Monthly Archives: September 2013

The other day my son, Clyde, burst through the front door, panting heavily.

“Hey,” he said, nonchalantly. Well, as nonchalantly as someone can be while they are gasping for breath.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, looking out the front window behind him for the zombie horde that must have been chasing him.

“Nothing,” he replied, walking past me on his way to eat the entire kitchen. “I just thought I’d run home.”

“Why?” I asked, now thoroughly confused.

And then he looked at me like I was the strange one. “Because.”

And that’s when I remembered that I was dealing with an other.

It’s got nothing to do with the generation gap: even when I was Clyde’s age it would have taken at least a zombie horde to get me moving at more than a brisk walk, and who knows how long I would have kept even that up. (Actually, who am I trying to kid? I know exactly how long I would have kept that up: about two minutes. And then I would have turned around and tried to debate my way out of being eaten.)

I also know that it’s not a generational thing because my other child is exactly like me in this regard: she would probably go through a zombie horde if it made it easier for her to get to her car on the other side. Unfortunately, my other child is also out of the country for the semester, leaving me at the mercy of these people who seem to think that sweating isn’t something that only happens after you have had your fourth shot of espresso. And by these people, I mean, of course, men. Or boys. Or whatever: I’m talking about those people who are estrogen-challenged.

I guess I never realized before how balancing it was to have another female in the house, how much the combined weight of our mutual disapproval helped to keep the male hijinks and shenanigans in check. How her disapproval radiating out from behind her closed bedroom door and mine laser-beaming its way out from the kitchen somehow combined into some sort of Ghostbuster-like proton ray to drive the worst aspects of guyville out the door and into the yard where it belonged.

Now, however, I realize that it must have been the only thing keeping my house from going Full Frontal Frat House. Look, I’m not saying that the females of the house are any neater than the males, or any less aggressive, or even any less aggravating. It’s just that I’d much rather find a pile of empty Starbucks cups on the coffee table than empty 2 liter bottles of Mountain Dew Red. Much rather have to tell someone to get off Tumblr and go to bed than tell them it’s time to say goodnight to all their lovely Call of Duty friends for the evening. (Tumblr, at least, does not involve a headset and shouting at people for accidentally shooting you in the face. Although there is probably a gif that gets the same point across.)

The worst part of it is that I know that this is all just a preview for when my daughter leaves for good and I am left with a house full of boys for years and years. What am I going to to when it is just me and the boys? I suppose I could try and fill the house up with some nonhuman females. It’s not ideal, of course, but it’s better than nothing.

And that, my friends, is where crazy cat ladies must come from.

The other day my son, Clyde, burst through the front door, panting heavily.

“Hey,” he said, nonchalantly. Well, as nonchalantly as someone can be while they are gasping for breath.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, looking out the front window behind him for the zombie horde that must have been chasing him.

“Nothing,” he replied, walking past me on his way to eat the entire kitchen. “I just thought I’d run home.”

“Why?” I asked, now thoroughly confused.

And then he looked at me like I was the strange one. “Because.”

And that’s when I remembered that I was dealing with an other.

It’s got nothing to do with the generation gap: even when I was Clyde’s age it would have taken at least a zombie horde to get me moving at more than a brisk walk, and who knows how long I would have kept even that up. (Actually, who am I trying to kid? I know exactly how long I would have kept that up: about two minutes. And then I would have turned around and tried to debate my way out of being eaten.)

I also know that it’s not a generational thing because my other child is exactly like me in this regard: she would probably go through a zombie horde if it made it easier for her to get to her car on the other side. Unfortunately, my other child is also out of the country for the semester, leaving me at the mercy of these people who seem to think that sweating isn’t something that only happens after you have had your fourth shot of espresso. And by these people, I mean, of course, men. Or boys. Or whatever: I’m talking about those people who are estrogen-challenged.

I guess I never realized before how balancing it was to have another female in the house, how much the combined weight of our mutual disapproval helped to keep the male hijinks and shenanigans in check. How her disapproval radiating out from behind her closed bedroom door and mine laser-beaming its way out from the kitchen somehow combined into some sort of Ghostbuster-like proton ray to drive the worst aspects of guyville out the door and into the yard where it belonged.

Now, however, I realize that it must have been the only thing keeping my house from going Full Frontal Frat House. Look, I’m not saying that the females of the house are any neater than the males, or any less aggressive, or even any less aggravating. It’s just that I’d much rather find a pile of empty Starbucks cups on the coffee table than empty 2 liter bottles of Mountain Dew Red. Much rather have to tell someone to get off Tumblr and go to bed than tell them it’s time to say goodnight to all their lovely Call of Duty friends for the evening. (Tumblr, at least, does not involve a headset and shouting at people for accidentally shooting you in the face. Although there is probably a gif that gets the same point across.)

The worst part of it is that I know that this is all just a preview for when my daughter leaves for good and I am left with a house full of boys for years and years. What am I going to to when it is just me and the boys? I suppose I could try and fill the house up with some nonhuman females. It’s not ideal, of course, but it’s better than nothing.

And that, my friends, is where crazy cat ladies must come from.

The first day I picked my daughter, Clementine, up from kindergarten I asked her a stupid question. I asked her “How was your day?” It was stupid because that’s the kind of question that is virtually guaranteed to get you some bland and uninteresting answer like fine. Which is exactly what happened. I tried to rectify my mistake by adding “Anything exciting happen?” but that only elicited a shrug that could have meant “No, we sat in a circle and meditated for six hours” or “Well, there was one kid who showed everybody their vestigial tail during recess.” And so I tried once again. “Did anyone get in trouble?” Finally she took the time to think about her answer. “Yes. One kid. He wouldn’t share.” Ah ha, now we were getting somewhere. “Did he cry?” I asked with a twinge of excitement. “Yes.” A lot?” A small smile. “Yes.” And then the dam broke, and I was finally hearing about her day.

Well, the gossipy bits at least. I never learned what they had for snack, or whether they studied numbers or letters (or both), but I did hear about who shoved who at recess, and who refused to eat any lunch at all, and who was being such a pain at nap time that their mom had to come down and take them home. And then, finally, I heard about how her day really went.

For my part I told her about waiting outside with the other kindergarten parents, and who brought their bad dog that barked at everyone, and who talked on their cellphone the whole time and who didn’t even get out of their car but sat parked in the bus lane until the bus pulled up behind them and HONKED so loudly everyone jumped except for those of us who were watching the whole thing and secretly wishing for it to happen.

And that was the day that, even though no formal agreement was ever reached, Clementine and I decided that “How was your day” really meant “Got any good gossip?”

Don’t get me wrong: it’s not as mean-spirited as it sounds. Well, at least at isn’t on her part. She’s just as likely to tell me about someone’s good fortune as she is to tell me about the really awful fashion choice they made that day—more likely, really. (It is a well-established fact that she is much nicer than me). But it is also a well-established fact (in our relationship, at least), that the sharing of gossip means that you always have at least the first thing to say. And how can you have the second thing to say if you don’t have the first?

And the second thing is where it really gets interesting. The second thing is where the truth comes out. Don’t ask me why, but statements such as “Just because it does zip, doesn’t mean it should,” are usually followed by other even more honest statements. (True, sometimes those statements are along the lines of “You’re such a jerk, Mom” but still.)

Gossip really gets a bad rap. A friend of mine was just complaining about Jane Austen, and her complaint was that Jane Austen’s dialogue reads as nothing but gossip. I was astounded. Of course Jane Austen’s dialogue is pure gossip: that’s what so brilliant about it. When she has one character comment about another, it distills both of their characters down to their essences.

Every time that we gossip about other people we reveal things about ourselves—for better or worse. It’s just the nature of the game. And it’s the whole reason I, for one, like to play it.

And besides that, how else am I ever supposed to find out about some poor kids vestigial tail?

“You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.”–William Blake

Satiety is a relative concept. What is enough for me may be too much for you. Take The Doors, for instance (please). I have a limit of about three Doors songs (two if one of them is “The End”), and then I’m good. I’m full up on The Doors. It’s not that I hate The Doors—it’s just that it doesn’t take very much of them for me to reach my limit.

With other artists it’s different. Back in the day when people still played records because that was how they sold it to you I used to be able to play one Dylan album after another all day long and never grow tired of it. My roommates, however, were a different story. They usually hit the wall around album number seventeen, which, if I was playing them in order, was usually somewhere around Slow Train Coming. I found their lack of Dylan stamina to be intolerable: how could they be done before we even got to the ’80s? But then one of them would take over the stereo for an extended Grateful Dead bootleg session (“No, we haven’t heard this tape yet: that was July 13, 1983. This one is July 14th, 1983. Two totally different shows.”) and I would understand. Sort of.

I tried to keep these memories in mind when I found myself bemoaning the fact that my son, Clyde, had just spent the nineteenth straight day of his summer vacation shooting zombies in the head. The same zombies, because apparently the only way to get to the next level was to go back into the same room over and over again until you figured out the perfect series of moves to get out alive. It was kind of impressive, actually: that’s the kind of dedication that, in another setting (say a cancer research lab) would eventually result in a Nobel prize.

In fact, the man I had in mind when picking Clyde’s name had that same sort of dedication: Clyde Tombaugh was a “junior” astronomer when he spent close to a year of his life painstakingly looking through detailed photographs of the night sky in an attempt to discover “Planet X”—the little blur that would come to be known as Pluto. (This was supposedly well after most of the “real” astronomers up at Lowell had already decided that they had had “enough.”)

There are times, of course, when I am not so willing to let Clyde determine his own level of enough. Soda is a good example of that: given the choice, I’m afraid that Clyde would attempt to subsist on soda alone, like those lab rats who starved to death because they chose to push a button stimulating their brain’s pleasure center over and over again instead of eating. Then again, I could be wrong—I’m just not willing to invest in enough soda (and dental bills) to try and find out. I guess you could say that my reluctance to do so is my own “enough.”

For other things, though, I still think it’s okay to find your own level: just like we hate it when people tell us to take off that sweater because “it’s not cold” (to them, maybe—mutant freakazoid space heaters), we rightfully hate it when someone else tells us we have had “enough” of something we love. Especially if it is obvious that they themselves do not share that same love. Kind of like me and the zombies.

And hey: eventually the summertime zombie slaughter stopped, and it was safe once more to be undead in my living room. Unless, of course, you happened to be an undead Jim Morrison. And then, zombie or not, three songs and you’ve got to go.