From the Department of Ewww

Mickey, one of the dogs I walk, found a dead squirrel today and picked it up. The wiry tail hung out of his mouse and whipped back and forth like a half-eaten strand of spaghetti.

Mickey was very proud of himself. He walked close to me to show off his prize. My one attempt to dislodge it from his mouth, poking the dead squirrel with a four-foot stick, only gained me an annoyed look.

He carried it all the way home, when he unceremoniously dropped it on the newly vacuumed carpet. I locked him in a room while I threw it away. Before we got home, though, we met a manically friendly 40ish year-old woman who was jogging towards us. This is the verbatim conversation:

LADY: "Oh, look at you! You are such a sweet dog! Yes, you are! Yes, you--OH GOD."
ME: "Yup."

Cock-a-da-roach

There was a cockroach in my room last week. Hairus cockroachus, a foul critter with hundreds of feelers protruding from its body, making it look more like a prehistoric troglodyte than a modern bug.

It was of a size that, for someone with a phobia of all life that walk the walls in the dark of night, was big enough to paralyze me with fear yet just small enough to make me feel ashamed of it.

Some bugs I fear without embarrassment. A few months ago, I came upon a huge cockroach as I walked into the downstairs bathroom. Over 8 inches long, including the hair. I saw it sprawled on the wall, like it was tanning at the beach. I quietly backed out of the room, saying in as calm of a voice as I could muster: “All yours, buddy. No, seriously. Enjoy.”

Haven't used that bathroom since. I doubt it's still there though. Probably left to eat a cat.

Anyway, when I saw Hairus cockroachus, it was 2:00 in the morning. I was in my boxers. The cockroach was on the wall right by me bed. As I surveyed my options (shoe? phone book? 911?) I was overcome with an innate, perhaps primal desire that superseded my anxious weapon inventory. This desire was not a bloodthirsty rage, nor desire to run. It was an unquenchable need to, as quickly as possible, put on a pair of pants.

I forget my exact thoughts, but it was something akin to: “I'm about to enter battle. I need pants.”

Is this what the Spartan warrior tradition has diluted to? “Eek, a big! Cover ye crotches!” It's not a flight response, but it's not a fight response either. It's fright.

Most people and animals freeze for a moment when confronted by danger, then move on to fight or flight. I'm stuck at fright. Cockroaches might be too. That night, the cockroach and I stared at each other for a good 10 minutes. I spent 5 of those minutes inching over to the closet for a shoe, and another 5 minutes hovered a few feet away from the cockroach, shoe raised in the air, as I tried to muster my courage to kill it. I know that sounds silly, but that's part of the reason it's called a phobia.

The rest of the night was a tragicomedy. When I finally moved to whack it, I missed. It fell to the floor, hidden from sight. I waited ½ an hour, and just as I felt relaxed enough to go to bed, it crawled back up in an uneasy zig zag, part of its body missing. Whack, miss, fall, wait ½ an hour, crawled back up, in worse shape than before.

The third time, I didn't try to kill it. I felt an odd admiration for its preserverence. Its doggedness. The Little Cockroach That Could. I just hoped it would crawl away from my bed and out of sight, preferably behind a window blind.

It was too wounded though, and fell back down on its own accord. I never saw it again. The next day, I was groggy from a lack of sleep and depressed from whatever chemicals my body excreted the night before. It made me think I needed one of two things. Anti-anxiety drugs. Or a clown for a roommate with an extra pair of shoes.

Why It's Bad To Think and Drive

I was lost in thought yesterday and ran a red light. Dumb. And that was before the police, which I will henceforth in my life refer to as the "PO-lice," pulled me over.

$156 fine. $100 for the fine, $51 for a processing fee, $5 for a local processing fee, or "Processing Fee Jr."

To those of you who don't live in Virginia, $56 for processing fees may seem exorbitant. What you don't know is that while Virginia's ticketing system is electronic and you can pay online or by phone, the driving records of the state's citizens are kept on stone slabs and can only be modified by a professional stone cutter. His name is Larry. This is also why points stay on your license for so long down here.

In that light, $56 for the services of a master stonemason is actually a bargain. I am going to include an extra $20 for his work and ask if I can come by to watch and make a paper rubbing afterwards.

There Is No Greater Struggle Than The Fight For Cake

A few weeks ago in my Saturday morning stuttering therapy group, our therapist mentioned that we wouldn't be meeting for a few weeks. She said something about having to go to a few conferences, but I suspect she is seeing another group on the side. I catch her turning around to peek out the blinds around 11:30, and she is very insistent about us leaving at noon.

Once, group ran until 12:15 and she made us walk out the back door wearing our jackets over our heads. She said, "Pretend the paparazzi are trying to catch you stutter." While it was fun, I figured out the truth on the car ride home after my jacket slipped over my eyes and I almost ran into a telephone poll.

Someone proposed in the meantime we get together on a weeknight, November 30^th. My birthday. Five years ago, I would have never mentioned my birthday was the same day. When you're extremely self-conscious, the thought of dozens of pairs of eyes staring at you while they holler a ballad honoring the day of your birth is mortifying.

That was before I got my first full-time job and learned a valuable lesson. You find a way to mention your birthday is coming up, you get cake. You don't, no cake.

Furthermore, if you don't mention your birthday and next week a co-worker asks about your weekend, and you let it slip out that you went out with a few friends to celebrate your birthday, you will become a social pariah. Because not only did you deny yourself cake, but you denied the whole office cake as well, in addition to an hour or two off of work.

In short time that part of my self-consciousness quickly eroded to make room for an altruistic desire to use my birthday to further in my own small way the global consumption of cake products. So when my stuttering posse, after rejecting half a dozen dates to meet and finally arriving at a day that miraculously seemed to work with everyone else asked for my acquiescence, I decided to play hard ball.

"Hmm. I'm not sure I can make it then. The 30^th is my birthday."

"What's that? Celebrate my birthday too? But by what manner do you propose...oh. Cake. Well, let me ponder upon your proposal for a moment. Hmm. While you do have my deepest gratitude for your offer of eating plain cake on my birthday, I fear I must...yes? Hmm-mmm? Chocolate cake? With sprinkles? What a novel idea. You know, I do believe I will be able to reschedule my plans for the 30^th. For the good of the group."

So I got my cake. There it was, sitting next to several platters and trays of food and a humongous cake, Cake Sr., to celebrate the one of my friends in the group moving to Princeton next month. Mary, the sucker who bought me the cake, lit a candle on Cake Jr. and they sung Happy Birthday. Then someone handed me a piece. I laughed. Ha! I'm not actually going to eat the cake! I just wanted someone to buy it for me.

Nine-tenths of the cake is now sitting on my counter. It's a waste, but I wouldn't have had it any other way.

Oh, I'm supposed to remove the baby first

The phrase "Don't throw out the baby with the bath water" comes from the practice of baptisms. In an earlier time, Baptists placed much more importance on when babies were baptized rather than how. It was important to baptize them immediately after birth before the world could "stain" them.

The mother would give birth, the doctor or midwife would cut off the umbilical board, and the father would rush the baby to the bath, typically a small, metal tub barely larger than the baby. The baby gets dunked, dried off (I presume) and returned to Mama.

A few weeks afterwards, the baby would be formally baptized at a church, but this was just for ceremony. It's kind of like getting married in a courthouse and having the wedding later.

This bizarre relay race from belly to bucket took less than 30 seconds. Now, I'm sure not even the most scatter-brained person would forget to remove the baby when he threw out the bath water. But the process was so rushed and stressful, it gave birth to the phrase.

I think the way most people use the saying is different from its original meaning. I used to assume that when someone said, "Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater," the person meant "Don't discount the entire argument because there is a part of it that you don't like." But its original meaning is, essentially, "Don't panic."

Here's some more background about the old practice. Obviously, a priest couldn't be there to bless the water for every birth. Besides the practical issues of the number of priests versus the number of babies, and not knowing the exact day that the woman would give birth, only a few people could afford to have a priest. The priests didn't sell their services, per say. The church wasn't crass. But if you wanted your baby to have the super deluxe car wash instead of the regular, the family would have to ask the priest move in a few weeks early, typically right after the 8th month, in case of an early birth.

While the priest was staying with the family, the custom was for the priest to be treated royally. He would get the best bed, the warmest blankest, the finest foods, and so on. This is the guy in charge for their child's entire life (and afterlife). And if you lived in some dingy stick stack, you wouldn't even think of asking a priest to stay with you. It would be like asking Oprah Winfrey to stay in a college dorm room.

Few people could afford the status of a personal priest. But getting a baby baptized was more important than a tetanus shot, especially since they didn't have tetanus shots back then. The workaround was for a priest to stop by the expectant parents' home and "pre-bless" the water. It wasn't great, but it was good enough.

Pre-blessing water caused its own problem. In hindsight, sticking a newborn baby with a weak immune system into stagnant water swarming with bacteria after three weeks wasn't the best thing to do. In fact, sticking a baby into anything right after she is born isn't a good thing to do. These are the two reasons why, around the time when people discovered the novel concept of germs, Baptists switched in flocks from the when to the how, a formal ceremony several days after the baby is born.

***
There's something wrong with this essay. Can you figure out what it is?
Okay, I made it all up. It started off as a two-second joke for something else I'm writing and morphed into this. I didn't know the etymology of the phrase when I wrote this, but the story seemed so familiar that I half-convinced myself I learned the phrase's history years ago and was remembering it without knowing I was doing so.

Unfortunately, I'm nowhere close. Here's the real etymology (from scopes.com).

Although the admonition against throwing the baby out with the bathwater dates back to the 16th century, its roots are Germanic, not English. Its first written occurrence was in Thomas Murner's 1512 versified satirical book Narrenbeschwörung, and its meaning is purely metaphorical. (In simpler terms, no babies, no bathwater, just a memorable mental image meant to drive home a bit of advice against overreaction.)


Reality is so boring.

...

I feel like I could write every day for the next week or not write at all for a while. I hope to find the will to make it the former. The only thing I have written in the past week is the following: well, the following and everything before the second "the following." And by "the following," I mean everything after the second "the following," which includes the third, fourth, and fifth "the following"s.

I'm not sure how to label what I wrote, or even what title to give it, if any. It's different from what I usually do. If you enjoy reading it, that is wonderful.

***

A can of Coke was folded into itself like a child punched in the gut. It slumped in the gap between two sections of the concrete barrier erected to keep road drivers as road drivers, and not shoulder drivers. Shoulders are for concrete, and cones, and men who sweat along the ridges of their spines and between their toes. And they're always men, even if they're women, because that is what the "Men At Work" sign says.

Traffic moved slowly. In another gap was a bag of barbecue potato chips, Utz. Empty, of course. Construction workers are not elves, or pixies, or any type of whimsical creature that would leave goodies for hungry, slow-moving commuters to grab as they rolled by. I could tell they were barbecue Utz potato chips because of the large strip of orange on the bag. They use the same color for the chips. That makes it natural.

Then traffic decided to stop moving slowly. Why? Because that is bland and traffic is tired of being bland. What the traffic decided to become, without moving any faster or slower, is this: an obese man climbing a broken escalator.

If you think fat people should be mocked, then traffic is stopping every few steps to bite a jelly doughnut and lick the sticky powder off his hands. He is so fat that no one can squeeze past him. A line of impatient commuters are forced to glower at traffic as he ambles up the steps, smacking his fingers and wiping the saliva on the hand rail.

If you shy away from making fun of the frailties of others, then perhaps traffic is not fat. Perhaps he is overweight, and has diabetes, and the jelly doughnut is filled with insulin, and he is looking for an empty spot where he can escape the loud sighs and muttered remarks and fill the air with sobs that only birds and the boy that lives inside every man can hear.

Or perhaps he is like my Dad, whose cane tapped the ground in the rhythm of a clock. My dad was once thin. In old pictures, before the heart medication, his face is smiling and happy. His body grew bloated before I was born. In pictures where he holds me and my sisters, or sits next to his parents, or watching TV on the couch, his mouth is in a frown, the corners of his lips pushed down by the weight of his cheeks. Yes. It is the weight in his cheeks.

So when I say traffic moved slowly, I mean that it moved like a fat man, or a father, or a road clotted with cars. I mean it moved slow enough for me to imagine a construction worker annoyed that all the gaps are filled with trash. And what's this, a beer bottle? The construction worker glares at Miguel, who is laughing with his friends by bulldozer. Miguel is always happy. And he's always eating mints.

But these musing will soon end. For traffic will ease and these cars, these cells with four wheels, will flow again. Traffic always clears up in the end. It is why, if you remind yourself of this, you can battle the weight of your cheeks and still smile.

First Lines

I love writing sentences, paragraphs, and short essays, but the process of writing a short story or novel seems overwhelming. I have yet to develop the skill of breaking projects into manageable pieces. But that changes today.

I am going to write a story, a few sentences a day, starting today. I will continue this process for as many years as it takes me to finish the project, or until Thursday, when I get bored of it.

"His hands were as hard as ice and his heart as cold as a man who eats babies for breakfast with a side of wet puppy noses. Scrambled. No salt."

Those Crazy Scientists

A "researcher" posted an ad in the Wanted section on craigslist requesting people send him stories on their addiction to Internet porn. "I'd like to hear the intimate details. What's your M.O.? How does it make you feel. Does your spouse know about it?"

Methinks someone is addicted to Internet porn addiction stories. But maybe this is legitimate. So I sent this email. I'll let you know if I get a response.


Dear Scientist,

I am into Internet porn. Big time. (If I knew how to make the font bigger, it would be BIG TIME. But in a bigger font.)

I have been keeping a diary of my travails in the "final frontier"...of PORN! I would like to type the pages and send them to you. Should I take the dirty parts out? Highlight them? I want to help. Also, I don't cyber, but I was wondering, do you cyber? Also, I'm not a woman, but I was wondering, are you a woman?

Your research sounds interesting. Which research organization are you part of? I must say, if you are part of The Heritage Foundation, I am not sending you anything. Those guys are dicks. (They told me to stop calling.)

Looking forward to hearing from you. May the Starship Enterprise take you to where no one has gone before!

"Frank"

The Missing Yucca

This is a great story.