i remember looking out the window at the pool area, bathed in the flashing blue and red lights of the police car. or maybe it was the ambulance. the entire motel was quiet, sleeping.
one of us swore he could see blood in the swimming pool water, and then we all swore that we could. i don’t know if it was true or not.
we knew what had happened, though we had not seen it. one of those older kids, those twentysomethings that were out drinking by the pool jumped in and landed on the metal patio furniture that was sitting in the pool. it wasn’t hard to see there, the black shapes in the clear blue water, but it was late, and they had been drinking, and…well, it wasn’t hard to imagine. we knew what had happened.
the television was still on. kevin bacon rode a bicycle in the movie now. we had already watched one with topless women in it. it was quite a night for us, three prepubescent boys who had no hope of seeing that kind of thing in the near (or even far, really) future.
eileen, the babysitter had rented us our own room. we had had pizza. we had swum in the pool. we had watched dirty movies, and we were staying up all night. it was the perfect dream of any nine-year-old. but the sirens had messed everything up. the sirens had taken us away from the cable tv.
and yet it was exciting, watching the drama unfold. like a real life episode of CHiPs, happening right here in front of us. it wasn’t that fun,nothing mucha happened, but we didn’t look away. we watched the paramedics load the stretcher into the ambulance and drive away.
it’s a memory i don’t access very often, and it’s not hard to see why.
but recently, a new part of that memory came to light. another person that was there that night reminded me of it. when i brought up the paramedics, he mentioned that he felt bad about that. why?, i asked him.
“because WE were the ones who threw that furniture in the pool! don’t you remember that?”
like a shot to the gut, that hit me. vague, blurred memories rushed to the front of my mind. like something from a bad late night cable movie. did we do that? were we that unruly? that stupid?
that guilty?
it made me shake a little bit, later on, when i thought about it again.
“you know, like how you’re not allowed to touch the queen’s webbies?”
she was nineteen, an intern on a tv show i worked on very briefly not all that long ago.
there were three or four of us sitting at a long table in a boardroom with a whiteboard on the wall. we were eating chinese food out of styrofoam containers. and i nearly choked. i wanted to laugh, i wanted to ask her what the hell she was talking about, i wanted her to not say one more thing before i could ask her about this inane statement. have you ever tried to laugh and talk swallo orange chicken all at the same time? it’s hard. it can kill you, if you’re not careful.
everyone in the room wanted to know more, but it took her a couple of minutes of her staring at us as if we were kidding? “you guys don’t know about the queen’s webbies?” she didn’t believe we could all be so ignorant.
turns out, “webbie” is the flap of skin connecting your thumb and your pointer finger. and it turns out it’s disrespectful to touch someone’s webbies. in an old-school politenesskind of way. and it turns out that touching the queen of england’s webbies would be the ultimate rude act. and that this is apparently covered in some class in her high school, and so it’s obviously common knowledge to all.
this is why you take the queen’s hand, like a lady, you don’t shake her hand like you do with a man.
so if you ever meet the queen, don’t touch her webbies.
aren’t you glad you know that now?
“i never drank coffee,” she says in her thick drawl, following behind us as we browse through her antiques. “i used to say my parents drank enough of it for the whole family.” her chuckle was musical, lilting. “then i met my cowboy. he drank coffee, so i said, ‘i guess i should get a coffeemaker. had to go back the next day for filters. i didn’t even know it needed filters!”
“one day,” she says a few minutes later, “we were staying in a motel. they had a coffeemaker in the room, but no coffee, so my cowboy went to one of those, um, those starbuck’s? he said he walked in, and there was a long line of ladies ordering drinks with the longest names in the world! he walked up and said, ‘do y’all just have black coffee?’ they looked at him, and then said, ‘where you from?’ the rest of the time we stayed there, they always knew, they’d say, ‘here comes the guy from texas!'”
it was bobby’s eraser that i’d drawn all over to make it look like a racecar.
i know it was his, cause he told me so.
i know he didn’t like me having it, or having drawn on it, because he told me so. and that he was going to beat me up after school because of it because–
well, he told me that, too.
i walked home that day with a very upset stomach. i didn’t have any friends to tell this news to, so it did not get any more or less scary. it was just this frightening thing on my social calendar. this thing i didn’t want on there at all, like a dentist appointment. i didn’t like that this was in my future, but i had never been beaten up, or even threatened in this manner before, so i wasn’t sure what to expect.
the next day in class i was able to push it to the back of my mind. and it was not until i as a couple of blocks from school that i remembered my date with destiny. i had not seen him in my walk home, so i considered it a lucky day.
the next day he told me i couldn’t hide from him. it had not occurred to me to hide, and the thought didn’t make any more sense now that he had said it. he was, after all, right. there was nowhere to hide. we were in the same class.
three days passed with nothing more said about the whole thing. still, i learned to flinch inwardly at anything between 3:30 and 3:45, when i was safely away from the elementary school grounds.
on friday, i saw him. he was walking towards me. fast. i watched him. it did not occur to me to run, or even really get more nervous than i already was at this time of day. he walked right past me, never even seeming to notice me at all, stalking across the parking lot and turning the corner, out of sight.
that was the last i ever heard about someone else’s eraser or how i should not have turned it into a racecar. but it was not the last time i was ever threatened with the thought of violence.
this was probably the day i learned to start being afraid.
has anyone noticed the ambitious spiders in this town?
i can’t walk through my yard but that some spider hasn’t spun a web from the fence to the tree–twelve feet away. and it wasn’t there the night before. that means he’s working all. night. long.
there’s always one from my car to the wall too. i mean, to get that done overnight, when you’re a spider, has GOT to be some hard work. i hope he’s catching mad flies and mosquitoes and generally making the world a better place to live in, cause it makes me mad as hell when i’m pulling at invisible strings all over my face, shrieking “get it off me!” like a little girl.
still–kudos to them, cause the next day, those damn webs are there for me to walk right through again.
a long time ago, i found this magazine, called vice. it had really strange articles about things i had never heard of, and reviews of things i didn’t know what were. it talked of a lot of things like that, mostly in the context of how “over” they were. but the things i understood blew my mind with their hilarious irreverence. it’s a free magazine, but it’s not easy to find. in fact, i only found it a few times, and have not seen it in a while.
the best thing was the “do’s and dont’s,” taking the emotions that i already had when i saw certain hipster fashion choices, and putting them into (mostly dirty) words that expressed exactly how i felt.
and then, randomly, google put me back in touch with them. and now, i can’t stop looking at those do’s and don’ts. years worth, just sitting there waiting for me to click on them.
the problem is that i can’t remember them all to tell you later when i see you, and anyway, you need to see the pictures when you hear the words, so basically, the only way i can share this with you is by you going there on your own.
so please–click on that picture up there.
then we’ll have a lot to talk about. and laugh? oh how we will laugh.
of course, i SHOULD be reading “twelfth night.” oh well.
if you don’t occasionally check in on this video podcast, you are missing something.
this should prove me right about THAT.
the times they are a-changin’, as bob dylan said a long time ago. and that…well, that hasn’t, um, changed.
i have a new phone, as regular readers will know. the last cell phone couldn’t hack hanging out in the rain. so an unexpected purchase as made, and a new phone sits in my pocket right now.
it’s nice. it takes pictures, and has lots of fancy ringers and games, can get on the internet. the one thing it doesn’t have is all my old numbers.
and i got to thinking how many numbers were in there that i don’t have written anywhere else. so i will wait for them to call me, and when they do, i will save their numbers.
some, however, never call. and i do not find myself running around trying to find their numbers. so they do not make the transition to the next phone.
and i put forth to you, the world, that this is the new age of herd-thinning. it is evolution in its purest form, with a few technological bells and whistles thrown into the mix that darwin could not have foreseen.
my truest, closest friends will either call me at some point, or i will want/need to call them badly enough that i will seek out their contact information. and those that are not as close will, by nature’s unseen hand, be left behind by the rest of the herd, to be, er…devoured by whatever this metaphor’s equivalent to hyenas and lions are.
yeah.
deep, huh?
had to get up a little earlier than i wanted to to push this tree out of the way of b’s car.
too much rain is killing our trees! oh bitter irony!
sigh. gotta call the tree man again.
Filed under: fun
Does any one know Tobacco liquor child?
Is tobacco liquor and children ok topic.
My 10 year old son was more and more teasing about step fathers big cigars and can he have my wine or his rare turkey. He says about cigars and liquor just to tease but still – it is time may be.
This should be a father thing but his father long gone. New step father moves slow to the children. This is good. To my 13 year daughter – slower learner but super sweet – she takes his hand so tight. He will act like no big deal and just a little squeeze back. Moves slow towards her. To my son he is like this big neat guy who can do any thing and sleeps with his mother. My son is really high energy always going but also good. But he teases of wanting a cigar and about wanting liquor. So then teach him.
So Saturday late afternoon then with my age 10 son. OK. We will both each to smoke a big cigar and drink really strong whiskey and just talk.
Mother to big cigar smoke and strong liquor drink my kid under the table quick. Puff again. Drink more. At first so cool. Then so very sick. Good night sick son.
He not one time to tease any thing about tobacco or liquor from Saturday to now. Is that ok way to do this with children for tobacco and liquor.
–this comedy central bulletin board post made the fact that i never found the daily show clip iw as looking for pretty much worth it anyway.
overthinking 