I’m Sooooo Confused

Okay. We all know I’m not too bright. Indeed, Dumb As A Brick springs to mind. And we’re not talking a high quality class o’ brick here, Buckeroo. Not one of those snotty red ones with pressed corners. No. We’re talking cinder block. The kind that have big empty spaces in the forehead.

That being the case, I get confused. A lot. With extra stupidity and a large side of dim. In fact, you may consider what follows today as an official SOS, Mayday, and Oh-Heck-&-Halitosis we just took a low yield nuke up the left nostril. Which is all to say that I’ve say that I’ve listed some things below which really, Really, REALLY confuse me and I’m hoping someone out there—some wise and informative soul—will explain ‘em to me.

So, put your thinking caps on, assume a learned expression, and please send me your answers ASAP. Or, failing ASAP, then just generally SAP. People say that a lot about me. He’s the biggest SAP I know, they say. Nice to know that I’m outstanding in my field…

Anyway, here goes:


*

In the news recently there have been a number of disturbing stories about environmental/animal rights terrorism. There have been multiple fire-bombings of the offices and even the homes of individuals whom activists have judged unworthy of life. A neuroscientist at UCLA who uses animals in his work had his car blown up (it was a matter of only luck that he wasn’t in it at time). Last year, another scientist AND her family were attacked in her own home by SIX masked animal rights activists. Meanwhile, the FBI has officially listed Daniel Andreas on its most wanted list. Andreas allegedly firebombed the offices of companies and organizations that he felt were anti-Earthish.

But, the people responsible for these things are just a few extremists, right? Just a few crackpots? The bad apples which spoil the barrel of quite legitimate animal rights activists? Responsible organizations, like, say, People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) would never, ever, dream of doing such things, would they?

Right?

Well, then, how to explain another story, also in the news, but somehow not receiving a lot of attention? Everyone knows about how the Obama family got a new puppy. Less know is that Vice President Biden’s family also got a dog. They bought a little German Shepard pup from a legitimate and humane breeder by the name of Linda Brown.

Now, remember, the People Who Know Best have been telling us for years that if we’re going to buy a dog, we should only buy from a Breeder. They aren’t like those nasty “puppy mills” that used to supply pet stores. So we should all give kudos to the Bidens and we should all be happy, right?

Wrong. PETA decided that the Bidens should have gotten their new dog from a shelter. Much more humane, you see. BUT, Biden is vice president of the United States. He has all these Secret Service agents around him. Hard to get through a wall of Secret Service agents. They have guns. They shoot back.

So who does PETA go after instead?

You got it, Linda Brown.

She was PERSONALLY singled out for abuse in the organization’s advertising campaigns. Her business was repeated inspected by state authorities (apparently acting on PETA’s allegations that she was running a puppy mill) and, while she was ultimately cleared, she was out some $4000 in legal fees.

She is quoted in the press as saying that she will never, ever again sell a dog to anyone famous.

Now, all of this leads one to uncomfortable places. If there is a difference between the animal rights extremists and PETA, then why has PETA attempted to ruin the life of an innocent person? How far is it removed from the firebombs of the fanatics? How close is it to the masked thugs who invaded the home of a woman and beat up her husband?

And most of all, how do we bring ourselves to believe that this organization is benign? How do we convince ourselves that it doesn’t have, at its heart, cruelty rather than kindness? That its activists are not motivated by a love of the earth, by rather overt sadism? Who delight in making other humans suffer in the name of a good cause?


*

Next thing that confuses me…

There has been quite a bit of furor of late regarding the Obama recovery plan. I don’t know whether it’s a good one or not (I can’t balance my check-book, much less understand how to keep the national economy running) but it has been interesting watching the debate itself. Most (but not all) liberals and progressives are for the plan. Most (but not all) conservatives and libertarians are against it.

But, most interesting of all has been the “Tea Parties.” Certain groups of conservatives and libertarians are presenting their opposition to government intervention into the economy as resistance to tyranny, and so they link their protests to the Boston Tea Party of the Revolution. As you’ve doubtlessly heard, they state that their goal is to “teabag the White House”—this, of course, to the great benefit of late night talk show hosts and The Daily Show. Always nice to be handed a punch line on, as it were, a silver platter.

Okay, but what is far more curious is that “the Tea Party” begins to look more and more like a political organization, perhaps even an alternative to the GOP. That’s fine…political activism is an American right . . . but where things get hinky is in the Party’s relationship with Fox News, which has (more or less) openly sponsored the movement. Indeed, despite repeated (and heated) corporate statements to the contrary, there is some speculation that Fox basically created the Tea Party in all its baggy wonder.

Oh, and Fox News itself has become famous (some would say infamous) for its ultra-nationalist, ultra-Americanist, super-patriotic commentators, weeping over the fate of the nation, and launching into barely coherent rants about crypto-communism in the Oval Office.

But . . . Fox News is owned by Fox Broadcasting…which is owned by Fox Entertainment…which is owned by News Corporation . . . which is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Now, Murdoch is (at least according to the Wikipedia entry I just scammed) now an American citizen. But, he was born Australia and spent of his career there and then in Britain where he was associated with right-wing political organizations. He only moved his company HQ to the United States in 2004.

So, here we have the Tea Party, an organization presenting itself as the defender of American values and American liberty, that is (in effect) controlled and created by an Australian multi-billionaire who has spent most of his life anywhere but America.

And nobody seems to mind.

Which confuses me.

I mean, suppose that someone from some other country, say, China or Egypt, were to move to the US, buy a TV station, and began preaching Liberalism…

Can you imagine…even begin to imagine!…the pure hell sh*tstorm that would follow?


*

Last thing that confuses me…two apparently unrelated stories.

First story: like most everyone else with access to YouTube I was stunned by the performance of Susan Boyle, the Scot who appeared rumpled and plain on a TV talent show and then proceeded to blow-away the place. Like most everyone else, I found her story inspiring and her talent amazing. And, maybe, the thing I loved most about the whole affair was the sight of the program’s smirking judges getting plastered to the wall.

However, here’s the kinky thing. Since then, I’ve started to pick up jeers in the news and on the ‘net. A number of self-described critics are saying that Boyle is some kind of fraud. Those Who Know Best have begun to say that she was not as poor, as lonely, as disadvantaged as we thought… merely ALMOST as poor, lonely and disadvantaged. Therefore, they say, we should reject her. They say she is a fake Horatio Alger story, manufactured for the sake of ratings, and that we should not consider her “real.”

How profound and insightful of them, I’m sure.

Second story: In the news today I see that two men in Michigan have been arrested for (prepare yourself) burning a six year old child with a blow torch. The report, as I have seen it, is that the two men were brothers. One of them was the child’s father. For reasons not revealed, they allegedly took the torch to the child … for amusement? As a punishment? For simple cruelty’s sake? We do not know.

The men are in jail. The child is in protective custody.

And here’s what confuses me.

Given the second story . . . given its horror … given what it may say about us as a society, why does the first story exist at all?

That is, considering the enormity of the problems facing us, all the places where we might expend our energy to protect the innocent, to heal the sick, to feed the hungry…

Why is it that Those Who Know Best, secure in their corporate offices and tenured positions, have chosen instead to slander a powerless woman . . . whose only crime has been to pursue the personal expression and personal success which, or so they tell us, are legitimate goals for us all?


*

So those are some of the things that confuse me.

For all I know, they confuse you, too. But I’m hoping they don’t. I’m hoping that you’ve got some great answers. And you won’t mind sharing ‘em. Soon. By return email. Right now.

Cause, otherwise, I might just start suspecting that maybe . . . just maybe …a whole lot of people who are telling me that they’re morally superior and devoted to all things good and wonderful and American … are, in fact . . .

As full of sh*t as a Xmas Turkey.

And nobody wants me to think that.

Do they?

Onward and upward.



~Michael Jay Tucker














Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker
All rights reserved

Scholastic Inaptitude Test: A Quickie

Just a quickie today, because it’s late in the game and I’ve got deeds to do and promises to keep and lots (and lots) of papers to grade and a chapter to edit. So, sort of as a follow-on to S*cks to be me…

I’m teaching a lot these days. Sometimes it’s in person. Sometimes it’s online. Sometimes it’s English. Sometimes it’s History. Sometimes it’s at one college, sometimes another.

Now, this is interesting because I don’t have a Ph.D. and probably never will. But, the students don’t seem to mind, particularly. And this is in spite of the fact that one of my own former professors said that I was incapable of scholarship and that I was “Unfocused.”

Maybe my students tolerate me because they aren’t particularly focused themselves. Oh, not that they’re aren’t focused on getting their degrees…their eyes are on the prize indeed…but they are not, shall we say? Homogenous. They are a diverse lot.

In just the last couple of semesters I’ve had students who were from pretty much every place on earth. There was a Hungarian, a Peruvian, five Nepalese, an Austrian, a Moroccan, a Saudi, three Chinese, one Taiwanese (“I think of myself as a citizen of Greater China”), a Japanese, several Koreans, five or six Indians, an Ethiopian, a Columbian, a Nigerian, an Israeli on leave from his army service (he was a sniper by training), a Belarusian, two Bulgarians, two Russians, a Salvadorian (“I’ve survived three earthquakes”), an Ivorian, an assortment of Brazilians, a Venezuelan (“I decided I wouldn’t go back after I was kidnapped. I mean, the second time”), and, of course, just to top it off, a very articulate gentlemen who was born in Brazil but made his first fortune in Peru, travels the world as multinational consultant and was a visiting professor at MIT. But, you see, he doesn’t have a bachelor’s. Many European and South American educational system don’t, that is, require them. So, he was in my class…

This was, of course, in addition to the usual assortment of students who were more “typical” albeit not always less colorful. There was, for instance, the woman who bred ferrets for a living, the young man who had danced professionally with the Twyla Tharp Company, the Marine Corps vet who looked as though he were 12 (he was all of nineteen) and who had earned a Purple Heart in Iraq, and one very intelligent young man who identified himself as a “member of the deaf community” and came to class each week with two signing interpreters.

I like to think we get along fairly well. I watched with some amusement while the two Bulgarians discovered one another and began, over the course of the term, a mild flirtation. Then, too, there was the delicately negotiated relationship between the Peruvian, whose parents owned a Guinea Pig farm (her research paper was on the proper way of preparing one for dinner. It seems you serve them with potatoes), and the woman who raised ferrets and was, we soon discovered, a member of PETA.

But, my story actually doesn’t involve my class, but rather one of my professors. The same one I mentioned above. The one who said I was unfocused. He is very Focused. He is Tenured. He is Outstanding In His Field. He is a Recognized Authority. I came to call him “The Hindenburg.”

Anyway, one day, before I left his program (as unfocused as ever, as incapable of scholarship as before), I was standing in a hallway and happened to be telling some friends about all my many sorts of students. He came out of an office and heard me. Then, he looked a little pained and asked, “How do you stand it?”

At first, I thought he was joking. But, a glance at his face set me straight. He meant what he said.

I stammered out something about enjoying my work, and that the students were fascinating. Meshing my world-view and theirs was a delightful puzzle. Each time I succeed in teaching them something, it was a personal victory to be savored.

My professor looked at me coldly. His mustache quivered. Then, he said, “ I suppose . . . if you’re interested in …teaching.” He made the word sound like a disease. “Those kind of people.”

Then, with a dismissive shrug, he waddled off to some class or another. There, he would face (I knew) a comfortingly monolithic community. A bland assortment of suburban youth, secure in their upper- to upper-middle class privilege, would snore comfortably and non-threateningly in the tightly linear rows of seats before him. They would offer him no challenge. He would present them with nothing unexpected. Everyone would be happily focused.

And as he left, I realized something.

I do not miss being “capable of scholarship.” I do not mind being unfocused. I would rather strive (however feebly) to be a teacher than a Tenured Authority In My Field. I would rather stay among my night students and my part-time students, at Community Colleges and Programs of Continuing Education.

Or, to put it all another way…

Given a choice between my professor’s privileged Few and my energetic, exciting, and sometimes challenging Many, I’ll take the Many.

You meet a better class of people.

Onward and Upward.

































Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker

S*cks To Be Me (#9): Slip sliding Aaawwaaay

So. Here it is. The pièce de résistance. Or maybe even an extra big pièce de résistance. Or, hell, a whole damn pizza de resistance. With anchovies and whip cream. And a side of slaw. And yes, that does sound revolting. And it is one of the many reasons I didn’t become a professional chef. You can thank me later.

Anyway…as you know, I’m doing a humongous series on my adventures in the last few months of 2008. It is titled Sucks To Be Me. And I’m understating. About the sucks part. I mean, the word “Vortex” springs to mind. Insert images here of whirlpools, undertows, ships going down with all hands, and Bermuda Triangles. With or without UFOs and giant squids. Your choice.

So far, I’ve gotten through Martha’s chest wall injury, my eye surgery, a flooded basement, and getting kicked out of a certain academic program by three professors who shall remain nameless. Except, of course, for a few quick references to Larry, Moe, and Curly. And Tweedledum and Tweedledee and Tweedledumber. And The Three Walking Analogs Of Rectal Gonorrhea. But, otherwise, my lips are sealed. I’m good like that.

Today, though, we are going to get to the final little chapter of my 2008 saga. It involves ice.

Lots of ice.

Lots and lots and LOTS . . .of freaking… ice.


*

Okay, so when we left off last time, we’d just had an ice storm. I had rushed outside to move the cars before Tom . . . the really nice guy we hired to plow the drive . . . arrived.

You see, as I said last time, we live near the top of a little hill where (in effect) three different roads intersect. The city snowplows coming from three different directions drop their snow . . . here. Which is how we normally end up with drifts of the stuff in our driveway that are “as high as an elephant’s eye.” Or, at least as its scrotum. Which is really more appropriate to the story. At least, when you think about it.

Most of the time, I go out with my handy little shovel and whittle that all away . . . after six or seven days of backbreaking labor. But, this time, because of the eye surgery and a few other facts (like realizing that I’m, shudder, 52 and not 25), I allowed Martha to convince me (she only had to bash me with the snow shovel two or three times) to hire someone with a plow truck to do it for us.

Ah, but the kicker is that to let Tom plow the drive, we have to get the cars out of it first. This usually means my hurriedly shoveling enough of the snow away so that I can back our cars out and then park them on the street while he does the rest.

Now, some more background. We have three cars. Two of these are Hondas. The other is a sporty little Toyota that used to be Martha’s pride and joy. She’s a car fanatic and she particularly loved her little Celica. The problem was that it is no longer easy for her to get into and out of it, so, a while ago we decided to get a more sensible vehicle and sell her old one.

That was the plan. It has been sitting in the driveway ever since. Somehow we never get around to selling it. Funny thing about that. And I’ve caught Martha standing in the driveway at mid-night, petting the car, and telling it not to worry because mama’s right here.

So, that’s the three cars.

I run outside to move them.

Then, I stop running.

However, I do NOT stop moving.


*

Everything . . . EVERYTHING … is covered with a sheet of ice. It had sleeted during the night and now the world is doing a pretty good impression of Ice Station Zebra. The sidewalk is under about a inch of the stuff and I seem to be drifting along, gently, toward the curb.

Well, “gently” may be a bit much. More like . . . well, did you ever hear that joke about the dancing chicken? The one they put on the hot plate? (“What do you think makes the chicken dance?”) Sort of like that. But with fewer feathers and more squawking.

*

I finally managed to come to a stop ‘round abouts the lamppost. I then take careful stock of the situation.

Oh, I say. Gosh, I add. Then I say something else. I will not record what it was. Suffice to say that it made some of the ice melt. And turned the air blue. And sent mothers rushing to cover the ears of the innocent young children. Who, of course, already used words like that and were texting their friends about the boring guy who didn’t even know how to swear properly.

Anyway, I finally made it to the cars and, after much bashing of ice off doors, I get them open and began my moving operations. Mine is a CRV and has four wheel drive, so it was pretty easy for me to get the thing out of the drive way and parked on the street. Martha’s had new snow tires, so it did pretty well, too.

That left . . . the Celica.

I got in. It sneered at me. I started it. It chortled. I started to back out. It began to giggle.

*

It was when I backed all the way out and was in the street that I realized something interesting was happening.

To wit… I was sliding.

I don’t mean that I was sliding forward. I don’t mean I was sliding backward.

I mean, I was sliding sideways.

I mean, the car was sliding SIDEWAYS…

I mean, I’m in the car and it is sliding In The Street . . . SIDEWAYS.

As in, the driver’s side door is even now headed toward the fence of the guy who lives down where the street curves to the left.

As in, yes folks, step right up… I’m screwed.


*

Now, I’ve been driving cars on the ice when they have decided to skid nose first into something.

And, I’ve been driving cars on ice when they have decided to fish tail their way into oblivion.

But I have never . . . ever . . . been sitting STILL in a car, and then had it slide. Sideways.

If you’ve never tried it, I suggest you give it a shot. It is a wonderfully quick way to get religion.

*


Somehow, I managed to get the car slowed down enough to point its nose down hill and toward the main street. Then, I managed to drift it to the intersection and make a right hand turn.

Crisis averted, right?

Well, no. ‘Cause, of course, I still have to get the car back UP the hill.

Okay . . . I’m not a great driver on snow. I’m not used to it. It’s particularly annoying because Martha drives in snow really, really well. So much for my macho image. Well, not that I had much of one anyway, but, it’s the principle of thing.

But getting back to my story…

I have to think this out. There is a short side of the hill and a long. I’ve just come down the short. But, it’s pretty steep and I don’t think I’ll be able to get the little car up it again . . . at least, not given the ice.

But if I drive down the main street a block, and make a right turn, then I’m back on our street and the Long Side of the hill. If I can get moving fast enough maybe I’ll be able get back up to our house.

Brilliant, I think.

I go down the block, I make my turns, I get into position, and put my foot on the gas!

By God! I find myself moving up the hill like a Celica-stallion! I’m sliding a little here and there, but I’m doing it! By God, I’m doing it!

And then…

This little old lady lives down the way. She is 339 years of age. And three quarters. She drives a huge Detroit beast of that sort that my son and his friends used to call a “Pimpmobile.” She has never been known to go faster than 25 mph. On the freeway. In the high speed HOV lane.

It is this exactly at this moment that she elects to exit her driveway. Into the road. In front of me. At a snappy six or seven miles an hour. And then, of course, she begins to slide backwards. Towards me.

At the last second I managed to get my car off to one side . . . well, technically, into a snow bank, but who’s being technical? She drifted on past me down the hill. She gave me a friendly little wave.

I think I heard later she finally stopped somewhere around Providence, Rhode Island. I understand she’s bought a condo there.


*

Okay, I say to myself. We’ll try this again.

I get the car dug out of the snow bank, drift back to the bottom of the hill, and once again, start the dash up the ski slope … I mean, the road.

And once more, I’m doing it! I’m doing it! I’m dashing along like Santa on Steroids! I’m almost to the top of the hill…

And then…

You know the guy on your street whose got no neck but lots of derriere? The guy who bought the pit bull so he’d have the meanest dog on the block? The guy who has a gun rack over his Jacuzzi? The guy who bought a four-wheel/four-door stretch luxury pickup truck (with DVD player) that he needs like a hole in the head because he never takes it anywhere ‘cept maybe the Mall? The guy who you’d like to ask, sorta in passing, Say, Just How Small Is Your Penis, Anyway?

Well, as I’m going UP the hill, our version of that guy in his shiny four-wheel drive is coming DOWN the hill, at high speed, taking his half of the road from the middle….

Wanna guess who ends up in the snow bank again? Wanna? Huh? Wanna?


*

Anyway, I finally make it back up the hill. I get there just about the time Tom, the plow guy, arrives.

He watches me fish tail into a spot sort of in front of our house. I roll down my window. He rolls down his window. “Like to a buy a car?” I ask. “Cheap?”

He shudders. “Think I’ll pass,” he says.

*

With Tom’s help, and quite a bit of sand, I finally get the Celica in place. Then, the driveway gets plowed. And everyone’s happy. Or, happier, anyway.

I stagger back into the house. Martha meets me and says, “You know, in the all the time you were out there, I didn’t see a single City snowplow or sand-truck. I think you ought to call the department of public works and complain.”

For a moment, I consider it. Then, I realize I already know what they’ll say if I do. They’ll apologize and then add, “We tried to get up your street an hour ago, but some damn fool in a Celica was sliding down it sideways and blocked the way.”

No, I think. I’ve suffered enough. Besides, we have a bottle of tequila in the cabinet. And it’s calling my name.

*

So, that was (mostly) the last of my adventures for 2008. There were a couple of more snowstorms, but no more sleet. Christmas came and we enjoyed it hugely. New Year’s followed, and we bid the old year farewell.

Actually, it wasn’t so much bidding it farewell as hoping we’d never see anything quite like it again. But, then, it probably doesn’t want to see us, either.

But, since then, things have been quite a bit quieter. My new bionic eye works fine. Martha’s gotten over the chest wall injury. The basement’s dry and the appliances work. I’m teaching and writing . . . though, I’m still trying to figure out what to do about my former dissertation committee. I had thought of inciting a crazed mob to grab torches and pitchforks and head up to the castle to scrag the good doctors Von Frankenstein. But, alas, all the lynch mobs I know are heading over to Wall Street. All those bankers, you see, taking bonuses…

I guess I can understand. It’s all a question of priorities.


*

So, that was the end of 2008. At least for me.

But…

Let me be serious for half a moment. I called this series Sucks To Be Me. But, come, it was hardly that bad. The eye surgery was scary, but it proved benign. Martha’s injury was painful, but, over time, she recovered. The appliances were (briefly) an inconvenience. But, they were only an inconvenience. I can survive washing dishes. My dissertation committee did me real economic and emotional harm. But, in the end, they were no more significant than any schoolyard bully. Perhaps it is true what they say about the banality of evil. Perhaps small evils are the most banal of all.

All in all, not so bad…

At least I do not know famine and slaughter, as does so much of the world. At least I do not have AIDS/HIV, the way that millions have here and abroad. At least I am not in a war zone.

Which makes me wonder . . .what would it take . . . how much effort would it be . . . to make my problems the worst the world knows?

It may be that the price cannot be paid. The effort would be too vast. The intent is too utopian.

And yet…

And yet . . .

Would it not be a lovely thing to try?

*

Onward and upward.



















Copyright© 2009 Michael Jay Tucker

S*cks To Be Me (#8): The Ice Storm

Okay. I swear. I promise. This will end soon. The S*cks To Be Me series will, eventually, stop. You will be released. Set free. Made Whole. And afterwards, you’ll be able to sit your grandchildren on your knee and say, Yes, I Survived The Great Tedium Deluge of 2008-09. And I recovered. Of course, it took many years of therapy. And enough electro-shock treatments to power an aircraft carrier. And that’s why my eyes are crossed. And we won’t mention that faint scent of singed rubber. But things are just ducky now.

Anyway…

As you know, I’m doing a seemingly interminable series on the wonderful little adventures I had at the tail end of 2008. You’ll recall that these included sheer terror, eye surgery, getting kicked out of my Ph.D. program (by a set of academic “advisors” who may be best likened to ambulatory excrement. With weevils), a flooded basement, assorted dead appliances, and, oh yes, a Christmas Tree that didn’t get hugged. And probably never forgave us for it. And developed a complex. But that’s what therapy is for. And, in the words of Freud, ah, to be Jung again.

Where was I? Oh, yes. So, last time, I’d just had my cataract surgery. After much dread on my part, it turned out to be quick, painless, and easy. I was in and out in like 20 minutes. In fact, I was a little disappointed. I mean, I was looking forward to all those wonderful opportunities to bore total strangers trapped with me on airplanes with stories about all the horrors I endured for Perfect Vision. But, no. Was not to be. Sad reality. I blame myself.

Anyway, so, I had the surgery. Everything was going fine. I figured now, finally, Things Are Going To Get Back To Normal.

Gosh.

Golly.

Darn.

You’d think I’d learn.


*

I had the surgery on December 15. That was a Monday. By Friday, it had . . . begun . . . to …snow.

And snow. And snow. And …snow.

By Saturday, it had snowed A LOT. There were happy little drifts of white icy shit everywhere. And, oh, by the way, if I ever get my hands on freaking Frosty The Snowman…well, let’s just say Napalm Enema and leave it at that.

But there’s more to the story. We live on a hill. Our street runs down from the hill and to the main street below us. But, there’s another street that intersects ours just about directly across from our driveway. In effect, we live on a three-way intersection.

Now, what that means is that snowplows coming up the hill … and snowplows coming down the hill … and snowplows coming along the Third Street . . . all meet. Right in front of our house. And stuff most of their freaking snow into our driveway. Meaning, quite literally, there may be four feet (or more) of snow piled up at the mouth of our driveway after any one storm.

This is known as life in picturesque New England.

Did I mention the Napalm enema?

*

Okay, so, what this means is that SOMEONE has to go out and shovel the aforesaid driveway.

Three guesses who that someone is.

You want some hints? Okay. There are two of us living in this house. There’s me. And then there’s Martha. We also have a dog. His name is Oreo.

At the best of times, Martha has some difficulty walking across uneven or challenging terrain—like, say, if it is knee deep in snow. And, right at the moment, she can’t stand on ice at all—the chest wall injury, remember?

Meanwhile, Oreo lacks opposable thumbs. Which means he cannot hold a shovel.

Lucky bastard.

*

So … a short time later, I am standing out in the snow.

Shoveling.

Alone.

While the left side of my head (the surgery side) sort of feels like somebody with a very large jackhammer is trying to get out. While tap dancing. In golf shoes. With extra long cleats.

I look up at the window of the house now and then. I see Martha. She sees me. She waves. She smiles. Then, she goes and has another cup of coffee.

I whimper a lot.

*

Anyway, for the next day or so, I feel like what’s left at the bottom of a birdcage shortly after Tweetie has a charming tête-à-tête with an E. Coli the size of a Buick. That, plus the fact that my eye surgeon just about had a cow when he found out I’d been doing major physical labor right after my operation … “You Did WHAT?”… made me admit that, yes, instead of shoveling snow myself, maybe, next time, we could actually hire someone to plow our driveway.

We answer a few ads on Craig’s List and, voila, the next thing you know we have an arrangement with a really nice guy named Tom. He’s got a diesel pickup with a plow and he’ll come on mornings after big snows. Cool.

In fact, it’s particularly cool because about a week later, we had another storm. A fairly sizable depression rolled up the coast, bringing with it all sorts of moisture, which it proceeded to dump on us.

But it was an odd storm. It didn’t start off as snow. Rather, it began as sleet.

Now, here’s a confession. When I was a boy living in New Mexico, I had no idea what sleet was. Oh, I knew the word. I’d hear broadcasters or my parents talk about “sleet and freezing rain.” But, I didn’t have an emotional understanding of the term. I didn’t really intuit, or grok, the genuine and inner meaning of Sleetness. Or the Gestalt of Freezing Rainism.

But how could I? I hadn’t experienced them. And, to quote another and better humorist, there are some things that cannot be explained to virgins in either words or pictures.

*

But, if, per chance, you are lucky enough to not have experienced sleet and/or freezing rain— and are, thus, sleet-virginal—then let me provide you with some background data.

Rain, when it falls, can get you wet. Snow can be slippery and block driveways.

But, sleet…

Sleet, or freezing rain, is partly water and partly ice. When it hits something, it sticks and freezes. In the winters here, after an ice storm, you’ll see cars, houses, telephone poles, power lines, and, most of all, trees absolutely glittering with ice.

It can be rather beautiful, actually, particularly on a sunny day. Envision a world in which everything is sheathed in white, all of it shimmering in the dawn, the light breaking prismatically into tiny, hard-edged rainbows.

Unfortunately, it is also deadly. The trees break under the weight of the ice. The power lines snap and drop live and sparking in the street. House roofs sag.

And cars?

Those slide helplessly in the road.


*

Just in case you’re wondering, pretty much everything in the previous section …particularly the cars and helpless part … is known as “foreshadowing.”

Great word, that Foreshadowing. Make a note of it. Might come in handy the next time you have to write an English paper or be pompous at parties while discussing pretentious European movies with no plot and no characters but great full frontal nudity. And I only read it for the articles.


*

So, late in December, but not quite next door to Christmas, we wake up and find ourselves in a gray, overcast day. From the windows we hear the little clicking noise of sleet on glass. If you’re interested, it sounds a bit like rat claws on hard tile. Really cheery.

I stagger out of bed. I look outside. The sleet is slowly giving way to pure snow. There are already two to three inches of it on the ground. That means that Tom will be here with the plow shortly. But he’s not here yet.

Ah-ha! I think, wisely. Here’s my chance. I’ll run outside (I decide) and move our cars onto the street. That way, Tom will be able to plow the whole driveway.

Boy, am I smart.

You betcha.


*

I grab my keys, slip my pants on over my PJs and head for the door.

It strikes me, as I go, that I haven’t seen any city-owned snowplows … or sand trucks…on the hill. Or on our street. Or on the intersecting street. Or on the main street down the way.

Well, I think to myself, if they’re not sending out sand trucks, it must not be that bad. Maybe the storm wasn’t as big as they expected. In fact, who knows? Maybe, at last, Things Are Getting Back To Normal.

Thinking thusly, I step outside and …

Do you know the term “helpless as a hog on ice?”

Look it up.

You’ll understand.


*

But that’s for next time.

Onward and upward.












Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker

S*cks To Be Me (#7): The Eye Part 2 (to a power of six)

Okay.

I’m going to finally, finally, finally (I promise) get to my eye surgery. I know I’ve said that like fifty-nine and three quarters times before. I know that I’ve tantalized you with images of a giant, bat-winged, fuzzy-eared, tentacle-equipped, fang-encrusted eyeball (with scales). And, I know, I’ve not delivered so far.

But, heck, if you wanted speed, efficiency and quickness, you’d be reading Twitter right now.

But the Eye…

*

As you’ll recall from columns way, Way, WAY back, I needed cataract surgery. The discovery of this aforesaid fact produced a certain in effect in me. That effect was technically known as sweat-poppin’, limb-trembling’, stomach-churnin’, heart-knockin’, breath-gaspin’, pants-wettin’ …terror.

As in Terror.

As in HOLY CHRIST THEY’RE GONNA CUT OUT MY EYE!

Well, that’s a little bit of an understatement, but Subtle is my middle name.


*

So, for weeks before this little trip to the eye doc, I’d been having these teeny-tiny, teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy manifestations of some slight anxiety. Little things. Like panic attacks. And trembling. And hyperventilation. And, now and then, just for variety, throwing up a lot.

The reason for my anxiety? Well, I’ve sort of gone over this a bit in my other columns, but suffice to say that I have a thing about knives going into my eyeballs (can’t imagine why) and I knew about what cataract surgery USED to be like.

The operative word there is USED. You see, these days, cataract surgery is a pretty trivial thing. But, not that long ago, it was a DELETED dreadful business involving major surgery, stitches … STITCHES! … in the eye itself, month-long hospital stays during which your head would be pinned between sand-bags to prevent you from rolling over, and, well, lots of good stuff like that. The kind of sheer unadulterated nastiness that you just can’t get these days. Well, at least outside a Freddy Krueger Movie Marathon. Or a Rush Limbaugh Poetry Slam on Steroids.

And I’m just enough of an historian to know all that stuff. Ergo, not to put too fine a point on it, I’m terrified.

Just in case you didn’t get that, let’s spell it out. T as in Torture, E as in Eviscerate, RR as in Rack and Ruin, I as in Incredibly agonizing, F as in Flayed, I as in Indescribable pain, E as in Extreme anguish, and D as in total Destruction. Terrified.

And, mind you, this is all going on while I’m also dealing with all the other stuff I’ve described over the last few weeks—getting kicked out of my Ph.D. program by the Goddamn pompous asses who were supposed to be my advisors (anyone with experience in voodoo doll construction please contact me at the above address), the furnace breaking in the middle of winter, the flooded basement, etc., etc., and, of course, etc.

So . . . my nerves are shot.


*

December 15.

The day of my surgery arrives.

I wake up early that morning. I spend long moments staring into space. I shiver a lot. I wonder about writing a will. I wonder if it’s too late to be Born Again. Or convert to Catholicism. Or buy a Juju. But, no. The Juju shops aren’t open yet. Pity, really.

So, Martha gets up just after I finish filling out my Do Not Resuscitate order and Last Will and Testament. We have a small bite of breakfast. Breakfast bites me back. And then, we’re on our way.

*

We arrive at the location of my execution . . . er, I mean, where I’m going to have the surgery. It isn’t a hospital. It’s a medical office building just down the highway. It looks sort of like the place where you’d go to buy order entry software. And not a Freddy Krueger in sight.

We go into the lobby and I join a group of other men and women waiting our turn. I’m a little out of place. At 51 (as of 2008) I was fairly young for cataract surgery. Everyone around me is older. They look at me with faint suspicion, as though I’m there under false premises. Yes. I really don’t need the operation. I just have this fetish for sharp knives. Inserted into my eyeball. Next week, I’m off to the proctology office. I’m bringing my own sewer snake. Can’t wait.

So, we sit. I shake. And, in about twenty minutes, they call me.

Right. I stand unsteadily. Courage to the sticking place, oh boy. Walk the last mile. Keep a stiff upper lip. No hysterical weeping in the front office. Frightens the interns.

They take me back into the rear office. A nurse gives me a shot…

And…

And . . .

The next thing I know, it’s twenty minutes later, and the same nurse is giving me juice and a cookie.


*

Seriously, that’s about all I remember of the operation. I have a faint recollection of some lights flashing. But, not much else. No angst. No suffering. No doctors yelling “STAT,” and rushing me off to the ICU.

It was really kind of a disappointment.

I said to the nurse. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Nothing else?”

“Uh…no.”

“Where’s the pain and suffering?”

“We try to avoid those as a rule.”

“Well…damn.”

I think they ought to keep a box of toothpicks around the office. Just so they’ll have something to stick under the fingernails of people Who Expect More. Maybe I’ll write ‘em and suggest it.


*

A little later, I toddled out to the front office again. A couple of other patients asked me what it was like. I told them, “I’ve had hair cuts that hurt more.” Which was true. There was the woman in Dallas with the straight razor. But we won’t go into that. Way too horrible.

Anyway, shortly after that, Martha takes me home.

*

Pretty much for then on it’s a gentle coast down hill. I had to wear an eye patch for a while. But, basically, that’s all there is to it.

Like I say, kind of a disappointment.

The good news is that I’m no longer near-sighted in my left eye. The weird news is that I’m now far sighted in that eye.

Understand, that’s a very new thing for me. I’ve been myopic since I was about six . . . probably before, but no one noticed that I was squinting all the time. They thought I was just a nasty bitter child with a bilious attitude. And proud of it, too.

But, now…things are very different. I had to get reading glasses. I now wear only one contact lens (on my right eye) and that adds a certain note of complexity to morning preparations—I’m used to having two, you see, and I have to remember which eye it is that doesn’t get one now (harder than you might think when it’s 6 am and you’re trying to wake up).

Then, too, there is the fact that colors are bit different. Many seem more vibrant. And my depth perception is changed. Better, but changed. You see, now, I think I judge depth the way that most people with two eyes do—that is to say, I triangulate. But, before, I think I was scanning rapidly from side to side, and then (unconsciously) comparing the different scans. It took some real effort on my part to give up the latter (jury rigged) method for the former. But eventually, I got the job done.

And, in the process, I gained new respect for the one-eyed, one-horned flying purple people eater, famed in song and story. (And we’re talking the Sheb Wooley original, here. Not Alvin and The Chipmonks.)


*

So, that wraps up the eye surgery part of my story.

In fact, it should end the whole “S*cks To Be Me” series. Certainly, at the time, it seemed to me that events just couldn’t get any weirder. And that, as a result, Things Had To Get Back To Normal…

But of course . . .

The year 2008 had one last little adventure to throw my way.

It would involve going down a hill…sideways …in a Toyota…during a sleet storm.

But that’s for next time.


Onward and upward.























Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker

S*cks To Be Me (#7): The Eye

Okay, folks. Here is where the shitake hits the ocular. Here’s where yours truly comes face to retina with the Giant Basketball-Sized Mutant Bat-Winged Red-Glowing Flying Eyeball (from Hell) and afterwards becomes a Bionic Bifocal Cyborg (eat your heart out, Terminator).

In short, this is where I have cataract surgery.


*

Okay, let’s have a quick recap. You’ll recall from way, way back at the start of this series that I have cataracts. I’m young to have ‘em (I’m 52 as of this writing) but I got ‘em just the same.

So, that means I gotta have surgery to get ‘em out. Specifically, I had to have surgery on the left eye. The right one’s probably going to follow in a few years.

Now, as you’ll also recall, it turns out that these days cataract surgery is pretty simpld. It is even an outpatient procedure. They give you some very cool drugs, wheel you into a special room, use advanced tools to open a micro-incision in the eye (so small it doesn’t even bleed), remove the old lens, and insert a new one. You’re out in a few minutes. No pain. Lots of gain.

And I knew all that. Knew it inside and out. Had thoroughly researched it. Talked to doctors. Talked to other people who’d had the procedure. Yep. You betacha.

And ya wanna know what?

I was, more or less, with admitted exceptions, and adding the necessary qualifications…

Scared shitless.

*

As you may further recall from the beginning of this seemingly interminable series, I was scared because I am just old enough, and just enough of an historian, to know that not long ago cataract surgery wasn’t that simple. Just a few decades ago, it was major ordeal involving a whole lot of knives, quite a bit of blood and suffering, and then, afterwards, stitches in your eyes

As in stitches.

As in FREAKING STITCHES.

As in OH CHRIST FREAKING GODDAMN JUST KILL ME NOW AND GET IT OVER WITH.

Whimper.

I’m so glad I’m good at dealing with stress.


*

So, there’s all sorts of stuff I have to do _ before _ I can have the surgery. I have appointments to go to. I have eye exams I have to take. I have to get a complete physical.

Except, funny thing …ha ha fricking ha . . . I find myself missing appointments.

Now, I’m pretty anal about appointments. I always have them in my calendar. I get to ‘em early. Hell. Sometimes I’ve been known to bring a gift. Say, a bottle of wine. Or a three bean salad. Or my famous guacamole, kumquat, and calamari cordon blue casserole (with green chilies). It’s known far and wide. Always take it to potlucks. Makes me a great favorite will all the folks down at the emergency room. I understand they’re naming a stomach pump after me.

Where was I? Oh, yes. But, now, for the first time in my life, I find myself forgetting appointments. Time, and time, AND time again…the various offices of the various eye doctors with whom I’m dealing call me up and say something like, “You do know you were supposed to be in here at nine, don’t you?” And I’d say something like Oh God-Delete It To Halliburton in a Farping Station Wagon and either go dashing off to get to the office or, more likely, have to reschedule.

You don’t think . . . maybe . . . just perhaps . . . could it be? . . . there’s just a tad of avoidance going on here, would ya?

Naw. Course not. Couldn’t be. Could it?

*


But, mind you, there are complications to this. My surgery is scheduled for 15 December. I have had to fight, and squirm, and struggle to get an appointment that early. If I don’t make it on that date, then . . . I have to sweat it out for another couple of months. Which I’m not really happy about doing.

So, I buckle down and try to really, Really, REALLY make every appointment and meeting.

The kicker? It’s just about this time I start picking up static from everyone else involved.

For example, the way I found I had cataracts? Well, way, way back I’d gone in to my ophthalmologist for an eye exam. I wanted to get contact lenses. After my doc had mentioned that I had to have my eyes gouged out … er, that I needed cataract surgery…she had duly ordered the lenses for me.

Cool. So, of course, it takes a while for them to come in. But, they show up on a Tuesday. I pick ‘em up, take ‘em home, and put ‘em in that evening.

Now, the next day, Wednesday, I’m scheduled for a very early appointment (like 9 am) at another doctor’s to have the length of my eyeball measured. They shine this little laser thing into your head. Great fun. Kinda like playing The Target in a good game of Starship Enterprise. Phasers on kill, Mr. Sulu.

But, that morning, I show up, with my brand spandy new contacts in my eyes, and the technician says… says … says “uh-uh.”

“Uh-uh?” I say, curious.

“Nope,” she adds.

“Nope?” I remark.

“No can do. No way. No how. Outta the pool. Game over.”

“Come again?”

“You’re screwed.”

It turns out when you wear contact lenses, your eyes adjust to them by minutely changing shape. That means the eye may not be the same length, or whatever, when the surgeon whips out the old chain saw and heads for your socket.

“But I’ve only worn ‘em for five hours,” I say.

“Tough toadies,” she responds, compassionately. Or, anyway, words to that effect.

It turns out, in fact, that you’re not supposed to wear your contacts for something like two weeks before they do their pre-operative measurement. My operation is now just about sixteen days away. It is just barely . . . BARELY . . . possible for me to get a new appointment for the necessary exam before the surgery.

At first, the technician doesn’t want to make the appointment but, fortunately, the folks at my regular ophthalmologist’s office are so mortified that they’d forgotten to tell me not to wear the lenses that they pushed a little and we got it all worked out.

Now I had only one last hurtle to …well . . hurtle over before I went for the operation.

But…

It proved to a be a real doozy.


*

I had to get a complete physical from my general practitioner prior to my operation. I made my appointment and saw the guy and he’d given me a clean bill of health. Then, he adds, “You know, this is overkill for your eye surgery, but why don’t you get your cholesterol tested . . . at some point in the near future.”

Okay, I say, and toddle on my way.

Now, notice the wording here. I assume, from what the good doc said, that the cholesterol test is separate from the exam I needed for the eye surgery. I think, in retrospect, that the doctor thought that, too. I think everyone thought that.

Except…my doctor’s staff.


*

So, time goes on, and as the date of my operation gets closer and closer, I start getting phone calls from the office of the surgeon. It seems that my regular doctor … my GP … had not faxed the results of my physical to him. Without those results, no surgery was possible.

Therefore, I start leaving messages at the office of my GP. Each time I phone, a staff member tells me, “Oh, yes,” we’ll take care of that.”

Except, then I’d get another message from my the eye surgeon saying that it hadn’t happened.

Finally, on the morning of the Friday before my surgery —that is, on 12 December, when my operation is scheduled for 15 December—I end up going to the GP’s office. I go to the desk and say to the nice lady there, “Can I get a copy of the results of my physical so that I can fax them to my eye surgeon?” Because I am in real need, here, I am at my absolute politest. I mean, I’m so damn polite that butter freezes in the old set of choppers. I’m so polite that Miss Manners would be freaking out.

And then . . .

And then . . .

One of the intake nurses comes out and starts yelling at me.

As God is my witness.


*

I don’t mean she’s talking loud. I don’t mean she raises her voice.

I mean Yelling.

I mean really Yelling.

I mean yelling at me in front of a lobby full of other patients.

All of whom are looking at me like I gotta be Jack the Ripper.


*

Finally, I get the story. It seems that she is peeved at me because I haven’t had the cholesterol test…which is What The Doctor ORDERED.

Further, she will not allow my records to be sent to the surgeon because I haven’t done What The Doctor ORDERED.

And, lastly, if I have any objections, I can go kiss …

Well, you can guess what she suggests I can go kiss.

I ask to see the Doctor. “He’s busy.” I explain that I’m going in for surgery on Monday. She suggests I go suck an egg. I say that the doctor had said I didn’t need the cholesterol test for the surgery. She suggests something I can do with the egg after I’ve sucked it.

Finally, she agrees that if I go, right then, to the lab downstairs, and have them draw blood, and if the lab can get the results today… “which they probably can’t”… then, maybe, she’ll let the office staff fax the results to the surgeon. That is, if she remembers. And they aren’t busy with “something important.”

Now, let’s walk through what’s going on here. This test requires that you fast for a least ten hours before you take it. Otherwise, the results are meaningless. I haven’t fasted. So, my taking the test is a complete waste of time for everyone concerned. Further, the doctor, to the best of my knowledge, has not actually specified that I take the test before I have the surgery. So, even if the test results did mean anything, nobody needed them before the Monday of my surgery.

So, what is all this about?

The answer, of course, is power. What is happening is that the intake nurse . . . I guess she’s actually a physician’s assistant rather than an RN . . . is demonstrating to me that she, not I, controls the situation. She is demonstrating her power and relishing every second of it. Moreover, she is doing so in front of the other patients, just in case they get any ideas…

It is about then that I recall a line from one of Raymond Chandler’s detective novels. “Put a monkey in a uniform,” his character says, “and it will try to give someone orders.”

Never in my life have I seen that principle so completely in operation.

(And, yes, soon after this, I find a new doctor.)


*

Well, to make a long story long, I finally got all the tests done, all the appointments taken care of, all the results faxed to the right people.

So it is, then, that the morning of the fifteenth arrives.

And I awaken from an uneasy sleep…

Shaking like a leaf.

But that’s for next time.

Onward and upward.


mjt

















Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker

S*cks To Be Me (#6): Basement Boogie-Woogie

Hello, everyone,

Right. So, this time, finally, at long last, I promise, no kidding, I’m going to get to the Big Bad Basement in Xmas. And we’re going to have rocks. And me. Digging like a gopher on steroids. In a blizzard.. While flying monkeys in UFOs from Oz dive bomb a certain ex-Vice President with high-powered excrement bombs. And I’m not talking Al Gore here. Fill in the blank. Here’s a hint. D*ck Ch*ney.

Okay, so I’m making up the part about the monkeys. But, you get the point. And all the rest is true. And, by Golly, flying monkeys SHOULD be sh*t bombing the aforesaid Veepee. It’s the code of the west.

Where was I? Oh, yes. The Basement.

*

So, as you’ll recall, we’d decided to have the Christmas tree in the basement this year. We have a family room down there, even though we don’t use it much. Until we got the furnace fixed, it was cold down there in winter, and because we haven’t had time to go get some lamps and such, it’s been sorta dim all year around.

But, this year, we decided we were Going To Make An Effort. And Efficiently Use Our Space. And Overcome the Lethargy of Everyday Existence. And Make Total Fools Of Ourselves In A Gesture of Total Futility. That, too, is the code of the west.

We called up our son David and he came out from his apartment and we all three trotted off to buy a tree. It’s sort of a tradition around here. We make it a family outing and regard it as the start of the season.

Sometimes David brings a friend. A few years back, it was his then girlfriend who joined us. She’s a bright and intelligent person who does things in Philosophy. She’s also a tree hugger. Literally. She likes to hug trees. “It’s how you know if they have an affectionate nature,” she says.

So, that year, when we went to the lot where they sell Christmas trees, we embraced spruces. Several of them. Deeply. Passionately. But, don’t worry. It was entirely Platonic. And, besides, the important thing is that you have a good healthy attitude about it. And part friends.

Anyway, we hugged several trees and eventually found one that, she said, had a sweet disposition and a cheery outlook on life, and we took it home. The scary thing? She was absolutely, 100%, completely right. It was one of the best Christmas trees we ever had. Didn’t shed needles. Was just the right size.

Like, I say, scary … but if it works, well, hey. I’m thinking of applying the same principle to lawn care. Maybe give it a shot on shrubbery. Not sure how it’ll work on cactus though. And that package marked Burpee Seeds? Naw. Might frighten the neighbors.

*

Anyway, so this past Christmas it was just David and us. We went to a local plant nursery, garden center, and green house operation that also does Christmas trees during the holidays. It’s a great place, really. Lots of flowers, shrubs, and stuff. And it’s entirely staffed with people who either speak no English or have an attitude problem. Or both. And would just as soon that you go away and die someplace. Ah, the joys of the season.

But, we found a tree and took it back to the house. David and I then wrestled it out of the car, across the lawn, and into the basement. Martha followed close behind to give us direction and moral support. Of which we got lots. Fortunately, she’s a kind and generous soul, always willing to share.

We arrived in the basement and positioned the tree. I said I’d hold it upright while David went and got the tree stand and then we’d get started decorating. Martha said she’d make hot cider. David said he’d be right back and dashed off for the stand.

So…I’m there…holding this tree.

And I notice…a smell.

I’d picked it up before a couple of times. I figured maybe the dog had slipped downstairs and done a flying euphemism behind the sofa. When nobody was looking.

Except…except…it didn’t exactly smell like that.

Holding the tree in one hand I reached down with the other.

Squish…

The carpet was soaking wet.

*

Okay, so here’s the deal. I grew up in a desert. The idea that water might fall from the sky … FROM the FREAKING sky! … is hard enough for me to credit. The idea that it might do so in sufficient quantities to flood things is downright unbelievable.

So, it came as a particularly nasty shock to me to learn that, here in New England, water can actually build up against the side of your house and seep through the space between the foundation and the wall.

And that’s what happened. Water had pooled just in the front of our house and come back in down the wall. The whole basement was wet. The carpet was wet. The clothes in the downstairs closet were wet. A bunch of our books were wet. The electrical wiring (YIKES) in the corner was wet.

End of Christmas in the basement plan…



*

David and I lugged the tree back upstairs, spreading needles and braches everywhere. We then had a rather pleasant remainder of the evening decorating it.

But, the issue was what to do about the flood downstairs.

I chatted with my father and, later, a friend named Skip. Both know about doing home, fixing cars, cutting large things with chain saws, and other guy-stuff like that. Stuff I don’t know squat about. I’m a terrible embarrassment to both of ‘em. But, heck. That’s true for almost everybody I know. So, they can just stop acting like they’re so dang special.

It turns out, though, that the solution to the problem is something called a “French Drain.” That is not a joke. There really is such a thing. I checked on the Internet. So it has to be true. (Doesn’t it?)

At its simplest, a French Drain is just a shallow trench filled with gravel. You dig it along the side of your house and then water…rain, runoff, whatever…enters the gravel and goes down into the ground and not (or so one hopes) into your basement.

You can also get more sophisticated French Drains. Some, for instance, will have a perforated pipe under the gravel to carry the water away from your house entirely. In fact, we later discovered that one of our neighbors had recently invested in just such a system. He had lots of pipes. And gravel. And expensive surveys. And it worked really, really well. Carried all that rainwater away from his house. Down the hill. And into … our…yard.

I’m planning on giving him a small gift soon. It’s sort of a belated housewarming present. It’ll involve a large box filled to the tippy-top with live but somnolent skunks. And an alarm clock. Attached to an air raid siren.


*

Now, all this business of French Drains assumes a new importance when you recall the time of year. It is December when this is going on. As of that date, we hadn’t yet had any snowstorms.

But, as we learned from a quick glance at the Weather Channel, there was a whopper of squall headed our way. It would, said the Weatheroids, going to hit town around mid-afternoon the following day. Further, they added cheerfully, we could expect up to three…as in THREE feet of snow.

For you folks out there on metric, that’s about a meter. And either way, it’s technically known as OHMYGOD AND FREAKING SH()T!

This coming storm presented, however, unique problems for moi. You see, if we did get that much snow, then a bunch of it would be up against our wall and … and …

Think gondolas. And motor boats. And sail boats. And the Harvard Crew. Stroking. In our basement.

*

The next morning, I’m out like a shot to buy gravel to fill a trench. The hardware stores I try don’t have any, so I end up going back to the same local plant nursery-garden-center-green-house where we’d gone to get the tree.

I found a clerk-type person with bad skin and body odor and said to him, “I wonder if you could help me.”

He looked at me suspiciously. “Don’t know. What are you trying to do?”

“I need rocks.”

“Rocks?”

“Rocks.”

“You mean you want a Christmas tree.”

“No, rocks.”

“Oh, you want pine wreaths.”

“No. Rocks. You know? Stones? Igneous, Sedimentary, and Metamorphic.”

“Ah, I understand now. You want tree decorations. They’re in the green house.”

“Er. Sorry. No. Rocks. David killed Goliath with one? Remember? In the Bible?”

He looked at me for a long time. Then he said. “In December?”

“In, as you say, December.”

“Jesus.” He pointed back toward where the dumpsters were. “I think we have some bags left over back there.” Then, he wandered off, looking disgusted and muttering.


*

To make a long story long, I did find several bags of gravel out in the back, next to the dumpsters, and under about a foot of ice. I paid for ‘em and headed for the house. And, shortly thereafter, I was out in the front yard wailing away at the ground with a pick and shovel.

A neighbor went by. She stopped. “You know,” she said, cheerfully. “This is the wrong time of year to do gardening.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Yes. You see, it gets cold. And the plants freeze.”

“Ah,” I said.

“So, you might want to wait until Spring. Or sometime.”

“But,” I said, “I’ve got to do this now because I’m putting in a very special crop.”

“Which would be?”

“Snow peas.”

She understood perfectly and went away.


*


I got the trench dug and filled with rocks just as the snow got started in earnest. I then went and took a shower for about a month because if it wasn’t true that I looked like death warmed over, I WAS able to do a pretty good impression of the same dish microwaved and served on toast.

But, I’m happy to report that it seems to have worked. We haven’t water in the basement since.

So, I say to myself, Things Are Getting Back To Normal.

And then…

And then…

I remember.

This is all happening the week of 8 December.

On 15 December … less than a week away . . . I’m scheduled to go meet the Flying Fetish Bouncing Bat-Winged Eyeball. With a meat cleaver.

But that’s for next time.

*

Until then…

Onward and upward.














Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker

S*cks to Be Me (#5): I’m Dreaming of a Swamp Christmas

Hello, Everyone,




Okay, so let’s pick up the story from last time. So far, I’ve been attacked by the Giant Flying Eyeball, Dissed by the Diss Dashers, Bashed by the Appliances from Hell, and Left To Freeze In the Dark by the Furious Furnace with anger management issues. And that’s just the fun stuff.

So, today, we’re going to move briskly to the Pond Scum and Poison Arrow Frogs in the basement.

But, before we do that…we’ve got to get Martha to the hospital.



*

Martha teaches at Tufts. She’s in the Department of Ed, there. That means she teaches teachers to teach (say that real fast three times). If you missed my column about her a few weeks back, then know ye for all eternity that if you make that joke about those who can’t teach and those who can’t teach teachers . . . well, if you make it, and in earshot of her, you won’t make it twice. At least not if you don’t want your kneecaps removed with a chainsaw. But a nice sharpen chainsaw. And in a loving and respectful manner. She’s good like that.

Anyway, she teaches at Tufts. One of her jobs is to go around to visit local high schools where student-teachers are placed so they can get a little experience.

So, one day, she’s at a certain high school downtown. It’s a nice school. It has lots of nice students in it. Some of them are small. Some of them are medium-sized. Some of them are large.

And some are . . . Extra-Large.

As in HUGE. As in Sumo wrestler meets Jolly Green Giant with a side order of Humongous thrown in for good measure.

So, on the day in question, a couple of these particularly large students were, as the saying goes, horsing around in the AV room. The particular form of horse playing involved concerned itself chiefly with tossing large objects around. Like chairs. And desks. And quarter-ton trucks. And finally, each other. Which is when it got serious.

To make a long story short, Martha was walking briskly through the hallway going from appointment A to appointment B when the door to the AV rooms bashed open and several hundred pounds of flying football player soared out…

And into her.

She bounced.


*

From what she tells me, there then followed a somewhat confused period comprised mostly of the previously referenced 200-pound meat rack of a student saying, “Oh, jeez, oh, jeez, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” a lot. And then there seemed to be several school administrators dashing about. And then the school nurse was there. And then some of Martha’s students were making plans to take her to the hospital.

But, then, Martha . . . being Martha . . . says No, No, I’m Fine. And I Can’t Leave. Because I Have Work To Do. And People Are Depending On Me.

So …

She staggers to her feet.

*

When she got home that night, and I found out about all this . . . and about how she spent the rest of day dashing about from place to place, all the while with a bag of ice under her arm and pressed up against the places where it hurt the most…

I thought about slapping her silly.

But, wouldn’t fit my image. You know, all that damn compassion shit…

*

Anyway, the next morning, I propel her to the emergency room at the local hospital. The intake nurse takes one look at her, blanches, and sends her off to X-ray.

Me? I’m left to amuse myself in the waiting room with its copious selection of reading material…

Like, for instance, several years’ worth of back issues of The Journal of Obscure Organs That Get Infected and Rot.

Great stuff.
*

There was also one magazine on golfing.

I don’t golf. I don’t suppose I ever will. That’s because every time I think it might be fun to take up golf, I find a magazine about it. And then I read it. And I find something like this:

“Need to manage that over-sized driver and really control those balls? Here’s the skinny from international Pro Roger Ruffhocker on all the tricks of the trade. The secret is in gripping your shaft. Make sure you provide a steady pressure at the base and just finger the upper tip. That’s to let you hit your balls straight in the face. Just assume the address position, but be sure to take up a soft backward stance with your feet spread and with a slight crouch to provide an opening. Place your heel to the left and position the driver just right. Then … Fire AWAY!”

That’s what I read.

Then, after a while, I very carefully take the magazine to the other side of the room. And leave it. Face down. When nobody’s looking. And no one can tell I’ve touched it.

*

So, several hours later, Martha reappears. The good news is that she does not have broken ribs. The bad news is that she has something called a “chest wall injury.” That’s code for, Ya Got Da Bujezzes Whacked Outta Ya. That’s the technical term. Very sophisticated and professional.

We head home.

*

Time passes.

Martha gets better over the course of the next few months. You read that right. Months. She received her injury in the Fall of 2008. In some ways, she wasn’t really entirely recovered until January of 2009. I gather she STILL has twinges now and then, and I’m writing this in March of 2009.

But, there’s another aspect of this story. The result of her injury is that, for these several months, even quite minor physical effort is painful for her. And something really demanding—like, say, helping her beloved husband shovel snow after a teeny-tiny little blizzard or two—well, that’s just not happening.

As we shall see, this will have consequences.

For me.


*

Okay, but now we get back to our story. By December, Martha is on the mend. And, the holiday season is upon us. It is, in other words, time to Buy The Christmas Tree.

We have a tradition about buying the tree. It’s something we do as a family. If at all possible, we gather up David plus one or more of his friends and head off to find the just right evergreen. So, one Thursday afternoon, we phone him up at his apartment and make arrangements to meet the following Saturday for a bit of pine pursuit.

But, as we’re hanging up, we realize we will now have to pick a place for the aforesaid Christmas tree.

Normally, we put it in the living room. But, this requires a bit of effort on our part. We have to move the TV, the sofa, the rocking chair, the recliner, the table next to the window where Martha keeps all those plants and other leafy stuff, the table next to the wall with all the photos on it, and, well, you get the picture.

It would be nice, we thought, to avoid all that.

So . . .

We also have a finished basement. There’s a bedroom that used to be David’s, while he was still living here, and a large family room. We don’t use the family room much because it used to be David’s space, and then, when he moved out, it sort of filled up with everything we couldn’t fit someplace else. And, besides, it was always cold down there during the winter.

But, during the summer of 2008, I had decided to Make Things Different. So, in dribs and drabs (and, as we shall see, in drips) over the next few months, I got things more or less straightened out down there. I moved out the stuff we were never going to use again, hauled a bit of furniture around, did some vacuuming, and, voila! We had a new room.

However, in the winter, we still didn’t use it much because it remained dang cold down there. But, that morning in December, we said, hello! We just got the furnace fixed (see last’s Xcargo, Sucks to Be Me, number four). We popped downstairs and checked. And, ta-dah! it was nice and toasty.

Terrific, we say, We Can Have Christmas In The Basement.

And, thinking thus, we trot back upstairs again.

At the top of the stairs, I turn to myself and I say, “Say…?”

“Yes?” I reply, suspiciously.

“While we were down there, you didn’t happen to …?” I ask.

“Naw,” I say.

“So there wasn’t a …”? I add.

“No,” I reply, firmly, “There was absolutely NO moist, musty, mildew, urine smell down there. None. Nada. Zip. Wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh, good.” I say, relieved.

I have a lot of these sorts of conversations with myself. As you may have already noticed. Also, I’m wrong a lot. But you may have already noticed that, too.

*

Next week, we’ll finally get to the Swamp part of the story. You, of course, saw it coming long, long, long ago. But, let’s just keep that between ourselves. So, shhhhh. Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Keep that flooded basement under your belt. Wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise for everyone much dimmer than we are.

But, there will also be some new developments. There will be, for instance, pea gravel, French drains, a fairly long trench, and, oh, yes, the Flying Mutant Bat-Winged Eyeball will, once more, drop by a visit.

But, as I say, that’s for next time.

Until then…

Onward and upward.















Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker

S*cks to Be Me (#4): Fire and Ice

Okay, so as you’ll recall, I’m doing a massive and tedious overview of the fun things that happened to me over the last couple of months of 2008. I know you’re enjoying it. I can tell by the way that your eyes are going glassy. And that expression that says, “Please kill me.” And, ‘course, the snoring. Ah, the joys of charisma.

Where was I? Oh, right. My trials and tribulations. So, to date, I’ve covered the Flying Eye From Planet Zork, the demonically possessed Academic Committee, and the Dishwasher that hated me. Last week, I’d just left off with the discovery that our furnace needed to be repaired. Or else we’d all freeze to death. And Giant Killer Polar Penguins would show up in the living room. And eat us. And nobody wants that. It would make them sick. And heaven knows they’ve suffered enough. Global Warming and all that.

Right… the furnace.


*

A few words about the furnace.

We need one. We live in the greater Boston area. While it is true that Boston doesn’t get as cold as, say, Bismarck or the Ross Ice Shelf or the typical response to my attempts at dating when I was single (six of one, thirty-seven of the other), it can still get pretty durn chilly.

Now, we have something called “oil heat.” This means that once a month or so a big truck shows up outside our house, sticks a hose into the basement, and fills up this huge tank. Oh, and then another hose attaches to our bank accounts and does something similar but in reverse.

I’d never even seen oil heat before I moved East from New Mexico, ‘lo these many moons ago. It seemed kinda primitive. Like having coal. And steam engines. And a neighbor named Barney Rubble. But, everyone assures me I’m wrong. They lean back on their rocks, pick their teeth with mastodon bones, scratch themselves under their loin cloths, and explain patiently that I just don’t understand because I’m a Hick from way out West where no one can talk intelligently about Art and Culture.

*

A few more words.

Every time the oil truck pulls up outside our house, I get pissed. Big time.

This isn’t just because it’s expensive (though God knows it’s that), and not because the oil smells, and not just because I know we’re sitting with a basement chock ‘o block full of a highly flammable material.

I’m pissed because we don’t have to be here. And by “We” I mean everyone.

You see, let’s face it, one of the biggest contributors to the current Recession (I’m writing this in 2009) is the cost of energy.

Oh, yes, there are lots of other factors. There was the Bush II administration, which was an economic disaster. And, there’s the war in Iraq, which in retrospect now appears to be about the dumbest sh*t thing done by an American government since Prohibition. And there’s the fact that two of our fearless leaders, Bush 2nd and Reagan 1st, tried to fund the government by means of deficit spending on a titanic scale and pretty much put us in the poor house at the same time.

AND there’s the fact that everyone got Ayn Randy over the last few decades and deregulated everything so that bankers in their vast wisdom could burn-through billions in lousy investments and really snazzy lifestyles.

But, come right down to it, the fact that gas hit four bucks a gallon and was headin’ toward five … THAT did us really serious harm. Maybe more than everything combined.

And the funny, scary thing is that I don’t hear anyone talking about that. I hear words about stimulus packages and nationalizing banks and dropping a few car execs outta their own DELETED private planes…but not energy.

Which is really serious because the hard, nasty fact of the matter is that no matter how much money gets thrown at what, no matter how many Democratic Congressmen pose majestically in front of Cspan cameras, no matter how many Republican governors announce that they won’t take any Federal money because they’re just too damn moral…

We’re not going to get back to the kind of standards of living we once knew until we get energy prices back down to where they were in the 1960s


*


Oh, and if you’re wondering, the reason we’ve got high energy prices…?

Well, yes, there’s been gouging. Oil companies haven’t exactly gone out of their way to limit their profits to the merely fabulous (as opposed to the frankly obscene). And there’s been competition from new economies like China and India.

BUT, the biggest single reason for our problems has nothing to do with Conspiracies at Halliburton, or price fixing by OPEC, or even wars in the Middle East…

It has to do with the pure, simple, inescapable fact that we’ve pumped most of the oil out of the ground that we can get.

And it ain’t coming back.


*

Okay, more on that in a moment. First, let me tell the story about the furnace. So, when we bought our house ‘bout fifteen years ago, there was of course an oil heat burner already in it. It’s a hot water system. That means that an oil fuel flame heats up water and sends it both into our radiators and to our faucets.

Now, from the day we moved in, we noticed that we didn’t exactly have scads of the stuff coming out the taps. Martha and David, both of whom kinda like cold water, didn’t mind much. But, me . . . well, remember, I grew up in a desert. For me, showers in this hosue were a continuous opportunity to practice those operatic screams that usually accompany testicular compression. Which, come to think about it, also happens to me when the water’s cold enough. But that’s another story. For another day. When I feel strong.

But, with the passing of years, the water began to get colder and colder. Finally, even Martha and David began to complain—which is saying something since either one of them could go nude bungee jumping off an ice flow. Not that they would, you understand. But, they could. You know. If it were required or something. Say, to save humanity from invading aliens. Which never happens. But it’s comforting to know we’ve got the option.

So, anyway, I decided to look into getting a new furnace. At the time, we had an oil contract and a service contract with a certain company—let’s call it Grifter, Angle, and Scam (GAS) Ltd.

I went to them and said, “Hey, what does a new furnace cost?” They responded, “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.” I said, “Come on, how bad it can be?” They said, “Ha, ha, and double ha. You don’t wanna know.” I said, “Sure I do. I’m tough. I can take it.” They said, “Well, okay, but remember, you asked for it.” And then they gave me a number.

Think the GNP of Guatemala. Then add a couple of zeros. And I’m not talking on the front end. I’m talking on the back. And on the wrong side of the decimal point to boot.

I turned a whiter shade of pale (not an easy thing) and went off looking for second and third (and fourth) estimates. Finally, I found a local plumbing company that offered a wee bit lower price than all the others. So, I gave ‘em the go-ahead and the next thing I knew we had a basement full of guys who were all sweating and swearing and doing faintly mysterious things with screwdrivers. And then, the next day, they all went away again leaving behind a brand new furnace and a very large bill.

Okay, I thought, well, at least that’s over. Everything will be fine. It’s got to get better.

Right? Right?


*

Two years go past. The local plumbing company that had installed our furnace . . . disappears.

And, one morning, last year, a little after Thanksgiving, we noticed …

It was cold.

Really cold.

And no matter how much we turned up the heat, it never got much warmer.


*

Okay, now getting back to why I’m mad.

We’re out of oil. Or, at least, we’re out of oil that’s easy and cheap to get. We plowed through it like alcoholics in a liquor store and now we’ve got the hangover we damn well deserve.

The kicker? The thing which is really, Really, REALLY infuriating? We don’t have to be in the situation.

We’ve known this day was coming. Forty years ago, we were talking about it. In 1968…that is, nineteen-sixty-freaking-EIGHT … we were talking about it.

Five years later, in 1973, the Arab world clamped down on oil exports, and Richard Milhous Nixon . . . that’s right, Tricky Dicky… launched “Project Independence,” which was supposed to free of us of dependence on foreign oil. And, you know what? It could have worked. But, then the Arab world relented on the oil exports, the Nixon administration got Watergated, and the whole thing ended with a whimper.

But we STILL could have pulled it out. In 1979, yet got yet another massive oil crisis. Jimmy Carter (remember him?) launched yet another attempt at energy independence. He called for massive investments, both public and private, into synfuel (i.e., oil substitutes made out of coal and other relatively plentiful carbon fuels).

Except, once again everything came to naught. OPEC lowered oil prices a notch and, worse, Reaganomics was on the horizon. All The People Who Knew Best announced that synfuel was uneconomical. Carter got kicked out of the White House and we happily went back to buying things we couldn’t afford with maxed-out credit cards while the President from Hollywood nodded off in the corner.

*

But, the point is, we KNEW this day was coming. We KNEW what was going to happen. It was no surprise to anyone.

But we did nothing…NOTHING…about it.

We could have used those forty years since ’68 preparing. We could have been developing new technologies, making our machines more efficient, building synfuel plants…

But we didn’t. We just assumed that since there had always been cheap energy before, there would always be cheap energy again.

And now . . .


*

Oh, and by the way, if you’re looking for villains in this story, there’s plenty ‘em to go around. And not just on the Right and in Big Business.

Sure, the Right and Big Biz have quite a lot to answer for. Conservatives were busily claiming there wasn’t an Energy Crisis (“we’ve always found more oil before”) right up to the day the pumps went to $5 a pop. They’ll probably be saying the same when those pumps go completely dry.

And Business…? Well, good old Detroit was making Behemoth Petrol Pigs when the whole damn world wanted smaller, fuel-efficient cars. And the big auto companies refused to do anything different even when they were nose to nose with death everlasting. (I’ve heard that once, when a group of experts confronted some Detroit executives on the fact that neither the market nor energy efficiency favored big cars, the execs said “Americans will buy whatever car we care to market.”)

But let’s not forget the Left. Let’s not forget all the Greenie-Weenies who opposed every technical innovation in energy production—quite literally from nuclear to windmills—but who have demanded that their standards of living (not necessarily ours, but theirs) remain exactly as they are.

This is known, in case you’re wondering, as being a Goddamned fool.

*

Okay, but getting back to my furnace…

So, last week, I told you all about how I finally called the furnace repair guy. We gave up on GAS Ltd. a long time ago. We’ve got a new oil company, the folks there actually seem trustworthy.

The repair guy shows up a couple of hours later. I walk with him downstairs and explain the problem. “Doesn’t sound too bad,” he says as we enter the back room where the heater is. He takes one look at it.

“Eeek,” he says.

“Eeek?” I ask.

“OhmyGod,” he adds.

“Ah,” I answer, wittily.

“You put this in yourself, didn’t you,” he says.

“Ah, no.”

“You had an uncle do it. Or a cousin. A crossed-eyed inbred albino cousin who watches cannibal movies a lot.”

“No…”

“Then who DID put it in?”

I told him the name of the plumber.

“Really? I didn’t even know he was out of jail yet.”

“Argh,” I say.


*

Make a long story short, the furnace had been misinstalled. In fact, at least according to the repair guy, it may not even have been legal. Certainly, it wasn’t up to code.

And, once more, there was a bill involved. A large bill. A breath-taking bill. The kind of bill that you don’t take home to meet mom. Because she might have a heart attack.

But, at least, now we’ve got hot water. And I don’t scream so much while taking showers. It confuses the dog. He thought plumbing just sounded like that. I’ve considered investing in a couple of army surplus air raid sirens and firing ‘em off now and then. Just to, you know, reassure him.



*


One last rant for the day, and then I promise I’ll quit.

To repeat, forty years ago . . . forty DELETED years ago . . . we could have addressed this problem. We could have made the investments, built the infrastructure, and perfected the technologies that would have kept energy costs cheap for centuries to come.

But, we didn’t. And, now, the day of reckoning is at hand.

We’re going to have to work really hard to get back to where we were. We’re going to have invest in whole new ways of producing energy. By that, I don’t mean just solar, wind, and tides . . . or any of the other trendy things that are supposed to be so green and friendly. I mean things like controlled thermonuclear fusion, or, failing that, lots of nuclear reactors. No kidding. Safer nukes, but nukes all the same.

Moreover, at least in the short run (and quite likely in the medium) we’re going to have to do some really distasteful things—like burn more coal, mine “oil shale” deposits, and exploit “tar sands.” (Look ‘em up if you’re interested.)

None of this is going to be fun.

The kicker? Once again to repeat myself, I hear no one saying any of this. I hear no one telling the world exactly what’s going to happen, and why. I hear no one saying what needs to be said. And doing it honestly.

Which makes me worry. A lot.

*

But, anyway . . . back to the furnace.

So, there we were. After the Flying Eye, the Academics With Their Heads Up Their Astrolabes, and The Dishwasher from Hell, we’d had the Heater That Didn’t Heat.

But, now, I said to myself, everything was Fixed. Now, I added, Everything Will Get Back to Normal. Now, I concluded, Things Will Be Just Ducky.

That’s what I said to myself.

Gosh. Golly. Gee. Wiz.

I say the darndest things sometimes.

Which is code for “Really, Really, REALLY Stupid.”


*

Next time, Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls of all ages . . . we’ll have yet another little tale of my happy adventures in 2008.

It’s entitled “I’m dreaming of a damp Christmas. In a Swamp. Just before the Blizzard.”

Loads of fun.

So, don’t touch that dial…

Onward and upward.

















Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker

S*cks to Be Me (#3): The Attack of the Killer Appliances (from hell)

Hi, Everyone,

As you know I’m doing a brief (but painfully tedious) series of Xcargos on recent events of my life—events which, at the time, seemed as much fun as a proctology exam performed with a Roto-Rooter. By Hannibal Lector. During a sleet storm. But which, I’m sure, will seem quite amusing in a few years. I’ll look back and laugh. And laugh. And laugh. And they’ll come and take me away. Ha. Ha.

Where was I? Oh, yes, my recent life.

When last we visited Our Hero (that would be moi), I had just received a short note from a certain graduate program to which I had devoted four years of my life. And, as you’ll recall from last time, the aforesaid note said … in effect, bottom line, stripped to elementals . . . Drop Dead, You Stinking Asshole. But in a scholarly and professional way. Very mentoring.

Ah, the joys of academic life.

So, anyway, I had just gotten over that and figured that Things Have To Get Better.

Boy.

Was I wrong.

*

Now, some background. We live in a house. I know that’s a surprise. I know you were expecting a cave. Or maybe a yurt. Pitched on the wild and windy plains of Mongolia. Or New Jersey. But, no. A house it is.

In the aforesaid house, there is a kitchen. In the aforesaid kitchen, there is a dishwasher.

Or was.

Now, here in the U.S. of A., we celebrate a thing called “Thanksgiving.” For those of my readers who come from foreign shores or Mars, this is a happy holiday where-in we celebrate the survival of the Puritans who would have starved to death had it not been for friendly Native Americans who subsequently got killed a lot by the aforesaid Puritans. And the moral of the story is Let The Bastards Freeze In The Dark.

To continue, in the US of A, Thanksgiving comes in November. That’s not like Canada, where it comes in October. But, then, that’s just like Canadians. Pushy bunch. Always trying to get ahead. And saying funny things with “ooot,” in them. And tossing big rocks around and calling it Curling. Clearly a vast plot against us. Probably involves trained attack-beavers.

So, we were getting ready to celebrate Thanksgiving, a process which involves a whole lot of cooking. Martha, my beloved spouse, does all the cooking in our family. This is because I don’t cook so good. Heck. I cook awful. Last time I tried it, the microwave ran away from home. And the EPA landed an air-sea-land SWAT team. And I’m still paying off that Haz-Mat suit for the dog.

This means that I do the dish washing. That’s fine. It’s a task up to my level of competency. Well. Almost. Though sometimes those Brillo pads get a bit tricky.

Anyway, it was a week or so afore T‘giving, and I had just fed the dishwasher a couple of pounds of china and a gravy boat, and then I flipped it on, and then . . . then … then . . .

Did you ever hear a brass band playing Sousa tunes run head on into a rock crusher?

Sounded sort of like that. But louder.

*

So the d’washer was dead. No problem, I thought. I can fix it. I went to get my screwdrivers.

And, several hours, I realized I couldn’t fix it. The problem, I later learned, was that the washer was relatively new. Where the older versions were all springs and cogs, and I could get into ‘em and fiddle around, the new ones have a little circuit board that controls everything.

Okay, I thought, and I called a repair guy.

He shows up a little later. He smiles. He’s nice. We talk about politics. We walk into the kitchen. He looks at the d’washer. He says . . .“Oh, Christ.”

“What’s the matter?” I say.

“You know the little guy who was the loneliest man in appliance repair?” he asks.

“The Maytag repairman?” I say.

“He croaked,” he replies.


*

Here’s the story. We had bought a Maytag washer because Maytag was a really great brand. But, in 2006, Maytag was acquired by Whirlpool. The new company wasn’t stocking the old company’s parts.

So . . .

That circuit board?

I could go whistle in the wind for it.

*

Okay, we say, no problem. We’ll just go buy a new dish washer. I mean, what the heck, it’s only credit card debt. And besides, once the economy melts down some more and there are riots in the streets and firing squads in sushi bars formerly frequented by billionaire bankers, who’ll notice?

So, off we go to Sears. We go in. A couple of clerks sorta of notice we’re there. They wander over and ask, “You don’t really wanna buy anything, do you?” We confess that maybe we do. They mumble something and take out an order form. “Okay, if you gotta…”

We point out a dishwasher and tell ‘em we want that one. “Fine…(sigh).” They start filling out the form.

“So,” I ask, “when can we get it delivered?”

The clerk looks at me. “Delivered?”

“And how much does it cost to get it installed?”

“Installed…?”

“Yeah, you know, plugged in. Hoses connected. That sort of thing.”

“Ha...ha ha …Ha Ha Ha….HA HA HA!”

“And, maybe, you know, take away the old washer.”

“HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!”

“So, you don’t do that anymore?”

“HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA…”

I would have asked more questions but they were rolling around in the aisles and flailing a lot and I was afraid they’d hurt themselves. So, at this point, we stole away as silently, and as mysteriously, as we’d come.

*

Okay, making a long story at least a little shorter (albeit not much), the next day or so we went to Gray’s, which is a cool little appliance store we have in the Boston-area, and got a Frigidaire. And they were willing to install it. So, day is saved.

Of course, they can’t install it before Thanksgiving but that’s okay. And, when the big Turkey day rolls around, we have a great time. Our son David, one of his friends, and a student of Martha’s all come and join us, and afterwards they pitch in on the dishes so I don’t have to do ‘em all. Then, we achieve Turkey-coma and all’s right with the world.

Except…


*

Except…

You remember last time I said something about icicles forming on my nostrils?

*

It was about a week later. Turkey-Gobbling Season was being replaced by Xmas-Shopping-Mania Season.

It was also brutally cold. Boston tends to be warmer than, say, North Dakota, but, still, it can do a pretty good imitation of Ice Station Zebra when it puts its mind to it. And that particular day was . . . nasty. As in 16 degrees on the outdoor thermometer and that’s not counting wind chill and cars aren’t starting and the dog is hiding under the sofa and saying something like “Don’t bother yourself. I’ll just stay inside. And if I should happen to make a little deposit behind the TV set, why, heck, you probably won’t notice until August.”

But, I’m not bothered. We’re warm and safe inside, after all. I teach online at Northeastern and Cambridge College, so I don’t even have to leave the house. And the appliance wars are over. Things Are Getting Back To Normal.

So thinking, I spring out of bed at about six o’clock. I head into the front room for a bit of coffee.

Say, says I, it feels kind of cold in here. No problem, I figure. I just need to turn up the thermostat. Which I do.

Funny thing. I don’t hear the furnace go on.

No problem, I think. Just needs a few minutes to warm up. I go pour coffee. I notice there are ice cubes in it.

Huh.

I go turn up the furnace again. And again fifteen minutes after that. And again ten minutes after THAT.


*

Martha wakes up at about seven. “Say,” she says, “is it just my imagination…?”

“Yes,” I say, somewhat hysterically. “It’s your imagination. Complete delusion.”

“Or does it seem awfully col…?”

“No,” I say, grinding my teeth, “it doesn’t. Warm and toasty.”

“Like the furnace isn’t …”

“It’s not! It’s not!” I say, frothing at the mouth.

“Hmmm,” she says.

“Right,” I say, despairingly, knowing when I’m beaten, and go call the repair guy.


*

I hang up about fifteen minutes later with an appointment for the afternoon and, I figure, about a $1000 repair bill in the very near future.

Well… I think . . . well, at least, it’s not gonna get worse, right? I’ve had the Eye, the Letter, the Dishwasher, so, now, just seems like things have gotta start looking up. No doubt. Absolutely. 100%.

So, I head back to my office, and walk past the stairway to the basement.

And, as I go I hear, very faintly, a Sound.

Of dripping water.

But that’s for next time.

Onward and upward.





















Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker