Tuesday, April 28, 2015

The Fragment

When I was 14, I spent long weeks conditioning for the upcoming softball season. From running until I puked to a seven-minute mile and some serious weights on my squats, I was in the best shape in my life. Tryouts were in a week and I was ready.

On one rare occasion, I had to ride the activity bus home after conditioning; both my parents were teachers, so there was always one of them still in town doing something, but on this highly unusual day, they had gone home and wanted to pick me up from the activity bus stop. Of course, this was the one day that I ended up running late in getting changed back to street clothes in the locker room, and when one of my friends hollered at me that the buses were ready to pull out, I tackled the gym stairs while still pulling on my jacket and hefting my book bag on my shoulder.

My distracted, klutzy self missed a step on the second to last step of the second landing and I took a long fall. The crack of my ankle when I landed was pretty sickening.

I ended up, of course, in the ER getting an X-ray and when the doc put it up on the light board in the room with us, his eyebrows furrowed as he looked at a strangely shaped object in the center of my foot.

My dad noticed his frown and decided to quiz him. "You know what that is, don't you?"

Our family doctor, who had treated every illness since I was two, shook his head.

"That's the bullet fragment," Daddy shared.

The doc's eyebrows lifted in comprehension. "Right," he said. "I didn't think it would still be there."

When I was six, I shot myself in the foot.

I had been raised around guns and shooting. My dad was an avid hunter and about half the meat on our table came from wild game. From the time I was old enough to aim and squeeze the trigger, I'd been target shooting with my father and some of my best memories from four and five years old are going squirrel hunting with him to help him listen for the squirrels cutting nuts in the trees.

On the day after Thanksgiving during my first grade year, my mom washed up dishes from dinner while my dad took me and my two-year-old brother out for some target shooting with his .22 revolver.

I was so excited for this session because my dad had finally decided I was big enough to cock the gun myself. Previously, I would aim it and pull the trigger while he held the stock, but he was letting me hold the stock, cock the gun, aim, and pull the trigger this time. It took years for me to realize that he was still supporting the weight of the gun with his finger underneath the barrel.

I felt like such a big girl as I positioned the gun. Daddy had talked me through cocking it, using that finger on the barrel for balance, and I had one eye closed, slowly moving the gun so that the little metal line at the front centered perfectly between the notch. My concentration was absolute and my finger tightened marginally as I prepared to squeeze the trigger, having been instructed by my father a million times not to jerk it.

I remember the sound of the shot as it rang out and I remember my confusion at hearing it because I hadn't pulled the trigger.

While I was aiming, my little brother had started around my kneeling father, coming around the arm on which the finger balancing the gun rested. When my dad saw him out of the corner of his eye, he automatically shot his arm out to knock him out of the line of fire. I simply dropped the gun.

Unfortunately, I caught it by the trigger.

Have you ever had your foot go to sleep and you didn't realize it? When you put it down, it was completely numb until the ants started crawling and then you started jumping up and down and smacking your foot until full feeling came back, right? Take that full-on ants crawling sensation and multiply it by 100. That's what it felt like when I shot my foot.

My father frantically searched the ground for the hole. I could feel his rising panic as those ants started marching up my foot.

"Daddy?!" I cried just as the blood started staining the awful brown penny-loafers that my mom loved and I hated.

His response was instantaneous; he scooped me up, pinching the top and the bottom of the hole that was starting to pump blood pretty fiercely as he started to bellow for my mom.

I've never been a huge believer in psychic ability, though I'll allow that there are too many unexplained phenomenon for me to deny that there's some things I'll never be able to explain. The fact that my mother had already grabbed the keys, locked up the house, and was on her way to the car as soon as she heard the report of the gun falls into that category for me. Before my dad and I had even realized what had happened, my mom had one of those magic mother moments--she just knew.

We jumped in the car and tore up the road. Back in the 80's, we didn't have 911 in our middle-of-nowhere home. To get to the main roads was an eight-minute drive, at one point crossing a one-lane bridge to get through Fairystone Park.

I don't remember too much about the ride, but I still have the occasional nightmare about driving through Fairystone. At the very end of the bridge, we got behind a dark green truck. The man driving the truck had ice blue eyes, a large black beard, longish black hair that was topped by a ball cap. For some reason, this man would not let my father pass. Daddy had his emergency blinkers on and honked his horn. He tried to pass on the left as soon as the road opened straight, but the man crossed the double-line to prevent him from passing. The other driver braked hard, actually slowing down and swerving to stay in front of him. Both my mother and father experienced road rage, my dad in particular swearing vociferously and promising legal action against the man while I bled slowly around my mom's pinching fingers.

Aside from being extremely grumpy that my mom was hurting me by squeezing so tightly, I don't remember having strong emotions like fear. Because I was the collected one and we were behind him for so long, I took a few seconds to memorize his license plate since my dad said that he wanted to call the police on him. We passed him as soon as we got on route 57.

We dropped my brother off at my great-aunt's house, roaring into her driveway like the Dukes of Hazzard, and Daddy sprinted up with my freaked out bro in his arms to pound until they opened the door. He was back in seconds and we ripped our way back onto the highway.

They were waiting when we pulled into the emergency room after the quickest trip into town I can recall because my great-aunt had called the hospital to tell them we were coming so they could prepare. The orderly who took me from my mother's arms was a giant black man, and I remember thinking that being enfolded in his arm's felt like sinking into pillows made of marshmallows. He was such a kind man, reassuring me as he hefted me onto the waiting gurney where they rushed me to be examined.

I don't remember much about any of the time in the hospital. I do remember talking to the police, answering their questions about how I was shot since they had been called as soon as the gunshot wound was reported. My dad felt so much guilt that I think he almost hoped there would be legal consequences, but it was just a tragic accident that could have been so much worse.

I do remember the look on my parents' faces as Daddy gave his statement about the man who wouldn't let us pass when I jumped in to give the deputy the make and model of the truck along with the license plate and detailed physical description. Their faces weren't quite as awesome as the deputy's face, though.

The doctors told me that if the bullet had been less than a millimeter to the left, it would have shattered the main bone of my foot instead of barely chipping it. I would have never walked without a limp, they predicted. As it is, I have an uncanny ability to predict when it will snow because the tiny fragment that's there wiggles just a little when the pressure changes.

The only real negative side effect is that I always have to warn the technicians not to rub over it when I get a pedicure. The silver lining there is that so far I've only kicked one technician in the face from reflex when they hit the fragment.

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

The Assumption

Stereotypes are not often true but sometimes they are. I grew up in a Southern Baptist church and for those who don't even know that stereotype, I'll share a joke to bring clarity.

How many Baptists should you bring on a fishing trip? At least two or the one will drink all your beer.

My aunts on my mother's side fit many of those stereotypes; they believe they know what is right and holy and get great enjoyment out of judging all those sinners around them with sympathetic words and a gentle "Bless their heart." Even as a young child, I made their eyebrows raise with my challenging attitude and determination to find my own way.

As an adult with kids of my own, I've enjoyed a subtle harassment of my beliefs and practices though it pretty much makes me laugh at this stage of the game. They don't bother most of the time now and just assume that my kids and I are going to do and say weird and inappropriate things with regularity though I try to respect how my mom wants me to be perceived.

At Christmas this year, my 13 year old son got a new gaming computer and the only monitor in my parents' house that we could hook it up to was my dad's 15 year old machine that he keeps in his bedroom just for decoration. After we have our small gathering in the morning at my folks' house, the extended family descends and we pack about 40 bodies in the house. The cleaning begins the minute the last present is unwrapped.

I'd barely had time to help the kids get their new gifts set up for play before my mom's older sister arrived to help with the cooking and table setups. My daughter was upstairs hidden in the study on her new laptop and my son was contentedly exploring the versatility of his system and ignoring the entrances and exits into my parents' room as everyone dumped their coats on the bed. I was running around as my mom's gopher, trying to help her avoid walking and setting off her arthritic foot.

The ingress of family continued and my generation showed up, bringing kids from ages 2-18. They all meandered or screamed upstairs, depending on their stage of kid-cool, while we adults congregated in the kitchen setting out the food. In short order, it was time for the blessing and eating.

As the line thinned, I realized that my boy wasn't among the crowd, so I went to fetch him. By this point, he'd been playing on his computer for over an hour and every single person who had come to celebrate had walked in the room to deposit coats.

I stepped past my uncle in the doorway and took a couple of steps when my son moved his head and I saw his screen.

I froze. I stared. I questioned, "Are those people NAKED?"

His head whipped around with alacrity.

"They're fuzzed out!" he immediately began his defense. While he was talking, the character turned towards the front and sure enough, his crotch was a pile of pixilation.

"See?!" He pointed and exclaimed as though vindicated.

I spluttered. "But they're NAKED. Why are they naked?"

I've already mentioned how I challenge the traditional roles in which I was raised. I haven't given specifics, but even I don't consider naked video characters acceptable gaming for a 13 year old in a house of elementary-aged kids, pixilation or not.

Looking for support, I turned to my uncle, who was still standing in the door and starting to crack up as he saw my face.

"Did you see that he was playing that?" I asked incredulously. His daughter is only five.

"Sure I did;" he replied, with a sideways glance and an awkward grin that indicated boys will be boys.

My red-faced son was quickly heading towards me to try to escort me out of the room. He did not, however, have the presence of mind to turn off the game first. When he reached me and took my elbow, I, who was still goggling stupefied at my uncle, turned to him and spotted a not very pixelated naked butt on the screen.

"What game IS that?" I asked, pointing at the screen I still couldn't believe I was seeing. On Christmas. With my uber-religious, judgy relatives there. And their little children. On Christmas.

"It's called Rust," he explained. "I played it at a friend's before and they had clothes."

My eyebrows rose with skepticism.

"Really!" he sputtered. "This is the beta version and they got rid of the clothes."

"It's really fun," he mumbled at the floor as the blush crept up his neck.

As he began to pull me to try to make me leave the room, I whacked him in the back of the head. "Go turn that off!"

The idiot looked at me and said, "But I haven't saved yet!"

I threw up both hands and exited to my plate at the table. When I sat down, my cousin's husband asked if I was alright.

"No, not really," I muttered. I looked up at him. "I just caught Wyeth on a game with naked people!"

He shrugged at me. "Yeah, I saw that."

"What?" I shrieked. "Why didn't you tell me?"

He shrugged again. "I just figured you let him play it."

I was still speechless and staring when my son came in the dining room.

"It's okay, Mom," he said reassuringly. "I saved."

My silver lining was that I've finally trained them to not be surprised at anything me and mine do. Funny that I always thought that would be a good thing.


Sunday, April 19, 2015

The Poo

She woke me up at 12:50 the first time. The dog, that is. I had stayed up a little later than normal watching a TV show and it felt like I had just dropped into sleep. She was whining loudly enough for me to hear her over the wondrous white noise app I installed on my iPhone that keeps me blissfully unaware of all but the loudest of sounds from my children and pets. They have to really want me to wake me up.

Apparently, the dog really wanted me.

I accepted that there must be a problem out of the ordinary because she usually sleeps through the night. Once I stumbled through the kitchen and found the leash from the strange place my son had dropped it, I opened her crate and took her outside so she could sit and look at me pleadingly.

Two nights ago, after she'd been in her outdoor lot for all but two hours, she woke me up at three wanting outside. I let her out and watched her sprint into the distance. I gave her a few minutes to go to the bathroom and then whistled her back. She came with alacrity, charging full speed towards me in the door. To say I was surprised gives a new definition to understatement. It normally takes several calls before she decides to hear me calling, so I was pleased to be able to get back in bed so quickly.

Of course, she was only teasing. At the last possible second, she altered her trajectory so that she whizzed by me at a speed high enough for my nightgown to ripple. At the very edge of the porch light, she screeched to a halt and gave me a mischievous doggy grin before heading into the pitch blackness of the front yard.

I whistled and yelled again, and then I heard the charge of claws coming my way. I prepared to grab her collar this trip by, but with puppy laughter, she raced by at the perfect distance for me to just feel the fur of her back. Damn dog. We kept this "game" up for at least fifteen minutes until I caved and got the treats. Right in the door she came when I shook the bag, and I got another three hours of sleep once my temper chilled.

Hence the leash last night. I was not playing rocket dog another night. If she had to go, she could go while on the leash. It was her retractable leash, so she'd even be able to burn a little energy jerking my shoulder socket.

But no. She just sat beside me and gave me a pitiful look.

"Go pee," I told her. I got a lick on the hand and whine in response.

I moved a few more feet out into the wet grass. "Pee!" I commanded forcefully. She took a few steps out, turned around, sat at my feet, and hit me with another pitiful look.

The other dogs came up. The happy-to-see-you-here nose sniffing and licking commenced, and when I told her to go pee a third time, the two outdoor dogs looked at her as though waiting for her to get on with her business so they could go back to bed too. She hid behind my legs and wouldn't budge.

At this point, it was on o'clock in the morning and I was tired, so I took her inside and she willingly went back to her bed and laid down. I shut the door and breathed deeply when my head hit the pillow.

Ten minutes later, she whined again.

My response was a bellowed, "SHUT UP!" and she did.

Fifteen minutes later, I hear a whine followed by my daughter's dulcet call: "Mama, I think Vivie had an accident."

Grumbling and thinking havoc and mayhem, I took the four steps from my bed to the door when it hit me.

Up to that point, the worst smell ever was caused by my husband's digestive system really not liking the barium cocktail required before his CT scan and resulted in my husband and I riding with our heads hanging out the window during a sleet storm in below freezing weather while driving to a friend's house.

The smell assaulting my hallway was at least that bad. With an oath, I flipped on my daughter's light and saw the dog, head hung low and a miserable expression on her face, sitting on the top corner of her doggy bed, as far from the string of diarrhea as she could get.

With a more serious oath, I opened her cage and she made good time tracking the diarrhea down my hall in little, wet, brownish paw prints. That's when I really started cursing. The first time anyway.

I let her outside and decided that I didn't care if she ever came back in. Since I was in the kitchen anyway, I opened the cabinet under the sink to get out my cleaner. My Mr. Clean wasn't there.

My housekeeper usually brings her own supplies, but I figured it was possible that she had moved mine somewhere else. I looked next underneath the bathroom sink. Nothing. Not even extra shampoo. I was more than a little pissed off now, both at the dog and at the housekeeper, since I know that I had a bottle of some sort of cleaning solution somewhere, but furious at 1 a.m. is still stupid tired at 1 a.m.. I headed into the basement where I might find anything. She doesn't normally go down there, but occasionally she leaves a note about doing some laundry so I thought it possible that she might have left my cleaner there. It wasn't.

I finally found a little bottle of an old cleaner supplement that smelled strongly if not good, and decided it was the best I had. Then I turned to look for my mop bucket. I still haven't found it.

I went upstairs, grumbling to myself, grabbed the mop, and ran a bathtub full of suds. After a few swishes to be sure it was wet, I lifted the mop from the water with my hand on that little lever that squeezes the two sides together and gets out the excess water. The sponge wasn't there. The glue had simply turned loose and the sponge fell right off that little plastic bit that holds it to the mop. I stared at in stupefaction for a minute or two and then my brilliance shined right through.

I plunged my hand into the scalding hot water, grabbed the scalding hot sponge, and pushed it back on to the plastic thing as though the nonexistent glue would suddenly hold it there. When it fell off again, I just stared at it dumbly while flapping my scalded hand in the air.

I'll admit to a few tears at this point. I'll also admit that I really don't function well in the middle of the night. Most people wouldn't still have the sleep-time fog after the stench and the burn. I had wised up some and woken up mostly. Just not enough.

I tried again with my unburned hand.

Eventually, I got the paper towels and a bottle of window cleaner and cleaned up the majority of the semi-solid matter with those, shoving everything in a plastic grocery bag. I only had to stand up a few times from gagging at the smell, and the dry heaves only took a few minutes once. I'm very proud that I didn't tow up. The smell when I walked in the room was nothing compared to bending over enough to get it up with paper towels.

And bending over was nothing compared to kneeling on the rug and feeling a squish underneath my knee. That dog got distance with this shit. There was at least a foot and a half of clearance between the cage and the rug.

As I am a forced-positive person (I'm a natural-born pessimist who refuses to let myself stay that way), I turned my poop covered knee into a good thing by realizing I would never have looked under the little dresser stacker for stray poop if my knee hadn't gotten gooed. I would have searched for the smell for days, missing the stream that somehow made it under there. (See how good I am at silver linings?)

About 30 minutes and one roll of paper towels later, I tied off the grocery bag to hold in the stench and shoved it to the bottom of the biggest trashcan I owned. Then I went back into the bathroom for the mop head. It only took eight trips to scrub my daughter's floor by hand with the mop head.

In only ten more minutes from finishing a deep scrub of the floors, walls, and furniture, I had scoured every inch of my arms and legs, glad for the scalding since germs couldn't live through it and even if they did, they would be sloughed off with the top layer of my skin. I changed my nightgown, gulped several glasses of water, checked to make sure my daughter was sleeping well in the recliner since her room was unlivable with stench still, and went to turn off her light.

That was when I brushed off some poop that had gotten on the door jamb from my mad dash with the crate bottom out the door. Another tub of suds and serious scrubbing of every door jamb I passed through whether I saw poop or not, I finally scrubbed up again and wet to bed.

I couldn't sleep because I could still smell it. I would turn my head to the side and catch a whiff. Each whiff resulted in me sniffing another body part for fear that I had missed some on my skin. I did both elbows first, then tried to smell my hair, and when I realized that I had folded double trying to sniff my own stomach, I called paranoia and decided that if it was me and not just lingering odor, it was going to wait until morning.

It took only thirty minutes of talking to myself to convince my brain to believe me.

I have, of course, bought a new mop head, some Mr. Clean, another mop bucket, several sponges, rubber gloves, and a spray bottle of some sort of degreaser since last night. I have taken the cage and everything that might possibly have been touched by the explosion out of my daughter's room and scrubbed every nook and cranny again. Only one element for my peace of mind remains:

Where do I hide my Mr. Clean?