vituperation

September 10, 2003

Danielle’s friend Debra is walking in a marathon to raise money for a cure for diabetes, a disease with which I am far too familiar. She needs to raise $5500 in Canadian dollars which, as you know, is like $75 in US dollars.

If there’s any way you can contribute, please do.

I went to the dentist Monday to get my teeth cleaned. This was my first time to see this guy; my previous dentist decided to stop taking the insurance I have, and it’s just too much an ass-pain to try to file the claim myself. Or, more realistically, to have Robyn file it for me.

I have to say, the new place is pretty cool. It’s all open and modern and shit, and get this: they’ve got TVs in the exam rooms for you to watch while you wait for the dentist. I was blown away when the hygenist finished up.

“Here you go,” she said, holding out the remote. “Why don’t you watch something while you wait for Dr. Patio?” (Yes, I changed the name to protect the innocent.)

I took the remote, thanked her, and began channel-surfing. As I clicked, I reflected on just how cool it was to be able to watch things like Shepard Smith or Married With Children while I waited for my dentist. In what seemed to be almost no time, he was there to check my teeth.

How is it, I ask, that with eighty channels — each with its own program — from which to choose, I managed to be watching Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood when the dentist walked in to meet me for the first time?

I had to terminate a cricket this morning in the garage. I was trying to work out — doing another of the “Firm” tapes since this week is my easy-week from the weights — and I could barely hear the TV because this cricket was so damn happy he was singing at the top of his wings. That’s how they make the sound, you know. Rubbing their wings and shit. Stridulation, if you want to know the scientific term.

He was behind the trashcan, that’s all I could really tell, but when I moved the trash out of the way and poked around with a stick I found nothing. As a matter of fact, it seemed to make him (I know it was a “him” because the “her” crickets don’t chirp) sing just a little louder. I suspect he was defending his territory. My territory.

I decided I needed to bring out the big gun. The Raid.

Pointing the can at the space between the baseboard and the garage floor I laid down a line of liquid death; napalm without the flames for insects. He raced out from under the baseboard, racing the stream like a tiny Forrest Gump sans his Bubba. He circled franctically but he was no match for my elite spraying skills, and I doused him in no time. And he lost his little cricket mind. For fifteen minutes I had to listen to him boinging into the garage door while I finished my workout. But you know what?

He didn’t chirp once.

“Spud,” I said to the child in question, who lay on her bed giving me an insolent stinkeye that only a teen can give, “You need to clean your room, including vacuuming. Also, please clean your lunch crap off the counter in the kitchen.”

With only the slightest roll of her eyes, the spud rolled off her bed and began the arduous task of making her floor visible again. I went downstairs to have my lunch. A couple of times, while I was still eating, the spud wandered in to get this or that, but she never cleaned off the counter. I went to read, and some time later when I needed more tea I found Robyn in the kitchen. The fixings for her lunch were spread all over the the clean counter.

All over the clean counter. The counter which the spud had not cleaned.

Robyn stood at the refrigerator, getting ice for her water. Our ice dispenser is loud, a sort of cross between a jet engine and a wood chipper.

“Bessie,” I said, and pointed at the counter, “why’d you clean her mess up?” My voice was flat, perfectly level in pitch, merely slightly inquisitive.

“I see!” Robyn trumpeted. Casting a hairy eyeball upon me, she stomped across the kitchen to the counter and began briskly wiping the counter. I watched, amused. When she finished, she pitched the dishcloth into the sink and turned to me.

“SO!” she said, “If I have to clean that up…” She whisked by me and crossed the kitchen to a point near the door leading to the garage. She bent, pointing at some spot on the floor visible only to her. “Then you have to clean this, and this, and THIS!”

With each this she hopped and pointed to a different place on the tiles. She then stood, triumphant in her victory over showing me who was boss. I smirked at her; I couldn’t help myself.

“Bessie,” I said, “What I said was, why’d you clean her mess up? not why don’t you clean that mess up?“

“Oh, bite me.”