Leezer

Most people don’t know how funny my husband is, because he looks like a banker and he doesn’t share his potty humor with anyone but me.  But because I’ve lived with him for nearly twenty years, the only way he can get me to notice his sophomoric comments and body sounds is through dogged repetition.  For instance, a few weeks ago I off-handedly referred to my –ahem- period as “menses.”  (This was in jest; I haven’t heard the term since watching “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” in the eighth grade and the word just popped into in my head.) He was so tickled by this that he peppered me with questions throughout the week – “how are your menses?” or, “would you mind passing me the salt, or are you unable, due to your menses?”  His use of the word as a noun eventually degraded into the uncomplimentary practice of referring to me as “menses” – “Goodnight, Menses” and “Menses, I’m going to the store. Do we need milk?”  That was where I drew the line.

A few days ago, in the same manner that “menses” just popped into my head, “nut-sack” popped into his.  While tearing a paper towel off the towel dispenser one morning he announced that he was going to incorporate the word “nut-sack” into a presentation he was a making at work that day.  “Good luck with that,” I said, not wanting to encourage him.  Later that night, I told him that the architect we hired for a bathroom-addition would be coming over the following day to take some measurements.  “Why don’t we have him design some shelves here and there throughout the house about crotch-high where I can rest my nut-sack?” my husband asked.  “Would the shelves have special indentations for your nut-sack, or would they be just flat wood?” I responded, levelly.  “Well, they’d have to be comfortable, or I wouldn’t want them,” he said, and he sat down to Olympic Speed Skating for the night.

Not discouraged, he was at it the following day.  Because my husband needs a passport so that we can travel out of the country soon, I phoned him at work to remind him to stop at a Kinkos at lunch and have a passport photo taken:

“Can I just do this anywhere?” he asked. 

“Not really,” I explained, “you have to go somewhere that specifically advertises passport photos, because the photos have to be a certain size, and have to be of your head, but not of other parts your body.”

(Here it comes) “You mean like my nut-sack?”

“What?”

“You said the photo couldn’t be of another part of my body.  How do we know that the nut-sack doesn’t contain specific identifying characteristics, like fingerprints or retina?”

“Well, a passport just contains a photo.  I doubt photos of nut-sacks would be helpful to airport and government personnel.  But maybe you’re onto something homeland security could use, instead of fingerprints, for instance.”  (This was the Rubicon, so to speak, as now he knew he had my attention).

“Right.  Maybe airport security should scan nut-sacks in order to identify potential terrorists.  But how would that work, really?  Would we drop trou at airport security?”

“No, when you went through baggage check-in you’d be assigned special pants with a cellophane crotch.”

“I don’t know if the scanning equipment they’ll invent for scanning nut-sacks will scan through cellophane.  Will you call the FBI today and ask?”

“Ask the FBI if the nut-sack scanning device that they need to invent soon will be able to scan can through cellophane?”

“Yes.”

“Hmmm.  Be home at five, o.k? Because I want to leave for the gym right when you get home.”

“O.K.

And so it goes for a few more days until a new routine replaces the last. 

Whenever I see a story on television about a couple married fifty years or more, the moron interviewing the couple will undoubtedly ask, “what’s your secret to a long marriage?” The answers consistently include, “don’t go to bed angry,” or “my spouse is my best friend.”  While this is good advice, I wouldn’t be married to someone for very long if he didn’t make me laugh.  Obviously there’s more to it, but laughing is huge.  Our ability to make each other laugh, among other things, has seen us through some pretty tough times, and I’m sure there will be more.  I’m grateful I can share them with someone with the same sense of irony as my own.

Der erste Fall - I am five years old and at a party outside around a swimming pool.  I look around; no one is watching.  I jump into the middle of the deep end.   Sinking down for the second and third time, gulping water, there’s nothing nearby to grab onto.   I go down for what I think is the last time, but feel something on my wrist.  I four year-old at the party makes an “O” with her thumb and forefinger around my wrist, and we float to the side of the pool. 

 Der zweite Fall - I am driving on ice and snow.  I slide through an intersection and into a five-lane highway facing oncoming traffic.  I can’t turn my car around.  I man knocks on my window.   He tells me he is going to pull his car into the road in front of mine to block my car from oncoming traffic so I can turn around.   After I’m  off of the road, I search for the man, but he’s gone; I never saw where he came from or where he went.

Der dritte Fall - I am in law school.  I have a dream that I am sitting in church telling my best friend Ruthie that I received an envelope in the mail containing a check for $1500.   I forget about the dream.  A couple of weeks later, I receive an envelope in the mail containing a check for $1500.  It is check from my law school - a scholarship for legal writing that I never knew existed.

Der vierte Fall - I am awakened by my infant daughter who is only three days old.  I feed her and rock her to sleep.  It is about three a.m.  I am overcome with love and concern for her.  I pray with all my heart that God will send her angels to protect her throughout her life, and to help me protect her.   The next morning I am alone in the house.  It is winter; all the doors and windows are shut.  No fans or air conditioners are running.  No animals are in the house.  No drafts are discernible.  Yet, as she sleeps soundly in her cradle, I watch from across the room as  it rocks back and forth, back and forth. 

Der fünfte Fall - I am in bed, resting in that peaceful state half-way between consciousness.  I smell my grandmother, who died when I was nineteen.  I smell her cold cream - that unmistakable rose scent.  I see myself as a small child; she picks me up and gives me a hug.   The scent is in the air when I awake.

My personal favorite! He looks like he needs a hug and some pants.

On this day in 1471, Piero de Lorenzo de’ Medici was born.  The Medicis were filthy rich and ruled Florence for about three hundred years.  The family produced three popes and a handful of dukes and rulers of Florence.   Piero was the youngest son of Lorenzo. Piero breast fed until he was fifteen and therefore showed little promise for military leadership or for that matter, getting laid.  This and he had a collection of jumbo pencils from Florentinian theme parks and a crooked penis. This is why he was called Piero the Unfortunate.

Which brings to mind the following query: why don’t we have descriptive titles after our names anymore?  For instance, I could be Leezer the Busty or Leezer the Ingrate.   A man with ample hips would be Bob the Ship-Hipped.  A loose woman could be Wendy the Town Floozy,  and so on.

In other news, my new favorite show is “Friday Night Lights.” It’s a drama about a small Texas high school football team whose coach is played by Kyle Chandler:

I really don’t have anything else to add here.  I just wanted to post a picture of Kyle Chandler. Hey honey, will you please wear a blue windbreaker for me and, oh yeah, put on one of those headsets like Kyle Chandler wears on Friday Night Lights.  There.  Like that.  You got it.  . . . .

I  am at my Grandmother’s house helping her prepare for a meeting she is hosting for several women from her church.  The women arrive and bring with them the most beautiful bouquet of red roses I have ever seen.  Everything else is black and white - the room, the people, the sky, but the roses are a vivid shade of red. They glow as if lit from within.  The petals look like velvet.  After the meeting is over and all the women have left, I notice they have left the roses behind.  I ask my grandmother if she thinks it would be alright if I kept the roses. “Of course.” she says, kindly. I am overjoyed.  Then there is a knock at the door.  I open it. One of the old women from the meeting is back, and says she’s forgotten her roses.  She takes the bouquet of roses out of my hands and leaves with them.  My grief over losing the roses is so intense that I have to force myself to breathe.  

I have had this dream about once a year for the past twenty years, and I spend each day following the dream under a gray cloud with a lump in my throat.  Only recently have I begun to understand its meaning.

The first documented association of Valentine’ Day with romantic love is believed to have been made by Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400) in The Parliament of Fowls, a mysterious poem about the joy and pain of love.

The poem takes place as its narrator is reading Cicero’s Scipion’s Dream.  The narrator is reading Cicero’s poem because he has “a certeyn thing to lerne,” but we don’t know what this is.  The narrator then falls asleep and begins to dream.  In the dream, a guide – the father of the guide in Scipion’s Dream- leads him through the celestial spheres and then to Venus’ temple. The narrator passes through Venus’ dark temple with its friezes of doomed lovers then through a garden gate out into the bright sunlight; on the gate are inscriptions of the pain and joy of experiencing love.  In the garden, the Goddess of Nature is convening a parliament at which all the birds choose their mates.  It is February 14^th, Valentine’s Day.  The eagles are at the top of the  hierarchy of birds.  Three eagles make their case for the formel (female) eagle.  The first eagle attempts to woo the formel with high rhetoric and protestations of courtly love.  The second eagle is not very romantic, but argues that because he has known and served the formel for a long time, he has the higher claim.  The third eagle acknowledges that he has not known the formel for a long time, but argues that his love is sincere and intense.  Without much upon which to make her choice, the formel asks the Goddess Nature to decide.  Nature states that the formel’s decision will be deferred for one year.  The dreamer awakes, still unsatisfied, and returns to his books, hoping still to learn the thing for which he seeks.  Experts have opined that the poem is about the fact that the narrator seeks a point of resolution, a point unattained and perhaps unattainable.

And there you have it.  Things haven’t changed much in the past seven hundred years.  Love is still a risk - a gamble for love or for pain.  And for most of us who have lived past the age of twenty-five, we have gambled and lost.

I was nineteen when it happened to me and, twenty-years later, I still have nightmares about it.  Maybe the nightmares occur so that I will never again be blindsided in such a way.  No kids were involved.  I wasn’t married at the time.  But it still haunts me to this day.  And now, while I doubt that my spouse will suddenly realize he’s spent the past twenty years with someone other than his soul-mate, it’s certainly possible that he’ll come home from work one day and announce to me that I was merely a prelude to meeting the real love of his life.  It’s not likely – he isn’t prone to bouts of spontaneity and inspiration (that’s me, not him) – but it is certainly possible.  And if I ever found myself in such a situation, as dreadful as it would be, I would not conclude that my abandonment was the result of being intrinsically unlovable.  Rather, I would survive the sleepless nights and awful days trusting myself despite the pain.  Romantic love is mutable.  It is not constant. While it can survive a millennium, sometimes it just doesn’t.  And, as the narrator in The Parliament of Fowls knows, just why or why it does or doesn’t last will always remain a mystery. 

Happy Valentine’s day.  And remember, Saint Valentine was a martyr.  But you needn’t be one too.

It is never too early to start planning for the end of the school year.  As summer quickly approaches, I am becoming anxious about the day camps in which I should enroll my little daughter so that, while I am toiling away in an overly air conditioned office, she may spend her carefree summer days becoming enriched and nurtured.   The frustrating thing is that the only camps offered are soccer camp, bible school, gymnastics camp and a handful of other programs promising fun and excitement.  That’s  bullshit.  What Butters really needs is something a little more practical, camps that will provide skills that she can use throughout her life. Something along these lines:

1. Oil rig fire extinguishing camp.   Fire-protective clothing provided; bring a sack lunch. Students are discouraged from the heavy use of hairsprays and other flourocarbons on fire extinguishing-simulation days. 
2. Panhandling camp.  Students will dig through dumpsters for broken glass with which to cut their own signs out of cardboard.  Dirty hobo-type clothing provided.  Money collected at the end of each day will be donated to Miss Seafair Scholarship Fund.
3. Genital Health Camp.  Students will discover how to detect and treat genital warts and other sexually transmitted viruses.  Students should wear comfortable, loose-fitting clothing.   Use of heavily scented perfumes and creams discouraged.
4. Novels of the Ocean Peril-Genre Camp.  Students will study the works of Peter Benchley (Jaws, The Deep, The Island), Paul Gallico (The Poseidon Adventure), and Diane Hoh (Titantic: The Long Night).  At the end of the week, students will apply the formula used in this genre to write their own screenplays.
5. The Works of Liza Minelli Camp.  Students will study the complete works of Liza Minelli and will role-play Liza and her many husbands during their hours of couples therapy in order to develop a working knowledge of this misunderstood legend.   Musical experience not necessary, but must be willing to endure tedious hours of false eyelashe-application.

I have not seen any such classes in the City of Seattle Parks Department guide to summer camps.    If you run across any similar course offerings in the greater Puget Sound region, please let me know.

Dark Ages Guy Applies for a Target Credit Card

Target Employee:  Good afternoon.  Would you care to save 10% on your Target purchases today?

Dark Ages Guy: Dear wench, thy wanton manner and forthright speech doth vex me.   Away with you, and send thy lord.

Target Employee.  Right.  Would you like to apply for a Target card today?

Dark Ages Guy:  I shall ask thy Lord and my liege for a trade of good value, two swine for the cod pieces (points to shopping cart holding  20 athletic cups, size L).

Target Employee (Sighing, chomping gum, and ringing up the athletic cups):  That will be $97.76. 

Dark Ages Guy: And will you fetch your Lord? The swine awaits thee.

Target Employee:  You can wait over there (points to Customer Service Desk) and they’ll answer any questions you have.

Dark Ages Guy:   Thou shalt suffer one thousand blows, methinks! Whilst thy master waits, your insufferable and factious talk infects thy soul!  Get out Satan!

Target Employee:  Have a nice day.