at my husband for being deaf in one ear and stuffing his good one in the pillow, rendering him unable to hear my panicked screams, and thereby putting me in imminent danger through his selfish desire to get some sleep. The bastard.
It took nearly three minutes for his Caveman Gene to kick in. Shoving me aside like any good manly-man would do, he stalked down the stairs to mercilessly confront the happy psycho in our back yard. I followed him so I could make sure he did it right.
With a primal scream sure to do any self-respecting alpha-male proud, my husband burst into the back yard with his maglite. He grunted and made all sorts of primal ape-like noises, but nobody was there.
"Did somebody just knock on the front door?" It had to be a ruse. The happy psycho was trying to lull us into complacency so he could strike when we least expected it!
"It rubs the lotion on its skin...." The voices in my head chanted ominously.
"He's at the front door! Get it!" I whispered, ineffectively trying to shove my husband toward the front door. I had it all planned out for him. "Blind him with the MagLite and interrogate him; if he freaks out, smack him with it!" He raised an eyebrow at me. I'm not sure why. There was a killer out there, and this meant war!
In horror I watched him set the flashlight on the stairs, then calmly walk straight to the door and open it. He didn't even peek through the hole! What a MAN!
"Hi, Gabor." My husband smiled and let Happy Psycho inside. Gabor's from Hungary, and he was one of the Randomly Invited. He'd spent that summer teaching at a youth camp in New York and had several weeks to kill before going home. Since he knew we were relatively close-by, he decided to pay us a visit.
Using nothing more than a partial address and public transportation, Gabor had somehow managed to find our house. In the middle of the night. We were both amazed and impressed.
Then my husband said appreciatively, "That was one amazing bit of navigation." He liked Gabor; Gabor was an engineering grad student.
After giving him a brief lecture on safety in places like New Jersey and Detroit, my husband teased him. "Say, did you hear about that Japanese kid who knocked on a door in Texas and got shot?"
"I did! But I was pretty sure you wouldn't shoot me." They did some man-bonding while I made coffee.
Then Gabor shot me an enormous grin, turned to my husband and said, "You should have seen her when I waved! I was afraid she was going to really hurt herself." He went on to describe, in great detail, exactly how ridiculous I looked dangling upside down into a box, thrashing around with my butt in the air as I tried to escape.
Gabor stayed with us for more than a week; I still have the towel he left behind (when traveling, always take your towel!). Even though he'd mortified me, Gabor was the best house guest we've ever had. Besides, his cooking totally made up for scaring me half to death.
His open invitation will never expire.
Lance and the Golf Club
Born a tomboy, I was always one of the guys. Even as a teenager I never had a whole lot of tolerance for fluff, and being that always popular combination of loner and geek, most girls didn't want to hang out with me anyway. My husband, who's seen pictures of me as a teenager, says I had the look of barely controlled rage in my eyes and that they were probably afraid. I don't see it though. I think they were all just mean. So I spent a lot of time with my nose buried in a book, adding "bookworm" to the mix and earning me a trifecta for social annihilation.
One steamy summer night in Arizona, I and a few of my socially awkward brethren were hanging out playing strategy games. No one sat around plotting world domination (probably because it hadn't occurred to us yet) and there wasn't even a chess board in sight, but we had cards and our imaginations. But after nearly 40 sleepless hours filled with caffeine and Doritos our imaginations were tired. Lucky for us, all anyone needed to do to win this latest game was to be the last one left awake.
By 3:00am, the Monkees marathon had ended and everyone had the shakes from drinking roughly eleventy-billion pots of coffee. Only one person had fallen asleep so far and we'd already super glued his fingers together and tattooed intricate patterns on his face with a Sharpie. We were bored and desperate to stay awake.
Keep in mind that I was socially doomed from an early age. Because of this, I lack that filter between my brain and my mouth that keeps most people out of trouble. Or maybe it's the other way around. Not that it matters, of course. Sometimes no one noticed; other times, they did.*
No one else was stepping up with the ideas; I needed to be entertained and, clearly, the situation needed a guiding voice of reason to spur some action.
"Let's tie someone to the staircase," I proposed. "We'll hunt each other, and whoever gets captured first gets hogtied and cuffed to the staircase." It was a much better plan than sitting around waiting for a Sharpie attack. The others agreed that a lively war game was just what we needed!
There were four of us left awake, so we split off into teams. Paired with my friend Lance, I slinked outside into the darkness to set a trap for the other team. We spent the next half hour stalking them, to no avail. Then Lance went rogue.
I had almost no warning. Lance reached out to grab my wrist just as the other team tried to grab me from behind, but I darted away before they caught me. Circling around behind the garage, I slipped inside. Obviously, I needed some sort of weapon! I grabbed the closest thing I could find: a golf club.
Taking a moment to kick myself for yet another brilliant idea, I readied my defense, then stepped out of the garage into the darkness. Tiptoeing across the yard, I was careful to stay in the shadows.
It wasn't long before I could see the back door. I knew that if I could get inside and hide the rope, I'd win the game. Winning was every bit as important as avoiding being tied to the staircase, if not more so. Just as I approached the patio in a beeline for the door, two of the guys materialized, one from each side of the house. They headed straight for me. I planted my feet firmly apart and stood my ground.
"If you come any closer, I'm gonna whack you with my golf club!" In one swift motion I swung the club up and behind me, intending to hold it over my shoulder like a baseball bat. Unfortunately for Lance, his face got in my way.
Focused on the team approaching me from the front, I didn't hear him sneaking up behind me until he screamed. After determining that the others were no longer a threat I dropped the golf club and spun around. Tears streaming down his face, Lance's nose squirted blood in every direction. Everyone else took a step back, moving away from me. One of the guys blurted, "I think you're supposed to yell, 'Fore!' before you do that." Lance was not amused.
We dragged him into the house and attempted some first aid before deciding it was probably a good idea for him to go to a hospital instead.
"No one's answering at his house. We should call 911 so they'll send an ambulance," one of the guys said.
Lance tried to hold back the tears as he shook his head, "Doh ampulanth! Mah thadth will kihl mah if I thake an ampulanth!"
We wasted a good fifteen minutes trying to convince him to let us call 911. The nearest hospital was two miles away in the soon-to-be blazing Arizona sun. Plus, he wasn't looking so good. His face had swelled to fascinating proportions, his nose had a huge gash across it, and he was covered in blood.
Feeling mildly responsible for his predicament and worried that he might fall over into traffic, I volunteered to walk to the hospital with him. That seemed to scare him a little. I promised not to bring the golf club along, but it wasn't enough to convince him.
So Lance set out to the hospital by himself, a two mile hike. Dripping blood off the tip of his nose. We made up a new game to play.
Almost three hours later, Lance's Dad came by for his things. He didn't say much, just sort of glared at everyone. Especially me.
We found out the next day that because he was only 14, after Lance walked the 45 minutes to the hospital, they wouldn't even give him a Tylenol for the pain until they located his parents. He had to wait almost two hours while the hospital located them; he ended up with 15 stitches.
Lance avoided me after that.
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*If you're anything like I was, probably it's a good idea to make sure the guy you're insulting doesn't have any weapons. Hypothetically, if he were to point one at your three older brothers, things could go badly for you the next time they got you alone. Or so I've heard.
It’s Not Blackmail if it’s Family, Right?
If you watch South Park, you know they always kill Kenny. I've decided this is because the guys who write the show know my step-cousin Kenny. A perfect example of what can happen when the wrong genes collide, Kenny's one of those guys who opens his mouth and immediately makes you want to kill him. I've known this since I was 11 years old.
I grew up in Mesa, Arizona, the Shadeless Land of the Blazing Sun. My mother claims that Arizona has shade; she says it's called "the mall." She also mentioned carports, but I pointed out that it's not really "shade" if it makes your skin melt when you stand under it. Or if random strangers sprinkle you with salt and try to stuff apples in your mouth.
Even clouds fear Arizona summers (summers run from mid-February to late-November in the Valley). The ones that don't instantly evaporate when they cross the state line into Arizona probably wish they did. This fact is never more apparent than when the gigantic nuclear furnace in the sky turns on the afterburners, bringing the temperature to a balmy 142C. Except for when it's 142C at 8:30am, and your car dies in the desert.
When I was a kid, I changed schools at least once a year. We weren't military; we just moved a lot. Unfortunately for me, my new schools were often staffed by people who were unable to properly decode my immunization records. This, of course, usually resulted in my mom being told that I needed more shots; I was the best immunized kid in nearly a dozen different states.
It was 1981, and my latest new school decided I was short one measles and a possible tetanus. So my mom sent me off to the health department in Apache Junction, with my cousin Michael.
Although that region is now solidly packed with people, back in the early '80s it was desolate. Not counting snakes, the only things between the two cities were a sparsely populated trailer park, dust, a mostly empty highway, dust, eleventy-billion lizards, dust, enough road fauna to distract the buzzards and dirty dust. We were about halfway between east Mesa and Apache Junction when the car overheated and died on the side of the road.
Steam poured out of the hood, followed by a lot of cussing from my cousin. Looking over at me, he grouched, "Get out. We're going to have to walk." Watching waves of heat rise from the road, I sighed and got out of the car.
I was 11. I was lazy. I didn't want to walk! "If you were paying attention to the gauges like mom said, this wouldn't have happened." That's me. Always helpful, even back then. He ignored me.
While I was thinking of ways to make him pay for ignoring me, we got out of the Mustang-shaped oven, and started walking. It wasn't even ten minutes before he was sweating buckets and whining about the sun. "Looks like you're getting a sunburn. Too bad you forgot your hat," I offered cheerfully. Lucky for me, I'm part Italian." I smiled sweetly, secretly hoping my pale, Irish cousin would lose skin. He glared back, powerless to make my suntan disappear. I smiled again.
We were at least ten miles from home, and we'd only gone about half a mile, when a white van zipped past us. Braking hard, the van backed up along the side of the road and honked at us. It was a different world then; instead of running to hide behind a cactus, we looked up to see our cousin Kenny roll down the window, waving cheerfully. At last! Rescue!
"What are you two doing out here, walking?" He asked. Instead of wasting valuable spit by saying, "Duh," we pointed toward the car in the distance and explained the situation. Kenny handed us each some water and we sat in the van, side door slid open, and chatted.
Now, most normal people would've offered to give us a ride without being asked. But Kenny isn't normal. So Mike asked him for a ride home.
"I'm not going that way," Kenny said casually. He looked at his watch. "But that reminds me: I'm late and need to get going. You guys need to get out of the van now."
We stared at him, mute and disbelieving what we were hearing. No way! It was a zillion degrees outside and he was going to just leave us on the side of the road?
My 11 year old brain was plotting his demise when he said, "You can keep the water bottles and pay me for them later," He smiled magnanimously as he shoved us out the side door of the van, closed the door, and choked us on a cloud of dust as he peeled off into the rising mass of incandescent gas.
I would've cried but you don't waste precious fluids on such trivial things when you're abandoned in the desert without a knife and piece of saran wrap.
I inherited my father's temper. Why did he just leave us here? We're going to DIE out here in this heat and it'll be ALL YOUR FAULT. Oh, his death was going to be a beauty. He thumped me and told me to shut up, so I kicked him in the ankle, hard, and committed him to an even lower circle of Hell.
I also inherited my dad's vindictive nature. Watching him hobble made me feel better. After several minutes, I resumed my observations about his impending sunburn. I'm pretty sure he wanted to kill me because he told me if I didn't stay a good 30 feet behind him he'd push me into traffic; I threw a few rocks at him.
Ten minutes later, and another half a mile, Kenny and his white van rolled to a stop next to us again. "How you guys doing out here?" He asked us. "I was thinking. I can give you a ride if you want to pay me for gas." He smiled, quite pleased with himself at finding a way to help out his cousins.
"I don't have any money, but Eli'll give you some gas money when we get to the house," Mike told him. Kenny shook his head. He wasn't falling for that one. We were in the middle of a huge gas crisis, and the price for regular was at an all-time high of $1.35 a gallon; this equates to $3.62 in today's smaller dollars.
"Sorry, but I don't trust you. You have to pay me up front." I didn't blame him; I didn't trust Mike either. Kenny looked sad that his solution to our problem wasn't working out so well for him. "Gas is expensive, and how do I know her mom will give me gas money like you say?" He had a good point. Even if he was a jerk.
Despite my mother saying, "Hey, Mike, you'll need to put gas in the car. Here's five dollars," before we'd left the house, he was insisting we had no money. That's when my big mouth opened up and out poured the honesty.
"Mom gave you money for gas. Give it to him before he leaves us and we die out here!" Mike glared at me. Kenny looked at him, brightening up at the prospect of his solution becoming yet again workable. "He's got five bucks on him." I crossed my arms and stared at them both, wondering exactly how many circles of Hell there really were to consign them to.
Yanking a five out of his pocket, Mike shoved it at Kenny. As he made the five dollars disappear forever, Kenny said, "Well, this van's a real gas hog, and I'll still have to come all the way back out here for work. This isn't enough."
Right after the yelling stopped, Mike and Kenny negotiated a deal: Kenny got to keep the five bucks, and when we got to my house my mom would give Kenny another $10. The five that Mike had given him was penalty money for lying, and my mom wasn't supposed to know about it. Kenny was again pleased with himself, having figured out how to salvage his rescue operation and acquire beer money as part of the deal.
My mom paid Kenny the ten bucks Mike had promised, but I'm pretty sure that's the last time Kenny was ever invited to our house.
Luke and the Butt Tick
About a week before we found out she had Lyme's disease, I'd made my husband check the girl child for ticks.
"Hey, isn't there manly man stuff outside for me to do?" Ticks are creepy and gross. How much manlier could he get?! Head checks were his job!
A few days later, I learned that the population density of the deer tick, carrier of Lyme's disease, can be plotted at the CDC website. If you look at the blackest, densest part of that graph, you'll see that it's in central New Jersey. If you look closely enough at that dense blackness, you'll see my old house.
Anyway, while I'm clearly not a fan of New Jersey, it does have its good points. It has beautiful beaches, some excellent colleges, the Pine Barrens, and great Italian restaurants. Also, it gave us The Sopranos, which redeems them quite a bit, really. They don't mention ticks in the brochures, though.
We had two acres of woods, a dog, a cat, and five kids; daily tick checks were essential. Especially for the girl. The girl with long hair. Who liked to sneak the long-haired cat into her room to trap, I mean cuddle, at night. But even with the best precautions, in the four years we lived in Jersey, we pulled hundreds of ticks off of ourselves, the kids, and our pets.
It was one of those sweltering summer spells, the kind that ensure you a $500 electric bill, when I noticed that Luke, one of our cats, was dragging his butt back and forth across the carpet. Wiggling his rear, he mewled gutturally, scootching himself along the floor. Turning around, he dragged himself back the other direction. After watching him do this a few times, it was clear he wasn't just trying to scratch his oversized butt as he made his way toward the food bowl. So I figured it was time to investigate.
Picking up the cat, I looked him over for easy fixes, like burrs or broken legs or a chewed up tail or something.
Lifting his tail, the problem was obvious. Luke had a tick, and it was sticking out of his butt. The tiny, still mostly flat tick had embedded itself in the sphincter; only its abdomen showed. Poor, desperate Luke. No creature should have to endure that. Naturally, I called my husband.
"Luke has a tick in his butt. He's trying to scrape it off on the carpet." I watched Luke drag himself across the floor again. He stared at me, silently begging for help, eyes filled with misery.
"You're not thinking of taking the cat to the vet for this are you?" The bastard. "No way plucking a tick out of his butt's worth two hundred bucks." I hung up. And as the day moved on, the tick grew. By the time my husband got home from work Luke's butt tick was fat and bloated, ripe for the picking.
Annoyingly, the husband made a good case for holding the dangerous end of the cat, meaning that I was in charge of the tweezers. Believe me, this was not Plan A. In fact me working the tweezers was somewhere around Plan D. Or F. So I got to be protected by the strong manly-man who selflessly volunteered to keep the cat from hurting me, and at great danger to himself, or so he claimed. Yay, me!
Experienced cat stalkers that we are, our suddenly suspicious cat was faster. Somehow clued in to our evil scheme, he zipped across the room and flew down the stairs. Skulking behind him, I tried grabbing him before he slipped under the couch. Five minutes later, we dragged Luke out from under the couch, shredding carpet in his wake.
We wrapped the cat in a towel, carefully and firmly restraining all of the stabby and bitey parts. Taking a deep breath, I gingerly reached toward his butt, lifted his tail, and tried to grab the tick with my tweezers without getting my face to close to ground zero. My aim wasn't so great; the point of my tweezers poked him.
He stiffened. Yelping like a puppy, Luke's butt contracted. It sucked the entire tick back inside of the cat's butt by at least a centimeter. A couple of minutes later, I watched with fascinated horror as his butt give birth to the tick. Trying again with even less success, the cat twitched convulsively, growling at us. Our plan wasn't working very well, probably because I was trying to avoid getting too close.
"Hurry this up. He's stabbing me through the towel, and I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to restrain him without hurting him."
Glaring at the husband and taking a deep breath, I made a resolution: I would not fear the butt. I leaned in and went to work. Getting a good grip on the tick this time, my husband tightened his hold on the cat. Slowly, steadily, I pulled on the tick. I knew that a quick tug would very likely break the tick, leaving its head embedded in Luke's butt - on the wrong side of his sphincter. I needed to avoid that.
Sometimes, there are things in life that don't need to be experienced. This was one of them. Let me just say that soft, moist tissue in most mammals is potentially stretchy. However, there's a fine line between "potentially stretchy" and "can span multiple zip codes."
Imagine turning a skinny, wet pink balloon inside out. And then a cat screaming, breaking loose, and running across the house. Yeah, it was kinda like that, only louder and much more horrifying. The tick dangled and squirmed off the end of my tweezers. I would have smiled, but the sight of Luke's inside-out butt had traumatized me.
I'm happy to report that the cat's butt had plenty of elasticity left, and Luke was fine. Within the hour, he crawled out from under the couch and slinked past me with almost no suspicion in his eyes. It's a little bit sad that he never understood what an enormous favor we did for him that day. I guess that's one of the downsides to being a cat.
The John Scale
“Was it worth five dollars?” My husband asked. He was looking expectantly at me, waiting to sign off on our bill for breakfast.
I didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely. It’s really busy, but she was quick. Plus, she’s way low on the John Scale.” The John Scale is a financial feedback tool which inversely correlates how much you tip with how annoying your server is. This system isn’t based on percentages or quality of service. It rose from a singularly hellish experience with a waiter named John, and is entirely subjective.
I never actually saw him with his mouth closed, but I'm pretty sure John looked like a 26-year-old version of Martin Short. Skinnier maybe, and not quite as tall. Seconds after being seated, John was at our table taking our drink orders. "How are you tonight?" He was very friendly. And had a compulsive need to make friends with people who were trying to eat.
My husband tensed up as John hovered. He hates questions with obvious answers. "We're hungry and thirsty. We'd like some water to get started with. No ice." John dashed off to get the water.
"Don't you be mean to him, I don't want them to do anything to my food," I told my annoyed husband. “Besides, he looks kind of like Martin Short, twenty years ago. I like Martin Short.”
"Fine. I just wanted to get him away from the table for a second while I look at the me..." John materialized next to me.
"Here you go! All sparkling and clean! The perfect way to quench that thirst. Can I get you anything else?" He'd snuck up from nowhere, scaring the hell out of me, and delivered two ice-packed glasses of water. "Oh, I'm sorry; I didn't mean to startle you. I'll come up from the other direction next time so you can see me..."
My husband said, "But..."
"...and we won't have any more issues with me scaring you like that. Can I get you something?" He begged.
Some air, maybe? "Coffee, please." I needed the caffeine; watching John made me tired.
Making a little tent with his fingers, he somehow managed to purse his lips and give us a toothy smile, all at the same time. He looked like the Church Lady. Turning toward my husband, John waited expectantly.
"I'd like some more water." My husband slurped the few ounces of water from the gaps in the ice in less than a second. "But no more ice." He hadn't mentioned the ice before; he was afraid it would encourage John to talk.
Realizing his mistake, John wrung himself some more, contorting like a two-year-old doing the Potty Dance™. He nearly collapsed onto the table between us, an apologetic mass of flailing limbs and twisted torso.
"No, really, it's okay. There's only like one or two ice cubes in it." My husband managed to blurt out an entire sentence before John started crying.
John was stricken. "Ok, you don't like ice, got it! Let me take that away and I'll get you a glass of water without ice." He snaked his hand across the table, in front of my husband’s face. Normally, it's a bad idea to do that when he's contemplating meat. At times, it's downright dangerous.
My husband was quick, and reached the glass first. Startled, John jumped back several inches. The husband bared his teeth (he claims he was smiling) and growled, "No, I'll keep this ice and use a little of it in the glass of water you bring."
Clearly distressed, John emitted a string of barely intelligible words, all mushed together. Whatever he was trying to say, it sounded a bit like, "You mean you want only a little ice? I'll get you a glass of water with light ice!" Plus a bunch of apologetic babbling.
"No. Plain water. In a new glass with no more ice."
Desperate smile still plastered on his face, John abruptly turned, and then backed away in the opposite direction of sneaking up on me. He tried to catch my attention. From the corner of my eye, I saw him wave his arms. Despite my resolve, and the husband saying, "Don't do it; be strong!" I had to look.
He slapped himself in the face. We gaped. This couldn’t be for real! We looked for the cameras. There had to be cameras.
Slapping himself a few more times, John flailed and pretended to fall. It was like watching a marionette. If that was his way of screaming, “I'm an idiot!” he pretty much got the point across.
Bowing and flopping as though he’d just stepped out of Cartoon Land, our distraught (and slightly disturbed) waiter miraculously tripped along to the kitchen without killing himself.
Huddled over the table, furtively glancing toward the kitchen, we formed an Alliance. Escape wasn't an option at that point; we'd already ordered our food. There wasn't enough time to get a restraining order. Prisoners are often given very little time to themselves; we had mere seconds to plan our strategy. We had to fight back!
John thrived on attention. Eye contact. He sought eye contact. We readied our first offensive. No more eye contact! Not for John!
Ninety seconds later (!), he was back with the manager on duty and some lame excuse as to why a steakhouse is out of prime rib at 6:30pm. Standing next to her, his distress grew; he continued to wring himself. Now, there’ve been plenty of times when I’ve ordered something, only to find out they’d run out of it forty-two seconds before my butt hit the seat. But it usually doesn’t require a manager and self-flagellation, right?
I declined the free dessert and chose a different steak. The manager ran away and hid.
Our food finally came. Despite John's valiant efforts to be bestest friends EVAR with us, we managed to respond to him in non-leading monosyllables to keep the encounter short. He left the food and walked away, dejected in his failure to engage us.
"Is he watching?" asked the husband.
"Yes, and he looks very sad." Genuine evil sparkled in my husband's eyes. He’s lucky he has me to moderate him; there’s no telling how much trouble he’d get into otherwise.
But I already knew what he was going to say. "I can't wait until they have robots for this. It would surely save lives." Visions of his collection of eleventy-bazillion servo motors ran through my head. Sigh.
Judging from the incident with the toll booth guy, I think he's right.
I Didn’t Need That Dumb Program Anyway, Right?
I got my first computer during my final year of college. Custom built for me by my best friend, it sported a processor that smoked (compared to the school lab computers, that is) and came with its own copy of Leisure Suit Larry. I was hooked from the sound of that first wrrrroooooooooo! as my own, personal copy of Windows 3.1 came to life.
I’d recently taken a work study position as a computer lab assistant. How I got that job is a mystery, given that I was in school for Geology and Creative Writing, but I was instantly hooked. That little ugly box was connected to maybe a thousand people! And they were all mean and arrogant toward each other and nobody was dying! I dove right in, figuring that my natural personality would fit right in.
A few of the other lab assistants took me under their wings, showing me how to unfreeze the lab computers for the students and also how to waste time on the Internet. This was the early days of the Internet, before the web got really rolling and we still got regular warnings from snotty (they were all snotty back then, unlike today) system administrators that every word we wrote was being transmitted and re-transmitted all across the world and that all the pennies needed for connection fees added up to something like the price of a small island.
So because every word written supposedly cost the world $10,000, we didn't get a copy of Netscape. Instead, we all logged into the web with a text program called Lynx. It was kinda cute, but the action was in Usenet where there were topics about anything you could think of, almost a thousand different topics – one for every person in the Internet, almost.
It didn’t take me long to realize my empty soul would only find solace in ownership. Sitting around in the lab all night was starting to attract attention from some of the CompSci students, and their aggressive “recruiting” efforts were starting to make me think there were no girls in CompSci, which was just plain freaky. So I got a computer that I couldn't afford, custom built for me by one of my best friends, Chris.
The first thing I did was install WordPerfect; the second was to figure out how to use my modem. I was in! Connected! If I'd known that this tubes thing would advance to the point where my husband obsessively reads RSS feeds on his CrackBerry during dinner, while driving (!), in the bathroom, walking down the hallway, and I don't want to know where else, I'd have been a bit less enamored.
Mid-terms were only a few days away, and I’d written three papers already. It was nearly midnight, and I was working on a critique for someone in my writer’s group, when I encountered my first problem; I was out of disk space! So I obviously started deleting things. At first it was old files in the temp directory. That didn’t help much, so I deleted other old files and non-essential programs. And I still didn't have disk space to spare. Perusing the file system, I saw that there were a few large programs that I never used (such as Word). Looking deeper, I came across one program that was not only enormous, but I had never even used it. Obviously, it was unnecessary. It needed killing! I deleted it, then rebooted my system.
Nothing happened. I pushed the power button again. The disk revved up, but it wouldn't boot. Just as I was ready to smack the side of it (hey, it works on TVs!), the monitor lit up. And it told me to put in the boot disk. Having no idea what this "boot disk" thing was, I did the one smart thing of the day: I called Chris.
"Hey, something's wrong with my computer," I got right to the point. "It won't start up and I have a paper due and I'm freaking out here. Help!" I was getting more frustrated and upset by the second. My brand-new, expensive computer that I was so proud of was now a doorstop.
"Don't worry; we'll fix it. So, what did you do?" Now, most people probably wouldn't ask that. Most people would probably assume that something was actually wrong with the computer. But this is me we're talking about, and Chris has been my friend forever, so he knows better.
"Nothing! I was out of memory, so I deleted a few things. But that's all, I swear!" I kept pushing the button. It didn't help, but the clicky noise made me feel better.
"You have plenty of memory. You must have been out of disk space." Memory, disk space, whatever. Good thing he couldn't see me roll my eyes at him. Then he cautiously asked me, "What did you delete?"
"A bunch of college papers, a few games, that Word program, and some other stuff," I rattled off a few more things, then said, "Oh. There was one program that was really big, and I never use it, so I got rid of it too." This conversation was going nowhere. He wasn't listening to me!
"Um, Vic, what was the name of that program?" He croaked. He sounded frightened, with a dash of hopeful thrown in for good measure.
"Dee Oh Ess. Or whatever." I was getting crankier by the minute.
"You mean... DOS?" This time, I could swear he was choking back laughter.
"Yes, that one! I never use it. I only use Windows. It was huge and I didn't need it sucking up all of my memory." You see, I didn't know much about computers, but I was smart enough to know that I had Windows. But I didn't do any of that DOS stuff because Windows was so much, um, prettier. So I got rid of it.
Note to self: This was a Bad Thing. A realllllly Bad Thing.
"Oh, God. You didn't." But I did. I'd deleted DOS. "Oh, man, Vic, this is bad, this is very, very bad.” My heart crushed, he ground it in a little, “You NEVER delete DOS.” My heart rate doubled and I felt sick. No one had ever told me you needed DOS in order to run Windows. And it was now sounding like I destroyed the poor thing that I couldn’t afford in the first place.
After he’d had his fun with me, making me think the little computer chips were melting and a bunch of other evil stuff, he got down to business. Three hours later, Chris was out of Mountain Dew, so he set me free. He said that any of the guys down in the computer lab would be able to help out (thank you Matt, wherever you are.)
It was a long night. I was exhausted and I think I had a little heart attack and maybe a stroke, judging from the new facial tic, but on the bright side, I learned a valuable technique for keeping future husbands on their toes.
Alcatraz on Wheels
If I don't lose my keys at least once a week it's probably because I lost my other shoe and couldn't go anywhere to lose them. Usually, I find them clipped to a shopping cart or in my five-year-old's pocket (he takes after his father).
In my defense, I've had a lot of kids and pregnancy shrinks your brain. Yeah, sure the doctors say you get it all back 6 to 12 months later, but they lie: you don't get it all back. Some of that brain matter gets all stuck to itself and you only get, say, 80-90% of it back. Do that half a dozen times, and it really adds up!
So there I was, sitting in my car rifling through a stack of school papers, mail, and electrical cords looking for my Costco card. My husband stared at me and shook his head. "I'm going inside. I'll be waiting for you at the Customer Service desk getting a temporary card." Muttering, I waved him away, annoyed that I couldn't find a brightly-colored piece of plastic.
He got out; I barely noticed that he locked the car. He does that when he's annoyed that my get-my-stuff-and-exit-the-car procedure takes too long. It's not like I can't remember to lock the door myself.
Sometime during this intense, methodical excavation of my car's innards it dawned on me that I'd last seen it sitting on top of the dresser. Great. I'd have to stand in line for a temporary card. I reached over and unlocked my door.
"Flip-SNICK!"
It immediately relocked itself. Surprised, I tried again and got another flip-SNICK! for my effort. My new Toyota was trying to out-think me!
I prepared for battle. I came to the logical conclusion that I just wasn't fast enough. Holding the door handle gently with my right hand, my left index finger softly resting on the lock button. Quicker than a greased cat in a laundry chute, I made my move: snapping the button into the unlocked position, I instantly drew back the handle.
Naturally, the security system deduced that it was being broken into from the inside. In my experience, people usually ignore screamy cars. However, sometimes your high-tech, smart car alarm is synchronized with flashing interior lights, and when it's dark outside, it's a great show for people who want to ogle the hostage.
Note to self: it's impossible to hide under the dash of a screaming, flashing car in a parking lot full of people.
Pretending not to be mortified, I waved at a few gawkers while trying to think of ways to escape the car. My cell was at home; my keys were lost in the husband's pockets. Having no intelligent ideas for escape, naturally the situation required a temper tantrum.
As I slammed things around near the center console, I heard a faint, metallic jingle from deep within. No way! I jabbed at it again. Ting! Okay, it was probably just our spare key to the truck. Theoretically, I always kept it in the car so I'd know where it was. Having nothing better to do until my husband finally realized I was never going to make it inside of Costco, I figured I might as well excavate the ting!-y thing buried in there.
Like most center consoles, this would normally require power tools and a hazmat suit to safely penetrate the stratified layers of stuffage. Despite my lack of proper supplies, I had a safety pin, a piece of string, and a stick of chewing gum. I could MacGyver my way into the console!
Buried under three weeks of unopened bills and a green, sandwich-shaped hockey puck one of the kids had hidden there, I found that spare set of keys I'd temporarily misplaced a few weeks earlier. I clearly hadn't lost them at all!
But it was the valet key. For those of you without a high-tech prison on wheels, the valet key is special in that it lets you drive the car but not open the glove box. Who knew what would happen if you put the key in the ignition while the car thought it was being broken into from the inside?
I'm a risk-taker. I put the key in the ignition and turned the key.
No explosions. No secret car-cell phone calls to the cops. Just silence. Yay, for freedom! Now I could go inside and tell my husband what an inconsiderate jerk he was for imprisoning me in a mean-spirited gadget.
I found my husband waiting for me inside the door. Approaching him with great vengeance and ferocious anger, I was poised to smite when he smiled at me and said, "Oh there you are. Hey, I found my Costco card in my wallet."
"I was locked in the car."
He stared at me as if those words made no sense. It didn't do his case any good that he had a point thinking that.
"It wouldn't let me out." Blank stare. "Every time I unlocked it, it locked itself back up." He started to smile. "And when I tried to trick it, the alarm went off." For some reason, his fit of laughter took the steam out of my anger.
"Programmers. It figures." Now, this might have been snarky from a non-engineer, but over the years I've learned that the different types of magic aren't all the same; there's a hierarchy, and most engineers think their branch of magic is at the peak of this hierarchy. Whatever that is. "They probably didn't bother getting their security model validated."
"You're talking that gibberish that sounds like English again."
"Sorry. I promise that the next time you're slow I won't lock you in, OK?" Then he hugged me.
And amazingly enough, I didn't kick him in the shin.
Watch That Center Line, Jethro
It was one of the few times I've ever been on time to anything. We'd arrived early to meet with the rest of the students taking Geology of the Grand Canyon. I should've known we were doomed. There's a cosmic inversion of luck between my time of arrival and the time of departure. The earlier and more prepared I am, the worse things are going to go. My current theory is that if I'm too early I become an object at rest, unable to repel the cosmic cursewaves.
My boyfriend's truck was loaded with a week's worth of camping supplies and gear for more than two dozen students. We started our caravan to the Grand Canyon almost an hour behind schedule because nearly a third of the class, one professor, and the guy in charge of picking up the college van still used sundials to tell time. Literally. They'd stand and point at the sun and the shadows and argue about it.
We were passing through downtown Blinkenmissit, Utah, when the flashy lights in the side mirrors caught our attention. "Huh," I said. "He must be after someone." A quick, paranoid check confirmed that we weren't speeding.
Half of a mile later, the police car bleeped at us. The officer was gesturing for us to pull over. I said, "Apparently, he's after us." We pulled over while the rest of our caravaners slowed to snicker and point as they passed us.
Rolling down his window as the officer approached, Boyfriend said, "Can I help you officer?" We hadn't broken any traffic laws, and all of our lights were working properly. We were on the side of the road and no one else was around. Scenes from The Hitcher and Macon County Line flashed through my head. I glanced over to make sure the cop didn't look like Rutger Hauer or Jethro.
Thumbs hitched to his belt, the cop thrust forward his ample belly, snapped his gum, and drawled, "You were driving too close to the center line."
Huh? How does one drive "too close" to the center line? As in many very important life boundaries, I was certain this one came under the "breaking the plane" rule.
Boyfriend's mouth said, "Um, I'm not sure what you mean by "too close." Are we getting a ticket or something?" But his eyes clearly said, "Are you out of your mind?" Officer Jethro immediately changed tactics, and harassed us about a small crack in the passenger side of the windshield instead. Because that wasn't nearly as stupid. Once again, I tested fate by pointing out that the windshield was, in fact, legal due to size and placement of the crack.
Twenty minutes later, Officer Jethro generously let us go without a ticket for doing nothing wrong. Yay! The system works! We escaped, carefully driving in the exact center of the lane for the rest of Utah.
The truck, sensing our relief, started making scary noises. "Wheel bearing," said my boyfriend, the mechanic. "I had a feeling this would happen. I'll repack it Tuba City when we meet up with the van." In a sunbaked (yes I know that's redundant for Arizona) empty lot he magically produced wrenches, tools and new bearing junk that he'd brought along "just in case."
A wrench flashing brightly in the mid-day Arizona sun, causes instantaneous brain damage to every man within 500ft of it. Like raccoons, every male student in our caravan gravitated toward the shiny object. A pack of them wandered over to stand around near the truck and talk about Man Stuff. Boyfriend plowed through the crowd, scooted under the front of the truck, and stated, "Why don't you guys go get something to eat. It'll take me 45 minutes at most to fix this." Ha.
I'm not sure if it was the sweltering midday heat or a sudden build-up of testosterone at the sight of power tools. The men morphed into instant experts on all things bearings. And they were in a sharing mood. Frustrated, and out of goopy stuff, we sent a few of the more "helpful" guys to find a parts store.
Boyfriend grimly worked on his task, surrounded by eleventy-billion college students who were all arguing about the best way to repack wheel bearings, when an unfamiliar voice sliced through the clamor, "You sure you doin' that right?"
We'd been infiltrated by a tiny, 200 year old Navajo with a big bottle of whiskey and three fuzzy teeth. He was armed with toxic halitosis and an apparent aversion to water; we were careful not to get too close. Leaning down to get a better look, he told my boyfriend, the mechanic, "I know a thing or two about packin' bearings" With bleary eyes and a wide, gaping grin he and several of his magically appearing friends settled in with the undergrads to advise and annoy Boyfriend.
After two hours, several whiners, one near-fight, and another drunken local, we were back on the road! We headed toward the Grand Canyon, our camp site, and the promise of a shower. Boyfriend, having had enough advice crossed the Reservation in record time. In the exact center of the lane.
We pulled in at almost ten o'clock that night. Four hours late, sunburned, dirty, and itchy from sweat, we arrived in time to set up camp in the middle of a freak blizzard and two feet of snow.
I slept in a bed that night. Visa rocks.