Gram Belle

I wake up in the dark to the sound of my grandmother’s voice coming loudly from my cell phone which has slipped down my pillow. “That damned husband of hers had better not mouth off again. He really doesn’t want to mess with me, does he Boo?”

Pretending I have not dozed off and have no idea if we’re talking about a family member or a soap opera character I say, “No ma’am. He sure doesn’t.” I look at the alarm clock across the room and when my nearsighted squint clears the red digital glow I see that it is almost 3am. Gram picks up the conversation and after five minutes of context clues I determine that we are talking about my aunt and her newish husband, who really is turning out to be a no-count dick.
This isn’t an odd scenario for us, we’ve always been abnormally close. My mother is a career woman who took her only child to her mother’s house to get on and off the bus while she worked her way up the corporate ladder. It was in the hours after school that Gram taught me how to play poker, Foxtrot, and walk the line between a lady and a good time. On some rainy days when a particularly good sale was going on or a major story line on General Hospital was slated to unravel, Gram would call my mother to tell her I had developed a strange cough and would need to be in for the day. My mom caught on quick, but reprimanded us only when I got close to the absentee limits. My grandmother loves to tell stories about how I would bring her flowers, statuettes, and other treasures stolen from the yards of neighbors. She leaves out that she kept them all.

As we both grew older our relationship changed. I became a latchkey kid and she went a little nutty, confining herself to her bedroom. I visited to gossip, help her balance the checkbook and file her mail. After I started driving I would sign myself out of school to take her to a doctor’s appointment. At seventeen, I became anxiety ridden and depressed and she was the only one with the sense to give me a Vicodin and a splash of sherry and really really listen to what I was feeling.

When I left for college My Gram and I had both evolved into creatures who consumed mind altering substances and kept strange hours. We became the best of late night phone friends and in ten years our conversations haven’t really changed. She tells me about her aches and pains and reads me letters from her first love. I sing Patsy Cline on request and we discuss the escapades of day time television characters. Occasionally though, one of us slips up and the benign conversation gets interesting. Our loose lips bond us and on nights when we are both particularly bored with life and our drugs of choice. We enter the walk-in closet and toss family skeletons back and forth.

These calls are where I learned that my aunt was pregnant, my grandfather had cancer and my uncle was getting divorced. It was during one of these calls that I found out that my mother was born out of wedlock and that my Pa-Pa was not my biological grandfather. My grandfather is a retired lawyer who lives in Chicago and was a prick to my mother when she went to meet him the year she turned sixteen. My Pa-Pa was the submarine sailor who went AWOL to marry my nylon model of a grandmother in 1960. He adopted my mother and raised her as his own, his “Ichiban Baby-san.” Two children followed my uncle and aunt, and the family moved to Aiea, Hawaii to reside on the naval base.

The woman has lived three lives in seventy-two years and I wonder what it must feel like to be done. I want to be done. I want to know if I’ll ever have babies and what they’ll be like when they grow up. I want to know if I’ll marry and to know who will die first. I want to know my happiest time and my saddest time and know that everything else is going to fall somewhere in the middle of the road. I want to sleep when I want, eat what I want and tie a scarf around my head before I leave the house.

On the other end of the phone, I hear her light another cigarette and I reach for one of my own.

Grace-ful John

I was sitting gin a hotel room in New York City last Thursday on the second day of the PhotoPlus convention I was attending with my colleagues. As a pro photography lab, our company was an exhibitor, which meant 10 hours on our feet each day, no time for breaks (or eating for that matter) during the show, and horrendous color coordinated outfits. On Thursday night, we all drudged back to the hotel exhausted and ready to finally sit down for a meal. My cell rang as we were deliberating whether or not to make reservations or venture out onto the street without them, and my Dad was on the other line.

"John Shank passed away," he almost whispered. I didn't understand what he said at first and asked him to repeat it. "John Shank passed away," he said again in a slight yell. I think he must have been terrified knowing that John, just a few years older than himself, dropped dead without warning.

John was the father of Carrie Shank, a dear childhood friend and friend to this day. Although we lead very different lives, mine in the city and hers in the country, we always manage to reconnect whenever it is that we see each other again. Carrie is expecting a baby in mid-December and I actually visited her just two weeks ago at the baby shower. We had spoken when she found out she was pregnant and again when she found out baby Grace's sex, but I hadn't actually seen her with that tummy. I teared up as I wrapped my arms around her for a hug and that bump hugged me back. She looked just gorgeous.

That Shanks were the family always brave enough to invite all the kids to their house, so growing up, their farm was the epicenter of parties, sleepovers, and swimming in the summer. Mrs. Shank, Sharon, loved a busy house and John just went along for the ride. Although there was a time or two when my Mom dragged me away from such parties because the Shank's weren't home to supervise, John and Sharon were always on their way home or not far away and would call my Mom to explain and ask if I could come back.

Sharon was so proud at the shower and thrilled to see me there. We too hugged and she asked about my upcoming wedding, my parents and brothers. It had been a long time since I had seen her so happy. She had a particularly hard time when Carrie, the only girl in the family, went away to college. She shut down and just looked empty when I happened to bump in her the few times I was back in our hometown. Yet, at the shower, she was surrounded by several old girlfriends with whom she had reconnected, laughing and telling stories.

When I got the news, I collapsed back on the hotel bed and asked a blur of questions. John had celebrated his 55th birthday with his entire family and headed home after dinner to fix the mailbox he had accidentally run over with his tractor. A neighbor found him minutes after he collapsed. He died at the end of his driveway from a massive heart attack. When I got as many answers as there were to be had, I hung up the phone and started to cry.

I wasn't exactly what I would call "friends" with John, he was my father's age after all, but he was a part of my life as a teen and most importantly, Carrie's Dad. What hurt most was that my friend had lost her father. It stung even more knowing that baby Grace was just a few weeks away from meeting her grandpa. And what about Sharon? I'm sure when Carrie left home for college and eventually got married and moved out, Sharon turned to John for support. I am confident he was an integral part of helping her cope and bringing her back to life. Now, he had left her too, but this time it was forever.

Of course friends and family asked the typical questions, "why did John have to die?," "why was he taken at such a young age?," but all I could think was "why right now?" People die, I've come to terms with that, and it can sometimes happen when least expected, but didn't John deserve to live just two more months to see the birth of his first grandchild? Kiss her just once? What could the family have done to be punished so severely? This is something I don't think I'll ever be able to wrap my head around.

I am not a religious person, but I think I am spiritual, and I truly believe that John will be a part of baby Grace, beyond simply genetics. I want to hope that he will be felt in the hospital room that day in December and when Carrie and Sharon look at that precious newborn, they will also see a rebirth of John.

Of Mice and Yen, or: How I Learned to Use My Japanese Washer and Dryer

What do you fear most?

I fear that “technology” has left me so far behind that I’ll never catch up. I don’t Twitter, I don’t have a My Face Space . . . Book, whatever. And until this class, I didn’t blog.

I’m also afraid of being eaten by a shark.

Dying in a plane crash sounds horrific. Not the dying part, but the screaming-on-the-way-down part, knowing I shall certainly not land softly and unharmed.

I’m terrified of mice, and their chubbier, pinker-tailed cousins, the rats.

So my worst fear might be boarding a doomed flight piloted by two mice so busy linking on their laptops that they overshoot their landing zone and run out of fuel over the sharky parts of the Pacific.

But it’s really the rats that make me feel the icy hand of fear at the small of my back.

I don’t think I had this problem when I was very young. No mouse trauma that I can recall. Once, when I was in college, living at the illustrious Wentworth Domicile and Partyshack, a mouse scrambled over my roommate’s foot while we were standing around discussing the latest panty-raid. I don’t remember being particularly troubled by witnessing this event, but then again, the mouse was smaller than some of the Palmetto bugs that used to crunch under our bare feet as we stepped into the shower.

No, I believe I can trace the origins of my fear to a summer night in 1988. I was a newly married girl-woman fresh off the boat in Okinawa. Consider that the first year of marriage is daunting enough in familiar surroundings, and then ask yourself: Who would want to make that any harder? The United States Marine Corps, that’s who. We’d barely crossed the threshold when some crusty CO handed my husband orders for the aptly named “unaccompanied tour” on an island in the South China Sea. This is when I came to understand the military maxim “if we wanted you to have a spouse, we would have issued you one.” They can’t tell you that you cannot follow your beloved, but they can make you wish you’d never set foot in the land of monsoons and bike-rusting humidity. Uncle Sam does not pay, on unaccompanied tours, for your stuff to follow you, nor does he pay for you to live with other Americans in the womb-like comfort of the base. You are on your own, baby, living with the locals, scrounging for furnishings and friends, and as an added incentive for never attempting to buck the natural order of unaccompanied tours again, the Corps waits until you’ve been on your new island just long enough to remember what your spouse looks like, and then whisks him off to some place you are most definitely not allowed to go. Ha! That’ll show you.

I was undeterred. I loved our apartment that smelled like soy sauce from the restaurant below. I loved my bilingual neighbor from Nagasaki who told me Hurry up! A Marine just left all his furniture in the dumpster! I grew to love the caribou, hooked by a nose ring to a post by the road. I even loved my stupid little red car that fostered a new kind of independence in me – that of a young woman who knew how to put clutch fluid in the proper receptacle so she could make it home, and who knew how to hitch a ride when she ran out of clutch fluid. I taught English, got paid in yen, ate a live shrimp, read a bunch of bad novels and some good ones, and missed my husband. I was alive.

I was not, however, of a mind to learn to use the washer and dryer in our apartment. It was a tiny, stacked model, with the operating instructions written in Japanese, so I just bundled up my weekly wash load and drove it out to the base for a rip-roaring evening of standing around the laundry facility, watching whatever baseball game the Marines happened to be playing on the field by the bachelor officer’s quarters.

The washers and dryers lined each wall of a small cinderblock hallway, with a bank of sea-salted windows on the side overlooking the field. A door, always left open in the humid summer, led to the parking lot. I was usually alone when I got there, and sometimes lonely. The smell of soapy laundry mixed with ocean breeze soothed me. Since I’d worked my way through a summer Physics class at a laundromat, I considered myself a professional laundress, and I kept hoping some feckless Marine would come in needing my assistance, perhaps some advice on how to determine if those middling colors belonged with darks or whites. But no one asked for my help.

One evening, as I rested my hip against the pulsing dryer next to the open door, I saw from the corner of my eye a large something waddling through the doorway toward my feet. I looked down in time to see the biggest damn rat I had ever seen in my life just before it disappeared, with some difficulty, beneath the dryer on which I was leaning. Because it did not streak or whip or zip or any other fast verbs that I usually associated with vermin, I had ample time to see the fat, plodding gray body squeeze itself under my dryer, long fleshy tail in tow.

I believe I screamed. I know I jumped on top of that dryer with complete disregard for any damage it might incur. As blood drained from my head to protect my vital organs, frantic thoughts vied for top position in my mind. Could I fit through the window? What would I do for clothes? How the hell did it fit under there? Was it still there? I needed to look, but I couldn’t look. I was afraid if I saw it again I would faint and drop onto the floor where it would surely attack me. Paralyzing fear froze my innards, and I was unable to move voluntarily, though shudders kept racking my frame.

Just as I had resigned myself to standing on the dryer and screaming until someone heard me, Grant walked through the open doorway. Grant was another Marine and a friend from the States, not to mention my savior in a white polo. He wanted to know what I was doing on top of the dryer with a very pale face.

“There’s a rat under here.”

He laughed and leaned on the dryer.

“No, I mean a really big one.”

But Grant just continued to smile. “We used to have mice and rats in the walls of our house in Oklahoma,” he said. “He’s more scared of you than you are of him.”

I felt that was an arguable and imbecilic point, but I refrained from hysteria and from asking him if I could ride out on his back. He talked me down from the heights of fear like a psychologist does a jumper, and after a time, I became convinced my nemesis was gone – probably having slunk behind another machine. If he felt it, Grant never once showed the slightest squeamishness. He helped me get my clothes out of the dryer and walked me to my car, though I sprinted and he walked.

I learned to use that washer and dryer in my apartment. I learned to keep from overreacting whenever I thought I saw movement in my peripheral vision. I learned how to calm myself when visions of that gigantic rat encroached upon my nights alone. And I learned a useful technique for vanquishing fear. Nothing less than this, my friends: Send in the Marines.

Rotten Baby

The books, veterinarians, and our friends warned us that Bichons were known as attention-cravers. “High maintenance,” they said, “don’t let their small size fool you.” My parents took note of everyone’s advice, but their curiosity took the better of them when she was born on December 6, 2007.

The litter was unusually large. Bichon litters tend to consist of three to four pups, but she was from a litter of seven. “The more, the merrier!” I thought, even though they said large litters can create overly hyper, aggressive puppies. Still, my mom fell in love with her when holding her in the palm of her hand. I fell in love with her when I bathed her at the breeder’s house and her delicate white curls melted away in the sudsy water.

After much thought, we settled on the name “Missy.” She was, after all, going to be the proper miss-priss, well-trained type that would wear bows in her ears and pink princess t-shirts. But when we took her home, she knew we were mere fools at her disposal and “well-trained” flew through the doggy-door. If the pink fleece blanket, array of soft, plushy beds, or scattered bones didn’t give us away, well, maybe the fact that the house looked like PetSmart upchucked in it did.

It only took a couple of weeks for Missy to learn that her pleading, black-eyed stares would earn her scraps of steak and cheese at the dinner table, which soon transcended into packages of cheese bought especially for her at the grocery store. She learned when I ate a bowl of icecream that she could nuzzle her way onto my lap with a kiss and then freely dip her head into my bowl for licks. And she learned to sit at my father’s feet at night, when he read and ate snack mix.

After a couple of months, we quickly learned that bathroom doors must be kept shut. If a door were inadvertently cracked open, she’d edge her way in to snatch the ends of the dangling toilet paper. She’d then run through the bedrooms and down the hallway, all the while keeping yard upon yard of the quilted, perforated squares intact. I always knew when Missy had assailed the toilet paper, because I’d find mounds of it looped back into the holder by my mother.

It also didn’t take long for our clothing to accumulate small holes and tears from Missy’s constant nips and gnawing. I no longer have elbows on my favorite burgundy sweater or embroidery on my sweatshirts from Missy’s attacks. “No, no” my mother would sternly warn Missy while holding up her index finger. “Be the alpha male,” they said. But Missy would have none of it. She always responded with growls that ended with her lounging in to tap my mother’s finger with her nose as a final act of defiance.

And chase her tail? Oh no. Missy’s too smart for that. She literally catches her tail, even if it’s paired with a couple of yelps here and there. And when she’s done, she’s beaming, with clumps of hair hanging from her mouth.


These days, we are quite accustomed to Missy’s affinity for shredding paper. In fact, just the other day, she stumbled upon my father’s stack of insurance records that he hadn’t had time to file. Shredded paper can’t even begin to describe the mayhem in his office, which was reminiscent of the annual winter wonderlands in malls. Think of his office as layered with the plastic, artificial snow mounded around Santa’s chair.

“Rotten bay-beeeeeeee!” my father says every evening, when he steps in the door from work. “No touch, no talk, no eye contact,” they say. But he follows this with an upwards scooping of Missy who is still squealing and wriggling in his arms. She licks him everywhere—up his nose, in his mouth, on his glasses, in his ears. After my dad sits her back down on the floor, she runs in laps, faster than Danica Patrick could drive, around the house: through the hallway, kitchen, family room, living room, then back through the hallway, all the while half-shrieking, half throaty-growling this “raaaa—raaaaahh-raaa—rahhhhh!” of hers. This has been their routine for the past two years.

At night, Missy always curls up against me, and she nuzzles her nose in the nape of my neck. We share the same pillow, and I cover her up with my comforter until only the tip of her black nose peeks through. Her baby breath lands in soft poofs against my cheek, and I hear her snores. “I love you,” I say, “you’re mine.”

Par For The Course

I recently read an article about a mother and son who were kicked off of a Southwest flight because the child was unruly. What was most surprising to me wasn’t the crew’s decision to have the women ousted rather the reaction from people who read the article and posted comments. Most folks agreed with the crew but took it a step further and attacked the woman for allowing her two year old child to disturb others. Moreover, they expressed their disgust for passengers who show little if any consideration for the people around them. It got me thinking about all of the different times I’ve flown and the people I have encountered along my journeys some kind, some mean but all interesting.

My first flight was over thirteen years ago out of Dulles on British Airways. It had stormed all morning. The traffic jammed on the Toll Road leaving me with an anxious stomach and little time to get through the airport for my afternoon flight. I checked my bag and ran to the gate. Passengers were already boarding and my friend was restless waiting for me. “Finally,” she said. “I was getting worried.”

“Well, I’m here, so let’s go. Europe or bust!” I replied as my stomach turned.

We boarded our flight in very different states of minds. I was a nervous wreck and Em was calm. She was a seasoned traveler and wisely took Dramamine while waiting for me. As we settled into our seats, which were the middle two in a row of four, Em fell asleep. The rain continued and pelted the plane amplifying my anxiety. Forty five minutes later our flight ascended and the turbulence that followed turned my stomach against me for good.

No more than thirty minutes into the flight and I had filled up my barf bag and was searching for Em’s. She was fast asleep and unaware of my condition. The man next to me kindly offered up his bag. I smiled sheepishly and began to fill it. I wanted to crawl under the seat in embarrassment or at least get up and go to the restroom but the turbulence was so bad I couldn’t. The flight attendants weren’t even walking around. I just hunched over in my seat and cried. The kind man next to me rubbed my back and told me it would be okay. He was only a few years older than me and spoke with a British accent. And over the next five hours, he talked to me about home, travel, family and life and helped me get through my first flight.

The following Fall I moved to Charlotte and alternated driving and flying home. I also began to travel more with business, so flying became a common occurrence for me. It happened so often that I rarely got sick. Plus, the flights were short and didn’t allow much time for my stomach to attack. Closing my eyes and sleeping became my fail-proof remedy. One time though I sat next to a kid who had gas. It was the longest hour flight of my life. He didn’t say a word the entire time just smiled uncomfortably. If it wasn’t for the rancid stench coming from his direction, I would have felt sorry for the kid, who was about nine years old and travelling by himself. Instead, I did everything in my power not to look at him or utter a sound in his direction. I knew if I opened my mouth something embarrassing would come out. So, we both sat in silence.

In an attempt to drift away to another place, I closed my eyes. But the only thing in my mind was the scene from Tora! Tora! Tora! when the Japanese dropped bomb after bomb on Pearl Harbor. My eyes stayed open for the rest of the flight. My fail-proof remedy crashed and burned, and the short flight home was plenty of time for the boy’s stomach to declare war.

I eventually moved to Atlanta and flying became my only means of transportation home. There were planes of plenty in and out of Hartsfield-Jackson and they were always packed. I was flying back to Georgia from a long weekend with the family when a young blond woman asked if she could have my aisle seat. She said that her husband was sitting next to me and they were unable to get seats together. I agreed and asked where she was sitting. The woman pointed to a seat several rows back. I reached up to get my laptop out of the overhead as I was planning on using it in flight when she snapped, “Why do you need your bag? You’re just going over there. It’s not like anyone will take it.”

Several things ran through my head to say to her at that moment: I plan on using my laptop once we take off. I want to have my belongings near me during the flight. It’s none of your business. I’m giving you my damn seat, back off. I didn’t say any of them though. Instead I replied, “What does it matter?”

She barked back, “You don’t need your bag. You’re just going a few rows away.”

Why did this woman care so much about my bag? After all, she was getting what she wanted -- my seat. Did it really matter if I took a few extra minutes to remove my bag from the overhead? It wasn’t like we were taking off at that very moment.

My patience had faded and I regrettably retorted, “Do you want my seat or not?”

Her hands flew up in the air and she started yelling things I can’t recall. Her husband stood up and got involved. People were staring. I grabbed my bag and ran. I wasn’t ready for all that excitement. I just wanted to get home.

For the rest of the flight all I could think about was that woman and what happened. My stomach cramped from anxiety. I had sweat marks on my t-shirt. And I never opened my laptop bag.

Nowadays, I hardly ever fly. The few times that I do, I usually sleep or try keep to myself. When I do fly, I don’t want to be inconvenienced just as much as the next person but that is kind of par for the course. We can’t control what happens in the plane anymore than we can control the elements outside of it. You just have to go with the flow and hope the ride is full of sunshine and roses. Lots of sweet smelling roses.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33555007/ns/travel-news/

Columbus Day

When my son, Joel, was in elementary school, I was a working mom. That meant caretaking, meal making, housekeeping, homework battles, and bedtime stories after work. That meant shuttling the kids to choir, karate, gymnastics, or band after work. When permitted, I’d watch their activities—while paying the bills kept in my handbag. When not permitted, say by the director preparing choir for concert, I’d pop a wheelie out of the parking lot and squeeze in an hour’s worth of grocery shopping. Weekends and holidays were the same, except Columbus Day, my one day without work or activities.

Every year, I looked forward to Columbus Day when I had off while my husband worked and my kids went to school. For weeks, I’d plan the favorite thing I’d do that day, maybe book browse at Borders or shop at Pier I.

One Columbus Day I was home—feet up, sipping hot Lipton, laughing with I Love Lucy—when my second-grader’s school nurse called: “Your son has a fever and is complaining of a sore throat. Can you get him?” I rushed over. We went to the doctor, who prescribed Amoxicillin. After filling the prescription, we stopped for Slurpees. At home, he put on pajamas, and I read to him on the den couch until he fell asleep.

The next Columbus Day, I was on my way to Annapolis to visit the Main Street Gallery and sit on the pier to read a novel, when I got a phone call: “This is the school nurse. Your son has an upset stomach.” To my exasperated “are you sure?” she handed the phone to Joel, who begged, “Please come get me; I feel really sick.”

When I picked him up, he said “Can I get a movie from Blockbuster’s?” We rented the movie and bought ginger ale for his upset stomach. At home, after he put on pajamas, we watched the movie from the den couch, my arm wrapped around him.

The next Columbus Day, I didn't even remind my husband that I had off. Wanting to not jinx anything, I dressed in business clothes to drop the kids off at morning care. Later, I got the inevitable phone call.

Every year, the phone calls from the nurse got earlier and earlier. Eventually, I gave up making plans for myself and started looking forward to spending the day with my son. By the time he was in high school, all pretense was out the door and when I’d pick him up he’d say, “Mom, it’s a miracle—I feel better already!” At home we’d have naps, watch movies, and enjoy hot tea while reading novels on the den couch.

It’s Columbus Day. I rarely hear from him unless he’s read my cryptic text message: You still alive? Then, he’ll call and tell me the latest about sessions he’s teaching at Penn State.

"FIRE!"

The thing about emergencies is that there’s no hard and clear rule on when an “issue” escalates into a “crisis.”

A few months ago, a friend of mine and I were waiting for a table outside of a restaurant when we noticed smoke billowing out of a car. Watching it seemed only to fan the invisible flames, so I walked into the restaurant and informed the non-committal hostess of the event taking place outside. There, I thought, dusting it off my hands as I returned to my friend; not my problem. Yet that wonderful feeling of transference began to wear off as the minutes passed without a resolution. The restaurant was crowded, and as people began to take notice of the event, that sense of responsibility began to set back in. I mean, we did notice it first; didn’t that mean we had to take partial ownership, at least until the real owner of the car showed up?

My friend Jesse and I deliberated for a few minutes about what to do. “Do we call the fire department? It’s not very obviously a fire,” I said.

“I don’t even know the fire department’s number,” Jesse added.

“Isn’t it…9-1-1?” I pondered aloud. There is so much stigma associated with dialing the forbidden number that I hardly knew if we should have called. When the chef from the restaurant came out of the kitchen wielding a fire extinguisher and marched around the car scratching his head, Jesse however decided that it was time to phone in a professional. In a matter of minutes, the fire truck sounded its way over and with a shatter of broken glass and the gush of a fire hose, a car was destroyed along with the danger it posed. We never did get to see its owners, though. I wondered whether they stayed in the restaurant throughout the ordeal, whether from embarrassment or hunger.

And so a few months later, when I am moving into my new house and my father directs me to clean paint off the electrical outlets using steel wool and Goof-Off, I hesitate. Fire is bad. And real. And, I don’t know whether that sprinkler system actually works yet, and I’ve never much cared for finding things out the hard way. But this is my father speaking; surely, if there was any threat of danger, real or imagined, he would give me due warning. After a quick game of “are you sure? Are you sure-sure?,” I found myself mindlessly scrubbing away at the sage green paint residue on each electrical socket of the master bedroom. “What a lovely unexpected flash of light,” I thought, calmly, and looked down to find, in my palm, the homey glow of a flaming piece of Brillo. At least I had the sense to throw it down, and what amazed me more was what happened next.

As it sat on the brand new carpet, flaming higher by the second, I screamed “FIRE!” in the jazziest most soul-gripping voice I never knew I had. Of course, it was preceded by a string of obscenities, starting with holy and advancing to the opposite end of the spectrum, but that was requisite. At that moment, my mother ran into the room, demonstrating what can only be called a text-book example of the word “panic.” Before she could make a sound, involuntarily her elbows began pumping the air like a bellows (and, like a bellows, somehow made it worse), and her knees marched violently up and down like a redneck at a hoedown, but it was the look of shock on her face that startled me to my feet. Seeing nothing around that I could use to douse or smother the flames, I began stomping them with one Isotoner-clad foot. The flames licked upward and neared my hip, and I feared that my aged cotton sweatpants might ignite, so I ran to the bathroom in search of…?

A towel! I grabbed a towel, a slightly damp one at that, and spun around for the bedroom. I saw my mother, helplessly stomping at the Brillo with her foot, but three feet away from it. She had been stomping at bare carpet in her panic. Long story short, the towel sufficed where the sprinkler system, Isotoner, and panicking mother did not. The carpet looked a little worse for wear even after a good vacuuming; its singed tips had to be painstakingly trimmed, and the nap will forevermore be uneven. Yet somehow, the hardest part was after it was all over. “You ought to go downstairs and tell your father what happened,” my Mother said gravely.

Resigning to my fate, I solemnly walked downstairs to where my father tinkered with the garbage disposal. “Don’t panic,” I began, “but we had a little fire upstairs.” It took all my might not to laugh, and I quickly extinguished the vision of my Mother the Scarecrow that danced in my head.

“Oh, you must have touched the electrical screw with the Brillo and it arced out,” he responded flatly. “I thought about warning you, but then I didn’t.” Hours later, after he had surveyed the damage and heard the full accounts of the only two witnesses, he added, “well, that sounds a lot worse than I thought it would be,” which in Dad speak means, “HOLY FUCKING SHIT, FIRE!”