“Nana,” I said. “Can you explain to me what an eighty-four-year-old woman like yourself would be doing with a jumbo variety pack of Tampax? And Biore nose strips?”
Nana looked into the cart and was just about to reach for a package of prophylactics when I grabbed her hand.
“Are those little gold chocolate coins?” she asked. “I don’t remember buying them, but I love little gold chocolate coins!”
“There’s my cart!” I heard a woman yell from behind us. “I went to get a can of soup and when I turned around, my cart had been replaced with one that had four packages of Pepcid in it! Can I have my cart back, please?”
“I’m very sorry,” I said to the lady as I hurriedly shoved everything back in the stolen cart.
“What aisle did you get these on?” Nana said as she pointed to the little gold coins. “They’re my favorite!”
“Would you be so kind,” I mentioned to Nana’s victim, “as to toss over one of those Pepcids? I think I could really use one right about now.”
The Craft Toothbrush
There was something stinky stuck to the bottom of my shoe.
“Ewww!” my husband cried as he waved his hand in front of his face when I walked through the back door from the garden. “What have you been eating?”
“It’s cat poop,” I tried to explain.
“WHY?” he demanded. “You still have a whole year’s supply of low-fat Pop Tarts in the pantry from Y2K!”
“I didn’t eat it,” I replied, lifting up my shoe. “I know that even king-size Tootsie Rolls don’t come that big. I stepped on it in the garden.”
I hobbled to the bathroom and pulled out my trusty craft toothbrush, which I keep in the part of the medicine cabinet near my deodorant and toothpaste. I flicked the bristles with my thumb, and, judging that they were still firm and stiff, decided that the craft toothbrush would be the perfect tool for the job.
I knelt in front of the toilet and did my gruesome task, scraping out all of the cat deposit that had firmly wedged itself in between most of the treads. Rinsing the now very soiled and very stinky toothbrush in the toilet water, I was almost done when my husband appeared in the doorway and after a moment screamed, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
“I’m finishing my poop Pop Tart and am washing it down with a cool drink from the potty,” I said. “What does it look like? I’m cleaning my shoe!”
“Perhaps I should rephrase that,” my husband said as his face turned all red. “Perhaps I should say, what are you doing cleaning the poopy shoe with my toothbrush?!”
I paused for a moment. “Oh, shut up,” I finally said. “This is not your toothbrush. It’s my craft toothbrush!”
“THAT is my toothbrush!” he insisted. “That is my toothbrush!”
“It is not,” I persisted. “This is the one I use for crafts!”
It really couldn’t be his toothbrush, I said to myself. We both keep our toothbrushes in a little silver container on the other end of the medicine cabinet. Mine is blue, his is green, and my craft toothbrush is gray. Besides, I knew he was still angry from a little practical joke I had played on him earlier that morning. After he finally hoisted his carcass out of bed at 11 A.M., I heard him grunting around in the bedroom until he screamed, “Have you seen my sweatpants?”
“Yes,” I called back, because that was indeed true. I had seen them.
“Do you know where they are?” he continued.
“Yes,” I answered, because I did indeed know where they were.
I heard him emit a big, deep, heavy sigh.
“Well,” he said, sighing again, “Where are they?”
I didn’t answer for a couple of seconds because I knew that would get him more aggravated. “I’m wearing them,” I finally said.
“I want to wear them,” I heard him proclaim.
“Fine,” I said as I took them off and walked to the bedroom to relinquish them. He wore them all morning, and after he took a shower and got dressed, he never even noticed the dirty pair of my underwear I had slipped into one of the sweatpants legs until I was forced to point them out.
“Now let’s imagine how this would play out in divorce court,” he said, pondering the thought. “’You see, Judge, my wife accused me of having an affair when her friend left her panties inside our dryer, she broke her stupid finger when she tripped over the laundry and blamed it on me, and then, oh yes, she put a pair of her dirty underwear with the torn waistband inside my pants that I wore all day.’ Not only would I get everything, I bet he’d sentence you to community service, too, just for being a menace.”
So, as I held the poopy craft toothbrush in my hands over the toilet, it only made sense that he was trying to get back at me for my very funny panty joke. So I just kept scrubbing.
“STOP THAT!” he screamed.
“How can this really be your toothbrush?” I answered sharply. “This is my craft toothbrush! If this is really your toothbrush, where did I find it?”
“In the medicine cabinet,” he said as he stared at me, “behind the deodorant.”
I stopped scrubbing. “And what color is it?” I asked slowly.
“My toothbrush, the one I put in my mouth every day, is gray,” he replied loudly.
I paused. “Oh,” I said simply as I held the toothbrush out to him. “Then I suppose this is yours.”
“What else have you done with it?” he demanded. “Cleaning toilets? Brushing the dog’s teeth? Polishing your shoes? Because it’s been tasting funny lately, and last week, my gums started to bleed!”
“No, no, no,” I said as I shook my head. “I didn’t do any of those things. I just used it to get some stains out of stuff, like my pants.”
And to get paint off the cabinet I was refinishing, to get some stubborn stains out of my frying pan, and to brush the cat’s teeth, but I wasn’t even sure if that one counted, because the only thing that successfully made contact with the feline’s fangs was the skin on the top of my hand.
“Now let’s imagine how this would play out in criminal court,” my husband said calmly. “I think fifteen to twenty years for attempted murder is fair.”
“I will buy you another toothbrush,” I offered, trying to make amends, but he just stomped to the bedroom, armed with a hand mirror, where he examined his swollen, puffy, scarlet-colored gums.
I got dressed, ran down to the store, and bought him a real fancy toothbrush that bends and everything. My husband never said another word about pressing charges, and neither did I.
Until I got undressed for bed that night, and a gray toothbrush with brown bristles fell out of the leg of my pants and onto the floor.
The Littlest Operative
My three-year-old nephew Nicholas came at me with three of them in his arms.
A fish. An elephant. A frog.
I shook my head.
So far, it had been a long afternoon. In a misguided effort to be the world’s best rock-and-roll baby-sitter, I told my nephew we could do whatever he liked for the afternoon he was to be in my charge.
“Let’s do what you think is the most fun in the whole world,” I naively said.
And that, directly, is how we came to be at the mall.
So far, it was no dutch treat. I had shelled out for the pizza, for the ice cream, for the Mountain Dew that he said he wanted and then promptly changed his mind when he realized I had Pepsi, and for the $5.95 Mickey Mouse lollipop that was bigger than his head.
For the $9 rubber gorilla he spotted in the first toy store we entered.
“You can have one toy,” I reminded him. “Are you sure this is it?”
He nodded vigorously, clutching the animal to his chest.
“I love him,” Nicholas said. “I will hold him like a baby.”
“Awwww,” I thought.
This strategic maneuver, I later learned, was called “Arrow in the Heart.”
It is a simple and easy tactic, yet startlingly effective, especially on those who are both simple-minded and eager
to please, such as aunts and grandmothers. It is such a basic command it can be employed by those as young as six months old with stunning and profitable results. Rumor has it that a toddler in Jersey City once acquired the stock of an entire Disney store after cooing, “Snow White not as pretty as you, Gramma. You fairest of them all.”
On Nicholas’s lead, we entered the next store, and before I even realized what was happening—within four seconds of crossing the threshold—I was being told by a salesperson that she “could take me over here.”
“Excuse me?” I said, trying to keep an eye on my nephew, who was busy pointing at a massive toy display and telling another child, “I have that. I have that. I have that. I have that.”
“He said you were buying this for him,” she said, showing me a Tarzan book and pointing to the expert thirty-pound manipulator. The master terrorist just looked up and smiled.
I had just witnessed the “Behind Your Back Stealth Bomber” tactic, one that is definitely beyond novice level. It requires movement at the speed of light, the ability to identify, secure, and successfully attack a target without being noticed. This exercise works well on those easily confused, mixing medication, or often considered “not the brightest star in the sky.” It is only fair to mention that my nephew, in the care of his other aunt (also my sister), got a sixty-pound Winnie the Pooh this way that’s bigger than my father.
“Now you have two toys,” I said as I wheeled the stroller out of the store. “We’ve reached Aunt Laurie’s limits, especially the plastic one with the hologram on it.”
At the next store, Nicholas looked at me and threw up his hands.
“What this?” he said sternly. “This no toy store.”
“I know.” I smiled. “It’s a grown-up store. I need to get something for me.”
Honestly, I don’t even know how it happened; the child was next to me the whole time, but suddenly there he was, cradling bath toys in the shape of a fish, an elephant, and a frog.
“When we came into this store I told you no toys, remember?” I reminded him gently as I approached the sales counter with a bottle of my favorite lotion in my hand. “You need to put them back.”
Desperate times require desperate measures. Nicholas’s face transformed into the look he gets every time he watches the part of the movie when Bambi finally understands that his mother has scampered into the light and that he is completely and utterly alone in the world. The look typically happens in slow motion, and it’s actually a work of art produced in stages. His eyebrows drop at the same rate as his upper lip, his mouth opens and extends downward, his tiny jowls tremble, and then his face flushes with red-hot angst. It is the look of true, unspeakable horror.
I stood there for a moment, trying to think rationally, which is simply impossible when confronted by a three-year-old who’s on the verge of exploding, and I have only enough cash left in my wallet to buy what he has in his hand or what I have in mine. At that moment, I finally understood why my mother started taking eight Tylenols a day when I was seven and just never stopped. Her liver probably looks like a fishing net, but what the hell. At least she never threw herself in front of a moving toy train.
“How about this,” I said, crouching down to his height. “How about if you pick the one you like the best, and we’ll get you that one?”
“But I can’t do that,” he said softly, shaking his head. “They’re already friends.”
“Be a big boy and pick two,” I said firmly.
He looked up at me, and I saw something shiny. Escaping from his right eye was a large tear the size of a chocolate-malted Whopper, so big it reflected light. I even saw myself in it. It teetered on the ledge of his lower eyelashes for a moment or two, then suddenly tumbled off and plunged furiously down his face, leaving a streak of sadness on his little baby cheek.
Man, I didn’t stand a chance. “Napalm” is a method reserved for only the most experienced, most brave, and most gutsy of preschoolers. It’s not for sissies. Under ideal conditions, the store will be crowded, thus increasing the humiliation level for the adult when the child throws himself on the ground, beats his head against the floor, or begins knocking over end caps. Effective, immediate results with any victim, but works particularly well if victim has a migraine or really needs a cigarette. Preschooler can boost power to superhuman strength if he or she has consumed a Pepsi and lollipop within the last hour.
As I loaded Nicholas into his car seat, followed by the gorilla, the book, and the bath toys, he looked at me and smiled.
“Oh, Aunt Laurie,” he said in his sweetest voice, “you make me so happy.”
I covered my mouth, and felt a warm, wet Whopper fall from my own face.
“Why you crying?” he said, sitting up.
I laughed, and wiped away the tear trail.
“Payback!” I shouted.
You Make Me Sick
It wasn’t the first sneeze that scared me. When I heard my husband sneeze a third, fourth, and fifth time from the living room, I still had no fear. It’s a common occurrence in our house; if you touch anything, move anything, or sit on anything, a sneeze is eminent. Our little dog, who I believe sustained minor brain damage from spending too much time out in the sun when she was a puppy, refuses to come back indoors unless she has completely coated herself with a thick layer of dirt and dead grass. If you try to brush her or pat the dirt off her, it just makes more. As a result, I have enough dust on some bookshelves to plant seeds in.
I wasn’t scared until my husband woke up the next day and shook me awake.
“Honey, I don’t feel so good,” he squeaked out. “My throat feels scratchy.”
Ten minutes later, he came back into the bedroom and leaned over me.
“I think I coughed up my colon,” he whimpered. “What does it look like to you?”
Then he stared at me and muttered the most horrendous words a husband can ever say to his wife.
“You know, I think I’m going to stay home today.”
I will say right now that my husband is the nicest guy on the planet. I knew when I married him that I got the best deal on the market, although I never thought a guy like him would ever settle for a big bag of trouble like me.
But when he gets sick, King Cranky is born, and a wave of panic washes over me when he mentions staying home. I know all about the vows I took when we got married—for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health—but the man I married changes just as soon as he’s unable to breathe out of one nostril. He becomes a walking testament to misery, shuffling around the house with two little wads of tissue compacted in his nose, poking his congested head in my office every couple minutes and asking me questions.
“I heard the phone ring. Is it for me?”
“Is it time for my pill yet?”
“How much longer do you have to work?”
“Where’s the dictionary? I want to look up ‘tuberculosis.’ ”
“I’m lonely.”
“Boy, you type loud. Every time you press a key, it’s like a dagger going into my brain.”
“What are the symptoms for the West Nile virus again?”
“I’m bored.”
“How do you make soup from scratch?”
“If the instructions on the box of oatmeal say it should cook for one minute, how long is that in the microwave?”
With that in mind, and the fact that I had a deadline that day, I jumped out of bed, rushed to the bathroom, and dug like an animal through our medicine chest.
“Here’s some stuff to make you feel better,” I offered to his droopy eyes, his pink nose, his chapped upper lip.
He unscrewed the top of the bottle and popped a pill into his mouth. “What are . . . Derma Caps?” he said weakly, reading the label as he turned the bottle around.
I gasped. “Spit it out!” I snapped, holding my hand out. “Spit it out! That’s medicine for the dog’s dandruff!”
I ran back to the bathroom and dug some more. Stashed in a box I still hadn
’t unpacked from our move, I hit gold. There, at the bottom, I found a whole box of a cold remedy you mix with water and then drink. I remember taking that stuff the last time I was sick, and how I passed out and flew into hallucinations before the last mouthful went down.
“This medicine,” I told my husband, plopping the two fizzling tablets in a mug of water, “is better than drinking a whole fifth by yourself.”
He downed it in one swallow. Within fifteen minutes, he was asleep on the couch, twitching and batting at things. It was magic.
I went back to work, but I checked on him every now and then, and was even privy to some of his hallucinations.
“I’m going to make her eat Derma Caps,” he mumbled from the couch. “And see if she likes it!”
“Hey, all of you sailors, get out of my house! Put your pants on! Where’s my wife?”
“I told you, mister, I’m Nick Barkley and I’m the head of this ranch!”
As soon as I even suspected that he was beginning to regain consciousness, I mixed up another batch of cold stuff and poured it down his throat. I had drugged him so heavily he could have written the White Album all by himself. By nightfall, I had made my deadline successfully, and went into the living room to see how many things I could put up my husband’s nose before he woke up.
I had a nickel in my hand when he shuddered awake, rubbed his eyes, and said, “Honey, you don’t look so good.”
“I had a rough day with the sailors,” I replied. “Choo!”
“Oh no,” my husband gasped. “You’re getting sick!”
“I am not!” I protested. “Choo! Choo! Choo!”
“I can’t handle this,” he replied, handing me a tissue. “You get so cranky when you’re sick!”
“I do not!” I said angrily, patting my nose with the Kleenex. “Will you quit looking at me! Move over, hog! I want to lie down there!”
“Can I get you anything?” he asked kindly.