Because that’s when it hit me: When you’re about to dive into a pool of water from four stories up going roughly 30 to 40 miles per hour and you’re wearing a white T-shirt with a white nylon bra underneath it, there’s a very good reason to try to get the hell out of that car.
A very good reason.
“I told you not to sit in the front of that log,” my sister insisted as we walked out of Splash Mountain. “I told you if you sat in the front of the log, this would happen.”
“I wasn’t sitting in the front,” I snapped. “I was in the second seat.”
“The only thing protecting you from that wave was a scrawny twelve-year-old boy who provided about as much of a shield as a chicken breast,” my sister said. “Would you please step back? You are dripping all over me.”
“Well, I’m glad that I was of service to you,” I shot back. “Thanks to my effectiveness as a shield, the both of you are as dry as dirt.”
“Did you know that wet, you have Liza Minelli’s hair?” my sister asked. “And now your makeup looks like hers, too.”
“Why are your arms crossed?” my nephew said. “Are you mad?”
“I’m not sure if ‘mad’ is the word, Nicholas,” I answered. “I’m just trying to keep our little trip here at a G rating. If I uncross my arms, either I’d get taken away by or I’d pop up in the latest version of Totally Ugly Girls Gone Wild.”
“Oh, you look fine,” my sister tried to reassure me. “It’s not that bad!”
“Oh yeah?” I said, lifting up one of my elbows.
“Whoa,” my sister remarked. “Last time I saw one of those roaming around in the open it was frolicking with Tommy Lee on a boat. But really, the parts of you that aren’t actively pornographic look . . . okay.”
“Really?” I asked, clinging to one last shred of hope. “I started out so great this morning, and now I look like a used Bounty paper towel.”
“No,” my sister said as she shook her head. “If you were wearing that, you wouldn’t look so completely topless.”
“Let’s go to Tom Sawyer Island!” Nicholas quipped.
“Fine with Aunt Laurie,” I said. “She needs to find some sun before she gets nominated for adult entertainer of the year.”
Over on the island, my nephew and my sister ran through caves and climbed up forts like chimps with a bunch of other kids, and I tried my best to keep up, but I lost them in the labyrinth of Injun Joe’s Cave, being that I couldn’t move very freely without exposing myself to a random child. In favor of keeping my balance and remaining upright, I decided to try and backtrack my way out and then find a nice sunny spot where I could dry out and enjoy the benefits of opaque clothing again. Finally, I saw the opening of the cave and headed toward it, and as I entered daylight, I suddenly saw the tumble of sky, the sun, glimpses of blurry faces, and finally, a big patch of brown all tossed in front of me like a salad.
When I looked up, I heard a chorus of tiny giggles and saw a bunch of rotten kids above me on the mountain, peering over and cackling like Children of the Corn. I had totally eaten it on Tom Sawyer Island, which wasn’t surprising since my arms were entirely useless. As I got up from my full-body dirt sprawl, grasping at the base of the mountain, I tried to act cool, like it was no big deal, while the kids still chortled.
I looked down at myself, and I saw three mud circles; one formed perfectly over each already wet boob, then a particularly large one that covered the spot where my big, fat belly is—and the skin on my palms had been scraped away.
Well, I thought, at least I’m not naked anymore. I am emotionally destroyed and physically devastated, but I am no longer flashing.
When my sister finally came around the corner with my nephew in tow, I had only one thing to say to them.
“Hi,” I said coolly as they both stared at the big brown mounds. “I HATE DISNEYLAND.”
God’s Car Wash
I saw it as I came around the front of my car, a streak of glistening silver, long, stretched, and shiny across the hood.
I looked at it curiously, tilting my head the way a dog does when he doesn’t understand you or the way my husband does when I ask him to do his own laundry.
At first, I thought that someone had hocked a huge one onto the car, but the stain was far too large for that. I came around to the driver’s side and saw that the side mirror, door, and trunk had also been savaged, and as I stepped in closer to get a better look at the shiny mess, I heard it distinctly.
CRUNCH.
An eggshell.
I had been egged. An entire generation of unborn chicks had been lobbed through the air to strike and splatter all over my innocent Honda. As I scratched away hardened egg whites with my fingernail below the window, I moaned.
Now I was gonna have to wash it, something I hadn’t done since I bought the car two years ago, and with good reason. What kind of idiot criminal would steal a filthy car when there’s plenty of clean ones to be had? I figured no one was going to steal a car with so much nicotine on the windows that you couldn’t see out in spots. No one was going to steal a car in which you had to move heavy objects like large panes of glass, my great-grandfather’s meat grinder, and an old computer in order to sit down. No one was going to steal a car that would make them dirty just by riding in it. Besides, I knew that if you waited long enough, God always washed it for you.
I looked at my car, dipped in so much egg that it was ready to be breaded like a cutlet. What did this mean? I thought. Obviously, someone hates me. Eggs? What is that supposed to say? “Sadly, I am unable to appropriately express my anger, so I have no other alternative than to throw an animal product at your mode of transportation”? But pelting a breakfast food at my car? Why couldn’t they just Corn Pop or Sugar Smack me?
And what’s next? If eggs are the first level of vengeance, I wondered, then what? If I make the vandals even angrier—maybe by pointing out an obvious though kindly overlooked physical flaw—do I get a rasher of bacon? If I start dating their ex-spouse, what fate lies in store for me then? Will I come out of the house one day and find, to my horror, that the Honda has been Rooty Tooty Fresh ’N Fruitied, with the tires slashed and filled with whipped cream?
And who are these vandals? Who could hate me enough to throw a delicate ovum onto the hood of my car and watch it rupture?
Quickly, I assembled a list of possible and cowardly suspects.
SUSPECT #1: The President of My Neighborhood Association. MOTIVE: The fact that I tried to egg his house for reporting me to the City of Phoenix for having a messy yard, but realized it was both immature and wrong when I arrived and he was standing outside with a video camera in his hand. ULTERIOR MOTIVE: He had a sudden epiphany that when he drove by on Saturday and I extended a cordial greeting, at which he smiled and waved, I was really saying, “I hate you, stupid tattletale! Don’t you wave at me, Stupid Tattletale Man!! I’m going to tattle on YOU! ON YOU!! For being DUMB, you dummy!!” (I’m not very good at on-the-spot insults.)
SUSPECT #2: Jerry, the Homeless Tree Trimmer. MOTIVE: The complete and utter rejection he experienced on the porch of my house at 11 P.M. on a Sunday night while demanding that I give him money. The main reason I don’t think it’s him is because my neighbor Robyn finally called the cops on him that same Sunday night, after he stood on her porch and repeatedly said to her, “Do you recognize me? I got my hair cut. But it’s me, it’s really me. Here, pretend my fingers are bangs,” and we’re pretty sure he now sleeps in a bunk bed and shares a metal potty with four other guys.
SUSPECT #3: The Lady at the Movies Who Cut in Front of Me in the Popcorn Line. MOTIVE: When the Popcorn Guy said, “I can help the next person,” and it was really my turn but Suspect #3 stepped up to the counter, I walked up next to her and said loudly, “Cheater, Cheater, Panty-Eater!” She then gave me a dirty look and said, “Humph!” to which I put my hands on my hips and said “Humph!” much louder.
SUSPECT #4: The nearly dead lady breathing out of an oxygen tank at Costco
whose heel I clipped with my shopping cart on the day I was supposed to be loving everybody, but she was moving way too slow and something had to be done. MOTIVE: I almost killed her when as I passed her, I flashed a Bob Fosse–caliber Angry Jazz Hands move that shocked her so completely it came close to ripping her oxygen tube out of her nose.
When my husband came home that night, I showed him the list and told him about my car getting egged.
“Oh yeah?” he replied. “Well, I wouldn’t worry about it. You’ve got the equivalent of all of Mount St. Helen’s ash on the hood alone, that should protect it. Your little dirt cocoon should be just fine.”
“I told you,” I replied. “God washes my car when He thinks it’s time!”
“Laurie,” my husband said, “your car is so messy people have asked me if you’re breeding chickens in the backseat and are then making sausage with that grinder. Maybe someone just felt sorry for your car and they’re forcing you to wash it, like an intervention.”
“You know I keep it messy for a reason. I keep it messy so it won’t stray, kinda the same way I kept shoving chicken-fried steaks down your throat,” I said, stomping around the house, collecting a bucket, sponge, and dog shampoo, since we were out of soap. “God knows better, but fine!”
With a spoon and a paper towel, I scraped the egg, which had now hardened to the consistency of polyurethane, off the afflicted areas. Then I squirted the dog shampoo on the car, worked it up into a lather, and as I took the hose to it, most of my neighbors came out to watch.
I was drying off the last part of the bumper when I heard something hit the hood. I heard another thud, and another one. I ran to the front of the car, and that’s when I saw them. Three big wet streaks across the section I had just scraped.
I looked up, held out my hand, and barely got to the front porch before God’s Car Wash opened for business.
Flight of the Bumblebee
As soon as I saw the pilot heading toward the main door of the school, dressed in his clean, crisp blue uniform and carrying a globe, I knew I was in a big pot of trouble.
Here I was, a guest speaker at a middle school for Career Day, and I hadn’t brought one single prop.
Not one. I hadn’t even pulled into the parking lot and already I was a miserable failure.
When I had been asked months ago to be a guest speaker at Career Day and attend a luncheon afterward at a local middle school, I was thrilled beyond belief. Me! Could anyone believe it? Someone out there thought I had a career!
I, obviously, knew better. Although my business card still said I was a columnist, in my messy little office at the newspaper, far, far away from the rest of my department, I definitely knew better. After losing my weekly newspaper column, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that the survival of my daily web column was hanging on by a thread. This was confirmed one day on the homepage when my column sig—a little caricature that looked far more like a Muppet than it did me—and link to my column was no longer there, much to my surprise. I had been booted. Bumped. Eighty-sixed.
Well, you might say to yourself, there are plenty of reasons why a columnist’s sig would be replaced, especially on the homepage of a newspaper’s website, which changes continuously—breaking news, a latest development in a big story, or an anticipated verdict may have just been handed down. Plenty of reasons. And I would agree. Except that my tiny little Muppet head was gone, and in its place was the head of a dog.
It was the head of Mr. Winkle.
Mr. Winkle, a real dog that looks like a stuffed toy, who does nothing but pant excessively and get dressed up in outfits to take pictures with fake butterflies and rainbows and has several books, calendars, and Today show appearances to his name, was in my spot.
Now, some people—including the editor who put Mr. Winkle on the homepage—might reason, “Well, big deal, it’s just a dog, so he took your spot for one day, it’s not all that bad, you should grow up,” but then I would be forced to point out that there was a pretty good chance that none of those people had ever come to work and found a two-pound dog, panting like an asthmatic and dressed up like an asshole bumblebee sitting in their spot.
Pretty good chance of that.
Despite being fired from seven jobs, despite having a gun pointed at me during one job interview, despite learning that I got a pink slip at another publication to make room for a guy who worked for Hot Rod magazine, I had no other choice but to make a poster officially declaring this as the lowest point in my career, and I hung it on the window of my office, facing out.
Even though my column sig returned to the homepage the next day, Mr. Winkle was a sign. I realized that my “career” at the newspaper was nothing more than a time card and inclusion in group health coverage with a lousy copay, and any other aspirations I had at my current place of employment were simply a case of misplaced hope that I needed to drown like a sack full of ugly.
And now, not only did I have a serious dent in my career on Career Day, but I had no props to boot.
“Stupid pilot,” I said to myself as I tried to find a parking space. “Getting all dressed up and bringing a globe! Snotty. That is so snotty! How can anyone else compare to that? He brought the goddamned world. He brought the goddamned world as a prop.”
I swung around the crowded lot, looking everywhere for a space to park in, and I zoomed toward what looked like the last empty spot. And, when I discovered that although roughly 80 percent of the space was indeed empty, the remaining 20 percent was being currently occupied by the two sets of rear tires belonging to a brightly and professionally painted massive race car trailer. A race car trailer that hauls race cars. RACE CARS.
You have got to be kidding me! I cried mournfully to myself as I hit the steering wheel and yelled at the trailer. And pointed at it. Not only do you need about sixteen thousand parking spaces to park your crap, but you brought a race car, too! God! Who else is here to show off and show everyone what a loser Career Day speaker I am? Maybe Jesus is here, do you think they invited Jesus? I’ll probably see him in about a minute, standing in between the race car driver and the pilot, holding a loaf of bread, a fish, and a jug of water. “Hello, I am the son of God, your Lord, your Savior. Is anyone hungry? Really, don’t be shy. I fed a whole Phish concert with half this much last week.”
Finally, after abandoning the search for a space, I parked my car on the street and headed into the school, right behind the police officer accompanied by his bomb-sniffing dog and what I hoped was a chiropractor with a skeleton in tow and not a serial killer with a trophy. I stood in line behind them at the office to find out where I was supposed to be, as the dog sniffed the skeleton and the serial killer thought he was being very funny by making the bony hand pet the dog’s head.
When it was my turn to get an assignment, I stepped toward the receptionist and gave her my name.
She looked above the rims of her glasses and eyed me suspiciously. “And you are here for . . . ?” she asked.
“Career Day,” I said, shrugging. “Just like the guy with the dog and the guy with his victim.”
“Oh,” the receptionist replied, seeming a little taken aback. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. You just don’t have any . . . accessories. Just one moment.”
It was at this specific point that I really wished I had paid closer attention in high school chemistry class so that I may have realized my true occupational dream of inventing a pill that would get rid of crappy songs running through your head within twenty seconds of taking it. Imagine the hero I’d be then.
Ain’t nothin gonna break my stride
Nobody’s gonna slow me down, oh no
Zap. Thank you, Matthew Wilder, you heinous madman who created a supersize nugget of auditory torture and then threw it out into the world! With my pill, you’re beautifully smothered by obscurity once again.
I want my
baby-back baby-back baby-back baby-back ribs
Kaboom. No thanks, Chili’s; with my pill, you can stick your ri
bs up your baby-back ass, because your jingle is a crime against humanity, and I will bleed for you no more.
Who let the dogs out
Who! who! who! who—
Splat. Nope, not this time, with my pill, those dogs aren’t getting stuck in the loop of my skull. On the contrary! Round up those puppies and break out the sodium Pentothal, because those dogs aren’t going out, they’re going down.
But no. I wanted to be a writer—well, not really, I wanted to be an artist, but my dad simply said, “Like hell if I’m going to pay for college tuition to art school so you can spend four years smoking and making pots.”
And now here I was, hands empty, with nothing. If I had invented that pill, I could have come armed with a bunch of K-Tel CDs and vials of pharmaceuticals. Why, the classrooms would fight over me! Instead, I had nothing to offer these children. Honestly, what were the tools of my trade? Did I even have any? How could I actually tell them that in order to do my job, the most valuable instrument that I possessed were my fingers, most or all of which have been up my nose and in other various unsavory places? I mean, think about that. Does a plumber stick a wrench up his nose? Certainly not if it was included in a matching Craftsman set. Does a carpenter pop a zit with his hammer? Not unless it’s life-threatening.
All I could really do was wave my ten little filthy, repugnant, and wanton Indians at the crowd of honest, innocent faces and request that they wash their own hands with alcohol after touching mine, especially after I really gave it some thought.
What was I thinking when I accepted this invitation? Why had I even come? What was I going to say? Now, I’d really like to report that when the door to the classroom opened and I saw the sea of wide-eyed, impressionable faces on the laddies and lasses before me that I became the Sir-ess With Love whose tongue immediately untangled and bestowed an incredible tale of honor, morality, and wisdom upon thirty-odd sets of hungry ears gathered at my knee, sitting cross-legged in a semicircle, and afterward, I played a jaunty tune on my flute that the able-bodied children danced to as if we were in medieval times and the less fortunate enthusiastically accompanied me on tambourine, but that did not happen.