Auntie Em – It’s a Twister!!!

Don’t let popular opinion fool you… tornadoes are not a good excuse to grab your digital video camera and run out the back lawn to film destruction. It never has been and it never will be.

A funnel cloud has never fascinated me. Dorothy and the Munchkins did not whet my child’s appetite. Helen Hunter and Bill Paxton did not make me think that Twisters were romantic. Jim Cantore from the Weather Channel might instill a lustful desire for him… but not for the cyclone that is charging toward the camera over his left shoulder.

Perhaps the fear of tornadoes was instilled in my early years. Having moved from Tennessee to San Antonio, Texas for my first year in grade school, I traded in fire drills for tornado drills. We didn’t have tornado drills in Tennessee, but in Texas, we had them once a month, at least. It made little sense to me that when the fiercely whipping winds began to howl and clouds began to circulate, the first grade class was to quickly and quietly assemble ourselves in a straight line and make our way to the hallway. We would then sit down and place a book over our heads. Who thought this was a great idea? Did our top-notch educators really believe that my Dick & Jane reading book would save me from the 400 pounds of sheet rock that was going to bury me alive in the rubble? Would the scent of mimeographed worksheets enable the K9 units to locate our lifeless, mangled bodies?

And the good Lord help you if the twister made an appearance the week you were pulling Tornado Monitor duty… because nothing is wiser than giving a seven year old the responsibility of assembling her classmates into the aforementioned straight line, making certain a textbook was clasped tightly in their trembling hands and steering them, single-file, into the hallway. Don’t forget that once the class was making their way through the door, the monitor herself must quickly open three or four windows so that the building would not implode from the suction of the twister bearing down on you. The last place I want to be when a tornado is bearing down on me is ANYWHERE near glass windows! Surely there are adults more qualified for such a position of responsibility! If my classmates survived, she would be heralded as a heroine and I probably just got a gold star or maybe a free book of choice from the Scholastic Weekly Reader magazine. Where was the teacher during this horrific time? Apparently running through the hallways securing her position and life!

The lucky kids in school did not live on an Air Force base where the cookie cutter homes were simply one level with a carport attached. They lived in a house with a storm cellar! Not only were these peaceful places to play during good weather, they were indeed shelters from the storm. I was more than grateful for one on the afternoon that I was playing with a friend and the tornado sirens began to blare. We ran as quickly as possible to the storm shelter and I had never felt so safe. The entire house, trees, etc., could have blown down around us and we would not have known it. Our greatest fear was that the house would fall on top of the entrance to the cellar (which I believe had been built as a bomb shelter in the 50s) and we would have to live off of Spam (this shelter was stocked with Spam and water) until someone could pick through the rubble and locate us.

I was not as lucky the time the sirens went off and we were in a house without a storm shelter. Nothing is quite as bonding as having five adults and four children crammed into an inner hallway bathroom while the sounds of a train are increasing your fears. As a child you wonder where the train is coming from, knowing you’ve never heard one this close to the house before. Then your fear increases as an older child, much more worldly in the ways of life, informs you the sounds you are hearing are indeed the sounds of your imminent death.

As a fresh-out-of-high-school-waiting-for-college-to-begin young person, you excitedly drive to your dream job – the no-longer-existing Opryland Theme Park. The skies are cloudy and that ugly greenish tint has tinged the clouds as you pull into the parking lot. You make your way through costuming, put your fear aside and your new outfit on to run as fast as your trembling legs will take you to find your supervisor and see to your day’s activities. When you finally meet said supervisor and she looks at you like you’ve lost your mind for attempting to work on a day when they are trying to find ways to close the park, you are told to remove yourself immediately and go home. “What? Are you kidding me? You want me to drive back home through this? Isn’t there a shelter, or a place underneath the park that we can all go to?” “No… go home now. Come back tomorrow.” So you make your way back through costuming, change your clothes again, and pray to the weather gods and the auto gods that your 72 Mustang will make it back home in one piece, preferably with you in it.

You would think that as you approach adulthood your fears would diminish. Not so much. You’ve selected your first apartment to be on the top floor of the complex because (a) you want the vaulted ceilings and (b) you are told as a single girl it is more difficult for the serial killer, who is certainly stalking you now, to get to you on the upper floor than the bottom floor. It is not impossible, but he’s going to really have to want to kill you to go to the trouble of scaling the outside of your building. He’ll get halfway up and decide you simply aren’t worth it and whack the chick with the yappy dog living on the bottom floor. You’ll mourn the girl… but are not distressed over the removal of said yappy dog.

During your second week in your new first home, the wind starts to kick up. The television goes to 24 hour news coverage of the impending catastrophe of the weather bearing down on you and the newscaster tells those in the Hermitage area to take cover. The Hermitage area!? Wait just a second… I’m in the Hermitage area! Crap! You begin to relive your days as Tornado Monitor and quickly open the sliding glass door. You don’t have a Dick & Jane book anymore and the weatherman has just told you to seek shelter under a piece of furniture. Your furniture consists only of a dining room table, a couch and a waterbed. There’s no getting under a waterbed, so you head for the couch.

You thought it was a great idea to purchase a couch with recliners built in to both ends. Your brothers cursed you as they hefted that monstrosity up a few flights of stairs to the top floor of the new apartment complex because it weighs only slightly less than a VW Bug. You cursed it during your first Night of Terror when you realized it was too heavy to turn over and crawl under. Why did I get the top floor apartment? These are the units that get swept away during inclement weather. Oh yeah, the serial killer. Well… bring on the Slasher! I’ve at least got a shot at outrunning that guy; I can’t outrun a tornado.

My last option was the dining room table, but I was told to get to an inner hallway. I live in a one-bedroom apartment! I don’t have an inner hallway! But I do have a three-foot semi-hallway that might work… except MY DINING ROOM TABLE IS TOO BIG! But I drag it as far as I can. Being the good Girl Scout that I was, and wanting to be prepared, I grab a can of beanie-weenies (I had no Spam), a flashlight and a bottle of water (because nothing says “prepare to die” like beanie weenies and Evian). Being the good Southern Baptist that I am, I grab my Bible and being scanning the concordance looking up the word “fear” and reading scripture out loud over the sounds of wind, rain and thunder. With the help of the Trinity, the beanie weenies and water, I survived the Night of Terror no worse for wear.

Then there was the time that I was housesitting for some friends who love animals way too much (they have a dog and three cats). They were vacationing in Hawaii while I was burrowed under a blanket in the bathtub inside an inner hallway while the city was rocked with no less than seven, count ‘em SEVEN tornados back-to-back. Did I get any sleep that night? No I did not. What time did the fun begin? About midnight. What time did it end? About 7:00 a.m. What time did the power go off? About 6:30 a.m. What time did I need to be at work? About 8:30 a.m. What happened to the animals? I don’t know… they didn’t want to seek shelter in the bathroom, so they were left to fend for themselves. Luckily for me, they apparently knew where the super-secret animal storm shelter existed, because they were hungrily staring at me when I finally emerged from the bathroom that morning with bags under my eyes.

There was the instance where I drug a bachelor’s bench into the hallway of my current residence under another tornado warning. I found a battery powered transistor radio that I kept by my side for the latest news that was the news, in case I lost power (the Girl Scout mentality having kicked in again) and some candles and matches. As a child, I measured my growth on that bench, becoming sooo excited the day that I could actually touch my head on one end and my feet on the other. I was still matching my size the night of the tornado by the fact that I had to ball myself up under the bench and it still only covered my torso. But again, my inner Tornado Monitor told me that a bench in the hallway would work better than a book or a blanket.

My greatest fear now, of course, is that I live just a few blocks from the train tracks that run through town. Tornados sound like trains barreling through the countryside. How am I supposed to tell the difference now between the mighty wind that will separate my life from this earth and the 7 o’clock northbound freight? Can’t we get the tornados to sound like something else? Couldn’t we have the music that precluded the appearance of the Wicked Witch of the West flow through about three or four minutes before impact? I really don’t think I’m asking for too much here.

My fear, it seems, continues to grow… just as we hit the new season of tornadic activity here in the midsouth. Only if I’m lucky will I get to meet Jim Cantore in the midst of my fear.

Are We There Yet? A Single Woman’s Guide to Parenting

Having lived my entire adult life without the constraints and restraints of marriage or, thankfully, parenting, I recently found myself knee-deep in that world without having given birth.

My great disclaimer: I love my nieces and nephew. All three nieces and one nephew have intertwined themselves so deeply into my heart; they will never be free from me. Much to their dismay, I am certain. And yet, as much as I love them without condition, this semi-parental time has yet again reminded me that there are those who simply need not reproduce. I am one of those people.

My brother and his wife jetted off to a far away land (Israel) for what I am sure was an absolute trip of a lifetime. I was asked to stay with his children. Before he left, I made my brother sign over a power of attorney so that I would be able to step in and take over should an emergency occur. Towards the end of my parenting tenure, I became certain that should an Al-Quada terrorist abscond with my brother and his wife, all George W would need to do to locate Osama, would be to send me to the Pit. I would rather take on Osama than take on the full-time parenting responsibilities of a 17, 16 and 10 year old any day.

Having a great foundational network of helpers is essential to regular parenting… even more so for the “I-don’t-have-a-husband-to-help-me” single girl who finds herself in the throes of parental responsibility overnight. Grandparents fill that foundation nicely. Throw some money at them and they will cook for you each night, ensuring the tykes will have a well-balanced meal and will not live off of McDonald’s or Fruit Loops for the entire length of your stay. Grandparents are generally retired anyway, so they will also constantly call the children and wear them out, giving you a break from what has been the constant phoning of yourself over the years. Try to catch the eye of the child being tortured at the time and remind them that Nana and Granddaddy are just old people with nothing better to do… and they will take it all in stride.

Having one of the children with a car is a big help too! She can typically fend for herself and help the hauling of the other non-driving children to places of interest and responsibility. Of course, she cannot remember that she needs to fill up her car with gas, and will use that to perhaps get you to call in to her school to explain her tardiness.

Having a 16 year old who makes you laugh until you want to throw up is always fun. Some people just live life to the fullest… and the 16 year old certainly does that! There is always a joke, a snippet, and a story that will leave you shaking your head specifically when she turns into a ravenous eating machine that cannot be controlled. There are not enough Fruit Loops in the world to satisfy her hunger… and the fact that she is skinny as a rail will simply make you want to smack her in the head!

The 10 year old boy is undoubtedly outnumbered and believes himself to be at LEAST 16. But alas, as he still crawls into bed with the 16 year old when he is scared, you are reminded of his tenderness. He will attempt to explain how he made that bad grade and his argument (weak, at best) will be delivered with great passion. He’s the sneaky one of the bunch and will do his best to talk you into renting an R-rated movie. You easily see through his wily ways. At 10, he simply is no match for you.

You must realize that you are still dealing with kids and not throw them into the adult mentality that you are so accustomed to. This will help in dealing with the consequences of being locked out of the home with no way to get back in. Of course, the oldest child has a key… on her key ring… at her new job… on the other side of town. In an effort to teach a lesson, you subject the 16 and 10 year old to spending the entire evening with Nana and Granddaddy, arguing over who gets to be on the computer, or what channel they are going to watch. You patiently wait for the 17 year old to come home and hand over her key and take the now fighting 16 and 10 year old home… it being well past the 10 year old’s bedtime.

On the drive over the 10 year old calls the 16 year old an imbecile. It is thrown back at the 10 year old from the back seat and she is challenged to spell the word. Her first letter is wrong, and you simply shake your head. The 10 year old also attempts to spell the word, and does so incorrectly. Now the real fun begins as the incorrect spelling of a word is debated until you have had ENOUGH and calmly allow that neither child can spell, and you’d really rather they didn’t make another sound until you are at home. They know better than to continue the argument.

You spend the latter part of the Sabbath with the children cleaning the house, it being just a few days before Mom and Dad return. You agree to do the laundry, if they will just bring it to you. BIG MISTAKE single woman! As a single girl, you know that as long as you have clean underwear, you are good to go! As a college student, you learned the importance of buying cheap underwear just so you didn’t have to do laundry more than once a week. You used the same bath towel for a week… hanging it up to dry each day. There has never been… in your single adult life… a reason to do laundry for six hours straight. Ever.

You cannot imagine where all the clothing came from. You have to pause mid-day in order to purchase more detergent. You are still washing, still drying, still folding until the dark hours of the night. You are amazed… you are grateful for your singleness.

February 14, 2006 – Black Tuesday

Let’s repeat my February 14th mantra, shall we? I hate Valentine’s Day (repeat consistently over and over)

There are some who have already determined that I’m cynical and sarcastic… and they may be right. I’m fairly certain that I don’t really care that much any more. But if you’re out to see what it is you can do to impress those around you, here are some great tips!

First… dress all in black. It is considered chic in Paris and will only make you appear slimmer… or so I’m told. I need all the help I can get in this area right now anyway, so an all black ensemble works for me! Of course, there is the fact that I may appear to either be headed towards a high-fashion runway… or the funeral of Johnny Cash… but I live in Nashville, so either option actually works.

Second… remind all your friends that you are wearing black for a reason. I mean come on… if you are taking a stand for something (the eradication of Valentine’s Day, for example) you can hardly allow your clothes to speak for themselves. You have a voice! You should be heard! It is probably a good idea to begin dropping little hints around the beginning of February so that your co-workers will not be completely caught unawares for your sudden mood change on the darkest day of all the year.

This will ensure that when you DO actually appear dressed completely in black, that you would not be mistaken for Morticia Adams or the Bell Witch.

Third… stay far away from little candy hearts with silly words on them. Far, far away. Why? What is the possible problem with such an American iconic Valentine candy? Well… the fact that it is THE American iconic VALENTINE candy is the first problem itself. The second problem is that it tastes remarkably like the chalk it is certainly derived from. Thirdly, having been forged from chalk in the first place, it leaves a residue that is not compatible with the black ensemble you are wearing; and finally, the words written on the chalky substance will only remind you of the things you are missing out on anyway (i.e. Kiss Me, Hug Me, Touch Me… you get the picture)

Fourth… Snarl at your supervisor when he does something as ridiculous as bring you flowers. Did he bring you flowers last year on February 14? No, he did not. Make a mental note that in 2007, you will do your best to schedule him out of the office so that he will not be able to make that mistake again. Forget that you were trying to be nice to him by keeping him close to home (and his wife) on February 14… and schedule him to take the depositions of 15 people of three different nationalities that will all require a separate translator. That should teach him.

Of course, you have the option of pelting said employer with the chalky candy hearts as he is walking away. I found that works as a good backup plan.

Next, you will have to deal with those “couples” in your life that really think it necessary to give you the “Oh, just wait… one day you’ll have a Valentine too” speech. Head’s up to those couples in the world… when you speak ridiculous phrases such as this to your single and not-dating friends, it is interpreted thusly: “Too bad you don’t get to grab that hot man over there and get your groove on… maybe one day you will, but I bought my mate/date flowers, so I’m gonna get lucky tonight… sucks to be you.” We already know it sucks to be us, stop reminding us about it on February 14, okay? We really don’t appreciate the sentiment.

Fifth… why not end the day on a high note and take yourself back to the YMCA for your next round of terrorist training (i.e. step aerobics)? If you do not have black gym clothes, that will be fine. You’ll see that there are not that many people who attend the Y on February 14, because they are too busy out purchasing overpriced floral arrangements and chalky candy. Skip right on in the door and head up to the track. It’s not even crowded there.

I went back to a step aerobics class, because nothing says “I love you” on February 14 like a well thought out and experienced heart attack. The first indication that you are in both the wrong place at the wrong time will be when Angie, Smyrna’s own answer to an Al-Quada operative states the following words: “This class is an intermediate to advanced class. That doesn’t mean anything except that there’s a little more choreography involved. Just hang in there and keep moving”. My brain should have interpreted that to mean “Cathy… keep moving right out of this step class.” However… the after effects of February 14 must certainly killed off a few too many brain cells and I stayed.

When my brain fires the “It can’t be that bad” synapses, I should begin to take heed. When my next thought was “I was in the marching band… I have rhythm… I’ll catch on”… I should have known I was headed down a slippery slope that had no chance for recovery. But… I marched on. I grapevined right and left. I threw the basketball. I box stepped and I did the three repeaters. I stomped and mamboed and cha-chaed. I walked around the world and I straddled and I wanted to die… mostly because while I was doing these steps Angie and the rest of the terrorists in the room were completing something entirely different. I told myself I was staying with it because I liked the dance music, but the real reason I stayed with it was because I knew at the 30 minute mark there would be a 30 second water break, and that was when I would hit the door running… or stepping… or cha-cha-ing my way out of the class and back to the real world where I am an overweight 40something single girl who hates Valentines Day.

I thought I was home free until one of the terrorists stopped me at the water fountain and said, “You aren’t LEAVING, are you?” I was at a crossroads… do I lie and say I need to throw up (oh, wait, that wasn’t really a lie, was it?) or do I confess my inability to commit to anything on February 14th, even a terrorist trained step class? I confessed… I was the second gunman on the grassy knoll.

“The intermediate class is a little out of my league.”

“Oh no… don’t say that. You were doing great! My first time in this class and I was falling off the bench. You’ve hung in there this far, you don’t want to leave now.” Yes, actually, I do.

Apparently the terrorists have been well trained in the art of persuasion, but I saw through the façade.
“Maybe I’ll be back when I can understand the terms a little better and get the steps down. I need to return to the basic step class…” and my sofa… and my Ben & Jerry’s…

“Well… I think you were doing great. Just don’t give up, okay?” (Happy cheerleader smile)

“Okay… I’ll see you again real soon.” Yeah right. (Not-so-happy painful grimace)

To end your day… try to walk your wobbly knees back to the Ladies Locker Room and then stare fixatedly at the combination lock that is securing your possessions. Your car keys are in there… the way to freedom. Focus on those numbers. What were those numbers? There are three sets of them… you know what they are… focus, focus, focus… something Right… two more turns Left… back to the Right and the lock will magically open…

Dang… do it again. Focus… I know it is hard with all that sweat pouring into your eyes, but you want to go home again, don’t you? Oh wait… that’s not your locker. Take one step to your left and pray that the person coming in the door doesn’t think you to be a thief.

Bend yourself into your car and pray to the fitness gods to allow you to get home before you (1) throw up or (2) pass out. Get in the house and cool your body off before you hop in the shower… while you silently pray for Norman Bates’ mother to appear and slash you to ribbons. It will be a much more fitting way to end the day and less painful than having to endure February 14, 2007 – or Black Wednesday.

What a Ham!

December 23, 2005

My parents were born during the depression. It was 1933 and my father gleefully boasts that he is some eight months younger than my mother. He is also boastful in the fact that his family suffered through difficult times with class, strength and virility. He was raised in a home with his parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents… some aunts and uncles as well. They had an outhouse for many years. I think it is my great-great grandfather that was a dentist… and apparently an alcoholic. Another in the family was a hypochondriac, and my father remembers a mantle in the house being filled with prescription drugs, or other remedies with no place for family photos. My father knows how to ring the neck of a chicken, chop the head off the Tom Turkey and slaughter a hog. He also brags that he walked to and from school, many miles, barefoot in the snow and uphill both ways… apparently carrying a load of books that weighed roughly 120 pounds.

My mother grew up in a coal mining camp. Her father was the butcher, baker and candlestick maker! No… really, he was the butcher, the postmaster and the manager of the general store in the camp. They lived in a very small green house just across the railroad tracks and my mother was an only child for the first 14 years of her life, before my aunt arrived on the scene. She walked to school as well, but not nearly the same distance as my father. She went to school with various cousins and learned to live within her means.

This is why I am never surprised when my family gets together for holidays and special events and my parents wax nostalgia. They talk of a day before televisions and microwaves; before remote controls and jet planes. One of my father’s fondest stories involves my mother’s determination to take a cruise ship across the Atlantic Ocean to join him at a military post there. She refused to get on a jet, because she didn’t trust a plane that moved without the safety and security of propellers.

Each Christmas we hear tales of the good old days and are admonished for having such a good and easy life. A good and easy life, I might add, that our parents strived so hard to give us. I am not without gratitude.

Christmas stockings are not a big tradition in my family. I do not believe we’ve ever really used them, except for decorative reasons. It just was not high on our list of Christmas obligations. Perhaps my parents felt that stockings were supposed to be for fruit and nuts. If they were extra good that year, there would be a piece of hard candy, or a peppermint stick. There would be no gameboy hidden in its depth. No doubt, the stocking itself was actually a mended old sock that had seen better days. If they were bad children that year, they could be guaranteed a bag of switches or a lump of coal. This must have been a year-long struggle for my mother, living outside a coal mining camp. Talk about inspiration for being a good girl.

But food has always been part of our family holidays. We are not big-boned people for no reason. Nosireebob… we come from a long line of healthy eaters with years of tradition to back us up. Thanksgiving was, of course, the time for a turkey, dressing, dumplings (thanks Grandmother!), and jellied cranberry sauce. Christmas; however, was the time for a baked Ham (thanks Gran!), potatoes and green beans. We continue those family traditions to this day.

So, you can only imagine the horror that struck the face of my younger brother and I as my mother asked the most sacrilegious of questions: “Would you mind if we have Fried Chicken for Christmas instead of Ham?” I looked at John, and he looked at me and then we slowly looked at our mother. I felt her forehead while he took her pulse and once we realized there was nothing physically wrong, we were able to respond.

John: Why would we have Fried Chicken for Christmas?

Mom: Your father does not want to go into Nashville to buy the Ham.

Cathy: Isn’t there a Honey-Baked Ham in Murfreesboro?

Mom: No… that’s a Heavenly Ham, and they are not as good. There’s really nothing as good as a Honey-Baked Ham.

***Pause for effect***

Mom: (sighing) Would it really bother you if we have Chicken?

Cathy: Are you going to spend the day on Saturday frying up enough chicken to feed all of us?

Mom: No… I was thinking more along the lines of a bucket of KFC.

At this point, any hopes of a traditional family Christmas dinner were flying out the window as I could imagine myself opening a Styrofoam tub of not-so-real mashed potatos and spooning the not-so-real-either brown gravy. It is a good thing that the predominant signature color for KFC is red… it will blend in lovely with the Christmas table that has been set. There’s nothing that screams Christmas like a table set with lovely holiday china and a big ole bucket o’the Colonel’s Extra Crispy right smack dab in the midst. I figured I could put some greenery around the base of the bucket to make a lovely centerpiece.

While I’m at it… I’ll just dump an old washing machine on the front lawn and put a car up on blocks.

Mom: It really wouldn’t bother you too much would it?

John: Well, I guess if we can survive the Thanksgiving Spaghetti feast when we were kids, we can make do with a KFC Christmas.

Cathy: Ho, Ho, Hell…
The next day, a big Christmas elf (John would hate to be called a Fairy) managed to save the Christmas dinner by traveling to the Honey-Baked Ham store and bringing a lovely ham to the Bell house. Our dinner would be set aright, and all would be well in the world. Our parents traveled to the local grocery store to purchase the remainder of the items needed to top off the feast. Their grandchildren were home to help unload the car, and sure enough, one would think that we are feeding an army by the armloads of grocery sacks that made their way into the house.

Which only caused great puzzlement for me when my mother arrived home from work today, the day after the food excursion with many, many more bags of groceries.

Cathy: Didn’t we just unload groceries yesterday?

Mom: Your father had another list of things we needed to get.

Cathy: Things we needed? Or things he wanted?

Mom: It doesn’t matter. Come the first of the year, I’m clamping down again, and we are only buying things we need, and not things we want.

I began to help load in the groceries from the car and then unload them into the already overflowing cabinets. When what to my wandering eyes would appear, but three packages of sliced ham… ready and waiting for consumption. I threw my mother my best “astonished” look.

Cathy: Ham? You bought ham? Don’t you think there’s enough ham here already?

Mom: Excitedly – OH Hurry! Put that somewhere that your father cannot find it.

Cathy: What?

Mom: He’s coming in right behind me...

Cathy: Do you just want me to put in the back of the fridge?

Mom: NO!! Hide it away! I have to wrap that up. It’s one of his Christmas presents!

Cathy: (astonished look expanding) Excuse me?

Mom: Hurry… he’s almost here. Take it to your room and wrap it up.

Cathy: Doesn’t it need to be refrigerated?

Mom: No! It wasn’t refrigerated at the store. Hurry… Take it and wrap it up and put it under the tree!

Well… alrighty then. As I was passing my the kitchen table I quickly grabbed a gift bag and tissue paper that was… er, perfect… for three sections of ham to be wrapped in. Even as I write, there is ham sitting under the tree, brightly wrapped, wonderfully adorned.

I think we have gotten a little off track with the true meaning of Christmas. I doubt (seriously) that the wise men would ever have shown up with Gold, Frankincense, and a big ole slice of ham!

Super Size Me

Last night, my mother informed me that she and my father were at odds. I could only imagine why. It appears that she purchased a new bedspread, but refused to put it on the bed.

"Why?", I asked. "Are there naked pygmy tribesmen frolicking about? Is it a bright pink that clashes with the carpet?"

"No... silly", my mother replied. "I just don't want to put it on the bed."

Hmm. I knew better than to bite at that one, but I had to do it. "So, where is it?"

"Stored away in the hall closet." (You remember the hall closet don't you? The same area that was the hiding place for 6 bottles of water now is the safeguard for the elusive bedspread.)

Seems strange to have purchased a bedspread without a purpose. Oh... wait... I got it. "Mom... this is going to be one of those things that when you die, I'm supposed to run to the house, leave your dead body at the hospital, wash everything, clean everything and make enough food to entertain all the guests who will arrive... now I'm supposed to add 'pull out the secret bedspread that has never seen the light of day and put it on the bed' to the list, right?"

She gave me "the look" with that last statement.

After a moment of well-deserved silence, she spoke. "Do you want to see it?"

"Will I go blind if I look upon it? It is stored in the 'Holy of Holies’ hall closet. Do I need to approach it with a robe hemmed in bells and a rope tied around my ankle in the event that an unconfessed sin (there are those floating around, you know) strikes me dead?"

The blank stare was priceless.

She became excited. "You stay here... I'll bring it to you."

I could barely contain the emotions that were flowing through my body. I sat perched on the edge of the recliner, striving to control my breathing. Then... it arrived.

My mother unfolded a lovely bedspread... ivory colored, with four HUGE pink roses embossed on tall, slender green stems. It was… in my eyes… hideous. I had to think of a way to dissuade her, and determined that full out honesty of my opinion would not work, but perhaps logic would.

My breathing returned to normal. "Mom", I said, "that is not a king-size bedspread."

"Of course it is. It says so right here on the label." She double-checked to make sure.

"Mom, your arm-span would not allow you to simply hold straight a king size bedspread. It’s not that big."

"Well", she became exasperated. "Let's just go see".

“Wait a minute… are you telling me that you purchased this bedspread, but you haven’t even put it on the bed to see if it fits?”

She ignored me.

I was shocked and amazed that at one fell swoop... the "we're not going to use this" bedspread instantly made its way past the Holy of Holies hall closet, down the green and lighter green hallway passage into the Navy wallpapered, pink carpeted, golden headboarded king-size bedded master bedroom. So proud was my mother as she draped her bed in what is now referred to as the rather FULL SIZE bedspread... leaving much of the bed uncovered.

She was distraught. I saw the wheels spinning in her mind. How would she save this moment? "Well... if we pull the foot of it lower..."

"And you don't intend to cover the pillows at the top of the bed..." I replied.

She was undaunted. "It might be okay if we had a bed skirt."

I agreed. "That would cover the bed springs..."

Realization began to dawn on her. "Hmm... I guess maybe I should send it back."

"Where did you buy this?" I asked.

She was so proud. "The JC Penney catalog. I only paid $34 for it."

"Quite a bargain for a king-size bed spread." I was trying to contain my cynicism.

It didn't work. She saw right through me. "Oh, hush. You think I need to send it back don't you?"

"Mom... it’s your room. You do what you want". (Knowing how well the large pink roses matched the pink roses on the navy wallpaper)

She wasn't giving up yet. "They had pillow shams that matched this. But I just hate having to move pillows before I go to bed."

"Sounds like that would not be a wise investment then." I was trying to end the conversation and return to the relaxation found in my cross-stitch pattern. It worked. I returned to the den and my cross-stitching and just when I thought it was safe, my mother returned a few minutes later.

She was excited. "Come and see what I've done!"

"Do I have to?"

"Yes." The firmness in her voice spoke volumes. I followed the confident stride of a woman proud of a new accomplishment that should not go unnoticed by her family. We passed the Holy of Holies hall closet on my right... my father and dog sitting in the study to the left... to the end of the hall where the master bedroom sits on the right and the guest bedroom (commonly referred to as the "teddy bear room"... if you have to ask why, I'll have to hurt you) sits on the left.

There was a perfectly draped full size bedspread on the full-size bed that it was made for. Stuffed animals and dolls resting against the headboard.

"What do you think?" she asked.

I couldn't help myself. "I think that king-size bedspread fits a full size bed much better. It looks nice, Mom."

"Thanks."

As we turned to leave, she said... "If the kids put their feet on that bedspread, I'll whip them."

My simple reply... "You'll want to put a sign on the bed then, Mom."

Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall…

Who’s that fat chick staring back at me?
November 28, 2005


I believe there comes a time in every person’s life when they wake up in the morning, roll out of bed, stub a toe on a dresser, curse like a sailor, stumble to the bathroom, throw water in the face, look in the mirror and wonder just who the heck that person is staring back at them.

In my mind’s eye, I am in the prime of my life. I am in my mid to early 20s and I am a size 9 Tall. I don’t have to think too hard to develop this image as I was once in my early 20s and a size 9 Tall, and lived life to the fullest. In real life, I’m in my 40s, and have been deceived. I think I still resemble that young, innocent, carefree girl, and I have faced that deception head-on.

There is a YMCA in Smyrna, Tennessee now. It is quite impressive. It will do great things for the welfare of our community and we will have hundreds of upwardly mobile people who will regularly experience all the Y has to offer in an effort to either stay in shape or get in shape. I signed up to be a member while the facility was under construction. I took a hard hat tour before I signed on the dotted line just so I could get the free neon yellow “charter member” t-shirt. I was very proud of my motivation. In signing my name to a contract that would remove a portion of money from my bank account each month, I swore that I would re-prioritize things in an effort to get myself back on the right track.

I’ve been in the midst of what I am calling my “dark year” for about a year and a half now. No, I don’t want to explain… you’ll just need to trust me. Suffice it to say, during the dark year (and a half) I have experienced a career change, my father has been diagnosed with diabetes, my mother endured knee surgery, I’ve buried at least three friends of the family, and have emotionally shut down in more ways than one. I decided to explore the various definitions of “comfort food” to the tune of an additional 40 pounds or so.

Therefore, when I learned we would have a YMCA in our very own town, and that it would be located a mere five minutes from my home… I made the jump from the couch to the gym.

I only hope I will live to tell about it.

It started out simple enough. I had my picture card made. This was where reality first hit. I’ve had the really bad driver’s license pictures and passport pictures before… but they couldn’t hold a candle to the fat girl on the keyring card that “Muffy” handed to me. (I don’t know the perky girl’s name… but she’s a skinny Minnie who, in my enlightened opinion, needs to eat more) I almost handed the card back to her and asked her to find the lady who belonged to that key card… it certainly was too “Large Marge” to be me!!! But I took another look, and sure enough, that was my face staring back at me. If that was not inspiration, nothing would be. I put away my desire to sink my face into a tub of Ben & Jerry’s, and I proceeded to experience the Y in a way that most of the town of Smyrna was doing.

The week of Thanksgiving was the first week I attended. I woke up bright and early on a Monday morning (5:30ish… yes… the sailors were embarrassed) dressed, and headed for the Y. I made it there a little after 6:00 a.m. (yes… AM… as in “what-in-the-name-of-the-Lord-am-I-thinking?) Little did I know that half the town of Smyrna would think it a good idea to do the same thing. There were no available treadmills and the employees were quite busy showing new patrons how to work various weight machines. Feeling a little out of place, I went up the stairs and simply walked the track for about a half hour. I learned that by about 6:30, most of those early people are heading out the door and away from the treadmills… which means I should have about an extra 30 minutes of sleep before I try that nonsense again!

I took a look at the schedule of activities and began to determine which program would best suit me. Truly anything was better than nothing. There was a water aerobics class that would meet the next afternoon at 5:30 p.m. (PM… when real people come alive) I made plans to dig out that swimsuit and take it to work with me the following day.

I got to the gym that afternoon a little early, tugged, pulled, mashed and generally molded my Large Marge body into my bathing suit and thanked the good Lord for the sense I had to bring a big Beach Towel to wrap about myself on my trek to the indoor pool. There are two pools at the Y right now… a no grade pool for the general public and children and a three lane lap pool. There were screaming children who had been dropped off by various parental units (who should be shot) in the no grade pool, so I headed for the lap pool for the approximate 15 minutes it would take before the aerobics class began.

There were people in each lane of the lap pool, two men and one woman. I chose to share a lane with the one lady, simply because I did not want Gramps in lane one to lap me over and over, and the Olympic swimmer in lane two just made me tired. I swam on my back. I swam on my side. I swam freestyle and I did the breast stroke. I swam under the water and on top of the water, and I was breathless when it was over. The lifeguards spent most of their time blowing their whistles and telling children (with no parental units) to stop running, stop fighting, and… if I’d had my way about it… stop breathing. They did not have to perform CPR on me; therefore, it was a good day.

Before I knew it, there was a contingency of people assembled in the no grade pool and a woman dressed in sweats standing on the edge. She was yelling instructions over the sounds of the screaming children and I realized this was the aerobic class. I hauled Large Marge out of the lap pool (much to the joy of my lane partner) and joined the water aerobics group.

The first thing I realized was that I was the youngest person in the group. Apparently the geriatric crowd really goes for water aerobics. The screaming children have been roped into the shallow “play” end of the pool while I and 20 of my closest elderly friends are thrashing about in about 4-5 feet of water.

Thrashing about is the kindest phrase one can use when describing water aerobics. One attends with the exuberant expectation of joining Esther Williams and her entourage in graceful moves that are peaceful and classical. When you realize that granny has smacked you upside the head for the fifth time and you more closely resemble Shamu than Esther… you really only want the class to end. Once it is over, being the nice girl your Mamma raised you to be, you stand at the side and help the little old ladies out of the water, then you rush past them to the locker room to change before all the changing stalls are taken.

I had a few days away from the Y because of Thanksgiving obligations, but I planned to resume my new found love the Monday after. Today.

I took a look at the activity schedule again to see what the upwardly mobile people would be doing at the Y, which did not involve Granny and a big pool of water. I came to the stark conclusion that I may not be an upwardly mobile person. I certainly do not feel mobile at the present time. Why? Basic But Tough Step Aerobics (a/k/a Have You Lost Your Ever-Loving Mind Step Aerobics)

I didn’t want to be alone on my first venture to an aerobics class in say, oh, 10 years or so. I called my sister-in-law, but she had done her damage at the Y earlier that day. So, I talked my 17 year old niece into attending with me. She’s never been to an aerobics class… let alone a step class. I figured I could help her with the basic steps (that Jane Fonda taught me in the 80s) and she could resuscitate me or call 911 in the event that I passed out (she has her own cell phone, you know) What I would NEVER have seen coming would be the fact that the class is 60 minutes long. I certainly believed it to only be a 30 minute class. That was as long as Jane ever had me grape-vining left and right in her leopard print leotard.

We were on the front row, because we were some of the last people to arrive. You could have sworn that the rest of the 20 people in the class were Baptists, by the way they huddled toward the back of the room. Kristin was great. Have I mentioned she is 17? The biggest problem is that she had to head out at the half-way point to attend a Bible study. She left me there to flounder on my own. But I stuck with it. I remembered some steps, forgot others entirely and generally prayed that I did not fall down. My step slid at times and I did my best not to trip over it whilst I moved it back into place. When I thought I was going to pass out, or hyperventilate (and I began thinking that during the warm up cycle… a mere five minutes into the 60) I simply stood and marched in place. I figured the skinny, athletic girl behind me would rather me march in place than fall backwards on her. She would not survive the blow.

Once we cooled down (a nice way of saying, hang in there… we just getting to the good part) we were instructed to replace our steps and grab a mat for our Ab workout.

What… are you kidding me? Do you really think I will be able to get up off the floor? Our instructor, Pam, who is a big boned girl too (but in great shape) assured us that it would be better for us to finish the time out completely. I was suckered into believing her. I lay down on the mat that was about a quarter of an inch thick and really felt no better than the wood flooring underneath it.

We did crunches. We did inverted crunches. We worked on our oblique muscles and we did leg lifts. We stretched and stretched some more, which was when the muscle cramps began.

“I’m sorry, Pam… I’m going to need to stop now… my toes have curled under my feet and it will take some time to retrieve them. No… really, that’s okay… I like it when my…

()&@$(#*&!!!!

There goes that calf muscle… No, it’s okay, I’m sure if I eat a banana, it will give me the

@#*$&@)(!!!

Yep, that was my back. No really… I’m good… I’ll just reach for that water bottle over there and

#$*&@)&@!!!

What’s wrong with my neck? I’m not sure. If you’ll just take this mat back, I’m going to throw Large Marge into the lap pool where she can drown peacefully.”

There’s an indoor cycling class that is being offered tomorrow. I know that exercise creates endorphins, which really give you a boost. I’m fairly certain that endorphins also kill brain cells… because I’m actually considering returning to the Y tomorrow.

What a Stupid Girl

I am, in some instances, considered the Queen of Horror Movies. I was raised on those great, classic films that were shot in black and white. I remember watching Bela Lugosi re-enact the legend of Count Dracula and being amazed at the cinematography of the early 40s. I remember thinking that “Dark Shadows” was by far the most interesting television program that had ever been developed. We were so excited the year that there was a Dark Shadows board game out, and we received one at Christmas. There is video film of my little brother and I playing with the coffins and skeletons and fake fangs that came with the game. Thinking back, that video looks more like the avante garde animation “A Nightmare Before Christmas” than anything with deep spiritual meaning of the birth of Christ!

I came home from school every afternoon and my little brother and I planted ourselves just a few inches from the screen of our remoteless television set to watch “The Creature Feature”. A very old, entirely too pudgy man in macabre garb would introduce the afternoon film and would segue way into the various commercials that would interrupt our movie-watching time. Most specifically, he was all about pitching a high fructose, high glucose concoction aptly dubbed, “Creature Cooler”. This Kool-Aid rip-off came in varying flavors… John’s favorite was grape, and my more sophisticated taste selected cherry. No less than five or six times in any given hour would one or the other of my parents enter the room and chastise us for sitting too close to the television set. They warned us that we would go blind in a matter of moments if we did not get up off the floor and sit on the furniture, which was an appropriate distance from the television. We acquiesced only long enough for them to leave the room and we returned to our warm spots on the floor. My parents were never that excited a few hours later when I would awake in the middle of the night having experienced a bad dream that sent me running into their bed room and curling up between the two of them… but they allowed it to happen.

As we got older, our tastes matured to the weekly Friday night “Night Stalker” program. This show had the ability to really creep you out. The main character was a newspaper reporter that always seemed to have the worst luck in his investigative reporting. He found all the monsters that were hiding in the shadows; vampires waiting to lunge at their first victim as the sun went down… and the zombies that would never die, but only wanted to eat their horrified prey. John and I were glued to the television set in the basement of our 1960s split level house. Our bedrooms were upstairs and down a long, narrow hallway. The living room was an open area to the left of the staircase, and the hallway was to the right. The light switch for the stairway was located, of course, on the upstairs level. One night, after a particularly bone-chilling episode, my father called to us from upstairs that it was time for us to get to bed. “Make sure you turn off the television and the lights downstairs.”

I went upstairs to turn on the stairway light and came back downstairs to help John finish straightening the room. When we got to the stairway, the lights had been turned off. We knew that once the den light was shut off, it was going to be a very dark, creepy and scary journey to our respective bedrooms. We looked at each other, we braced ourselves, and we hit the lights. As we got to the midway point of the split level, my father let out a menacing growl that I can remember to this day. John and I screamed at the top of our lungs and fell over each other to get to the top of the stairs and our rooms before “IT” could get to us. I slammed my bedroom door shut and to this day can hear the sound of my father laughing from the living room at the terror he had instigated.

I hit my high school years just about the time of the incredibly classic horror movies that made the 80s great. Jason began his journey into folk lore at Camp Crystal Lake and Michael Myers had Jamie Lee Curtis running around town in her northeastern suburb screaming at the top of her lungs. Throw Freddie Kruger into the mix and you have all the makings of a great date movie… there’s nothing a guy likes more than a frightened girl hanging on to him… and even if you’re laughing more than you’re scared… you make him think you’re scared.

I was also one of those people who would talk to the television or movie screen and advise the main character that doom was awaiting them just around the corner. “What are you thinking running through the woods without an axe in your hand? Don’t you know there’s a stump you’re about to trip over? That’s all the monster will need to catch up with you!” Or, better still, “Yes, I know you just heard a noise in the attic… don’t you think you need to call the police before you traipse up there in your nightgown? Maybe you should leave the house that is possessed and speaking to you from the great beyond.”

Having explained all this… it makes you wonder why you do the very things you swear the actors should never do in the movies. For instance, what is it that drives you to investigate that “bump” you heard in the night… or the three “bumps” that woke you from a deep sleep early one Thursday morning?

My REM cycle was working overtime as I was in the throes of my production season at work. When I did finally get my brain to shut down, sleep was a welcomed friend. It was about 4:30 a.m. when I heard the three very LOUD sounds. I sat straight up in the bed with my heart pounding fiercely. My brain had already engaged and was trying to determine both the origin of the sound and its location. What I heard was something… or someONE hitting something that was wooden coming from the general direction of the living room area.

Our house is a brick house and the only wooden parts of it are the front doors. The problem, however, is that we have large glass storm doors that remain locked on the front of the house. In order for someone to be banging on the front door… they would have to get past the storm doors first. This is a disconcerting thought to a single girl at 4:30 in the morning. What is she to do? Reach for the cell phone and call the police? No… she whips off the comforter that has been warming her now chilled-to-the-bone body off the bed and heads to the living room.

Is there any type of weapon or protection that said heroin can locate? No… it’s 4:30 a.m. Is there a piece of furniture you can hide behind if Jason has indeed found his way from Camp Crystal Lake to your house? Not really. As a matter of fact… you’ve just walked your half-naked self in front of the large plate glass window of the living room as you are investigating this strange phenomenon. The mind is racing through various scenarios of misadventure as you stealthily make your way to the front door. As your hand touches the door knob you jump out of your skin when your 72 year old mother’s voice whispers from behind you “what are you doing up at this hour?”

You fight the urge to strangle her as the nervous pee-pee dance begins… she having scared that bodily function right out of you and a discussion ensues regarding the bump in the night. She heard the same noise, but it was time for her to get up anyway. She didn’t know what it was, and is not nearly as concerned as you are. Being the heroine of the story, you head for the front door anyway and slowly pull it open. You see nothing in the dark blackness of the night and you test the screen door to find it still locked. “Hmm…” you wonder. Could it have been the other front door? You stealthily make your way into the music room where thousands of beady-eyed Beanie Babies watch your every move. Both doors are locked there as well. Now you’re irritated. Now is the time for the “stupid-white-girl-in-the-scary-movie” persona to take over. You head out the front door.

The temperature is cold outside at 4:35 a.m. in the month of March. You are barely dressed and barefoot and you scurry among the trees and brush that line the front of your house. You’ve suddenly become Sherlock Holmes or a character in an Agatha Christie novel. You’re looking for footprints or tire prints in the dirt alongside your driveway. You listen for the twig to snap that will cause you to spin around and face your aggressor head on. You’re looking for a hockey mask and a black cape. You find nothing; but you curse out loud as you step on a pinecone that imbeds itself in your foot. You hop on one leg back to the front door only to be blinded by the porch light your mother turns on at the last moment. You stumble backwards into the prickly holly bush and stifle a curse under your breath. You now remember how stupid the girl was who twisted her ankle running from the serial killer through the woods. You feel pretty stupid yourself. You return to bed for about another hour of sleep before the alarm clock goes off, and you remain puzzled for the next few days as to what could have made that noise.

On Saturday the pieces of your wracked puzzle put themselves together as if they were positively and negatively charged ions in the atoms of common sense. You find a large metal frame that has slipped on the wooden shelf you put together in your bathroom just a few weeks earlier. You realize that the metal frame bounced around a few times before finding its resting place, and the bathroom is right next to your bedroom… which is why it could rouse you from a good night’s sleep.

Still… you shake your head in amazement the next night over a bag of Popcorn as you watch a teenage girl scamper through the woods while a resurrected Jason (number 13) hurries along after her with a machete in his hand.

“What a stupid girl.”

My Mother's Ingenuity

Ingenuity: skill in planning, inventing, cleverness

My mother is a genius. Have I mentioned that before? She was born at the end of the depression era; grew up in a coal mining camp; went off to a boarding school for girls; began college; met/fell in love with/cheated on and finally married my father. She lived in a few different countries; bore three children; suffered five miscarriages and dealt with various pets through the years. She taught school, taught piano, is the church organist and Sunday School teacher. You name it, if she hasn't done it, she thought about doing it.

Adapting is a way of life for my mother. When faced with the circumstance of not being allowed to play with the other children in the coal mining camp, she was determined to host her own birthday party. She invited the children (her school friends) over to the house and while she sat inside the fenced yard, she made peanut butter and crackers and passed them to her friends through the gate who were not allowed in her yard. She would not be stopped.

Adversity is no friend of my mother to this day. A few years ago, she had taken a liking to the concept of turning old tires into flower planters for the garden. It just so happened that we had an old steel-belted radial tire that had seen better days, and she was set on her new craft. It turned out that the tire was just a little too large, and she wanted to cut it down.

A truly odd sight to behold is one where your mother is on her hands and knees with a serrated bread knife sawing through a steel belted radial. A deaf ear meets any advice you attempt to give. She knows what she is doing. Her family finally steps into the fray when, in her desperation, she pulls out the handy-dandy electric kitchen knife. Knowing that no good will come from an electric, hand-held appliance meeting a steel belt, her children finally debate the dangers of her actions, and she acquiesced. The tire is thrown away and a large plaster planter is purchased at the nearby garden store.

Her ingenuity does not fade with her years. About 15 years ago, her first granddaughter came into the world. Kristin stole the hearts of all the Bell family, and was quickly followed by her sister Katy and her cousin Allison. Three little girls all in a row! The guest bedroom at the Bell house began its transformation to a room with pink walls (of course), darker pink trim; with dollies and teddy bears lined everywhere! There was only one problem… a draft coming in from one of the two windows.

Some normal people would have perhaps caulked the window to keep out the chill. But they are not the genius my mother is. Caulk is expensive, takes time and effort, and is unattractive. But TOILET PAPER!!! There's the solution. Cram toilet paper into the cracks for a quick, easy seal. However, that leaves its own problem… an unsightly mess. What to do? Stand back for a moment, assess the situation, and come to the only rational conclusion one has left… paint the toilet paper pink! It will match the wood trim and no one will be the wiser.

Certainly the adult daughter would not be the wiser when she sets out to remodel the same room some years later. She'll begin painting the trim and will come upon the window that appears to be caulked closed. "Funny," she thinks, "how do they plan to ever open this window again? I suppose they are not planning to open the window. I can't leave it pink and I can't seem to dig it out. The caulk moves from its pink stage in life to its cream stage.

Her mother is ecstatic when she comes home to her new guest bedroom. She is thrilled beyond words. She hails her daughter's charms to anyone within hearing distance, and praise goes from her lips for weeks.

Then one night, she approaches the daughter, after the newness of the room has worn out.

"Well, I've got to try and fix that window you painted shut," she said with a tone that was not generally flattering.

"What are you talking about?" I replied.

"You know… the window in the guest room. You painted it shut."

"Mom… I did not paint that window shut. It was caulked shut. It was permanently shut before I ever got in there."

"What are you talking about? I never caulked that window. That was toilet paper."

"Toilet paper?" My facial expression could never be adequately described.

"Well yes, I was trying to keep the cold air out."

My hands had covered my face at this time. I ran my fingers through my hair as I looked back up at the ingenious woman who gave me life. "Mother, you painted the toilet paper pink." I said this calmly and forthrightly and with no surprise in my voice. I mean come on; this is the same woman who uses toothpaste for both spackling holes in her plaster walls and cleaning her silver. It's not just for brushing teeth anymore.

A confused look came over her face and was gone in the instant that reality checked back into her life.

"I did?" The surprised sound was almost too much to bear. The longer the conversation was going, the more difficult it was to keep a straight face.

"Yes, you did. Did you want me to leave it pink?"

"Well no." Her answer came with an incredulous timbre, and then she seemed to begin to speak to herself. "Hmm… I can't imagine why I would have done something like that." She paused for dramatic effect and then moved on. "Oh well, no matter. I'm starting to dig it out now. Would you like to help?"

"No thanks… I’ve got the toothpaste out… I'm going to reseal the cracks in the driveway."

How My Mother Plans to Save the World with Six Bottles of Water

A lot has changed in the world since September 11, 2001. A new generation’s innocence has been stolen and ideals have been manipulated by terror. A heightened sense of expectant doom has permeated the minds of United States citizens. We no longer live in a country where terrorism is not considered to happen on our soil and is not simply relegated to far away countries with names that are either too difficult to pronounce, or end with the suffix “stan”.

Somewhere along the line, previous to our current war in Iraq, the Director of the Homeland Security Department issued a series of advertisements aimed at helping the American people slowly wake up from their sense of innocence and be prepared for a biological attack on our own soil. It was no longer out of the question for this to happen on the continental United States. On its purchase list were essentials: duct tape, plastic tarp, flashlights, canned food and bottled water.

Had this warning occurred at any time prior to September 11, my mother would clearly have paid it no mind. She scoffed at such notions and titled any such warnings as political propaganda. She would label these men and women as naysayers and would give them no further attention, striving to live her life in a way that a post-9/11 American should… going about life as usual.

I am not certain whether it is her age or whether Tom Ridge poses such an impressive figure that would cause her to pay attention to the television commercial that appeared in the months and weeks before the United States began its invasion of Iraq, but something did. However, as any logical parent would do, she kept her fears and plans hidden from her family. She did not want to do anything to make them believe there was need to fear.

She was “outed” from her preparatory plans one day whilst I was shopping with her at a local pharmacy. She and my father have become quite the coupon clippers during their retirement years. They watch the local newspapers for too-good-to-pass-up bargains on the essential things in life… namely soft drinks and two-for-one sales on canned Vienna sausages. They plan their weekend outings to various supermarkets as masterfully as General George Patton planned his military campaign in Europe during World War II. They know when the banks open and what each store schedule is like. They have their targets in sight and they are masterminds of the coupon-clipping crowd.

One afternoon I was drawn into the fray by my father’s desire to remain in the house and watch, what I can only assume, was the 57th viewing of “The Godfather” marathon on television. My mother needed to make a trip to the store because there was a sale on 12 packs of Coca-Cola products, but you were limited to four packs per person. I was to be the “ringer” that would allow my family to abscond with eight packs of the sugary concoction. I was given my assignment, handed my own currency with which to procure such extravagance, and we were on our way.

We loaded our respective shopping carts with our treasure when my mother asked me if there was anything else I wanted to purchase. Since we were in a pharmacy and I was not suffering from a mysterious malady, I told her I really didn’t think there was anything I needed. However, we soon passed a section of six-packs of bottled water. I felt my body would probably appreciate having something to dilute the 1,152 ounces of carbonated sugared drinks that were purchased and I reached out to grab a six pack of the clear liquid that would prevent me from going into a glucose coma.

Now my mother has never appreciated the idea of selling bottled water, let alone the idea of purchasing it. Why would someone want to buy extra of the very thing that you are paying for at your house? The tap water from the faucet has always been just fine for her family. When I began cross-training a few years ago, bottled water was an everyday part of my diet, as I was chugging about 64 ounces a day. I would watch, as she would shake her head at me in disbelief.

Then came the notion, after watching an investigative report on the news, that certain bottled water was not as pure as it was advertised. In fact, there were some hazards to drinking bottled water, as it could be tampered with at the bottling plant. This would cause concern for her, but the inadequacies of the water purification plant never crossed her mind. Our drinking and bathing water may be filled with mercury and lead, but she had not seen that investigative report and therefore had no cause for worry.

Imagine my shock when my mother prevented me from purchasing bottled water at the pharmacy because we had some at home. I was quite sure that the last bottled water that I purchased had been consumed, but she was adamant that there was plenty of water at the house. After a moment of prodding, she explained that she had made the purchase. I was bewildered. My very own “anti-bottled water” mother had crossed the line of her own psyche and delved into the evil that was buying water off the grocery aisle shelf. I asked her what could possibly have led her to perform such sacrilege. Her answer was astounding.

“Do you remember back before the war began? Did you ever see any of those television commercials with Tom Ridge?”

“The Director of Homeland Security?”

“Yes.” She had something of a sheepish look about her. I was completely unaware of where this conversation was going. “Well, they did these commercials about how we needed to be prepared for things in the event of an attack on our country. One of the things we needed to buy was bottled water, so I bought some.”

“Really?” I was just a little impressed that my mother had gone out and had followed the instructions of our Commander in Chief, through the Homeland Security Director. This was a woman who lived on various military bases with my father through most of her life. She survived the cold war and ideas of bomb shelters. She even worked for a short period of time as a secretary for NASA and her claim to fame was that she signed a rocket that was launched into space. This was a woman who lived life to the fullest and knew when to put on her poker face to bluff, or knew when to play her hand. “Did you purchase plastic tarp and duct tape too?”

“No, just the water. If we come under attack, I just can’t stand to think about going thirsty.” With this statement, reality struck me in the face. I returned to the skeptic child I had been raised to be in an instant and began to question her.

“Where is the bottled water? I haven’t seen any in the house.”

“I have it stashed away in the hall closet.”

Our hall closet has undergone various transformations in the almost 25 years we’ve been in this house. It has stored an old slide projector and slide photographs of my parents’ life in the military. There are quilts that my grandmothers and great-grandmothers made. There are sheet sets and bedspreads and comforters. There are empty boxes of collectible dolls and china figures that dot the landscape of our house. There are blankets and pillows, tablecloths and candles, kitchen appliances and a broken VHS player. If it has crossed the threshold of our house, it has, at some point in time, been stored in the hall closet. I never attempt to find anything in the hall closet. It is worse than staring blankly at an open refrigerator waiting for dinner to prepare itself.

I imagined that my mother, in her desperation to save her family, had gone to a local retail warehouse and bought pallets of bottled water. I could see how she would empty the closet out and store this treasure under lock and key. I knew that she would have purchased enough to allow her to not only remain refreshed physically, but she would be able to bathe and brush her teeth with it as well. She had become the epitome of the Proverbs 31 woman and was providing for her family.

“How much water did you buy?”

Her reply was not quick in coming. I saw different expressions cross her face as if her brain were trying to compute a theorem. I assumed she was trying to remember the exact quantity, as she would want to give an accurate account of what she deemed appropriate to save our family from impending catastrophe. Finally, she spoke.

“Six.”

“Six? Six what… cases?”

“No. Just six.”

“Six 6-packs?”

She became exasperated. “No… just six bottles.”

“Six bottles,” I replied. “Six bottles.” I repeated myself. She was busy at this point loading eight 12 packs of soda in the trunk of the car. The realization of the moment was becoming clearer with each second. “Six bottles of water.” I was going to have fun now.

“Mom…”

“Yes, dear.” She was closing the trunk of the car.

“Do you really think that six bottles of water are going to save the family from a nuclear holocaust here in Smyrna, Tennessee? I mean, we are the hot-bed of political power. I assume that Al-Queda have operatives roaming the streets at night just waiting for the go ahead from Osama Bin Laden. Will you ration the bottled water out in cap-fuls at a time? How long do you think we’ll survive on six bottles of water?”

The response she gave was beyond belief, “Well… I really didn’t plan on sharing.”

My mother’s decision to lose any maternal and marital instincts during “wartime” quite appalled me. I was in utter disbelief. The look on her face was priceless, however. I could tell that she was disgusted with this selfish act and even more disgusted that she confessed it to me. Since the war had been declared over some months previous and it was not apparent that we would suffer a biological or nuclear attack, I gave my final two cents’ worth.

“I sure am glad Dad and I have all this Coke to drink. We ought to outlast you in the long run with plenty to spare.”

The Snake that ate the Bell Family

Spring 2004

We last left the Bell family with Mama Bell wringing her hands and declaring we’d not be using the dryer. This was out of fear that the two foot long Eastern Ring Tailed snake had crawled into the dryer vent and was anxiously awaiting the opportune moment to strike and kill off every member of the Bell family, and their little dog too! Papa Bell was quietly seated on the back porch, still appropriately attired in his Easter Sunday best. Baby Bell (that’s me [for the sake of the Goldilocks-type story… but in reality I’m the middle child) had enlisted the help of her friend Leon to dispose of the ferocious back yard python, that was a good five or six inches in diameter. (Leon, as you will recall, came equipped with a shotgun and 9mm handgun). It’s hard to imagine that it has been almost a year since that fateful Easter Sunday afternoon, but indeed it is true.

It is harder still to believe this same monster has survived the various lawn cuttings, freezing temperatures, and other woodland creatures that are higher up on the ecological food chain. But it has! This must not be your normal everyday predator/killer. This, my friends, is the Super Snake!

I was quite tired Friday night, after having put in a good 12 hour work day, when Mama Bell entered the Bell den, wearing her lovely sleep shirt, and announced that Papa Bell, our hero, had indeed thwarted the advances of the killer viper and crushed his head under his foot. My mind immediately traveled to the recent showing of “The Passion of the Christ” where Mel Gibson’s foot crushed a rather large, yellowy, evil serpent that had been sent by Satan to inflict pain upon the Christ. Almost as instantly, my mind returned to the reality of my 72 year old, arthritic father, and I wondered only how he kept from hurting himself as he faced such an impressive foe as the two-foot python from the back yard.

Mama Bell proudly let it be known that Papa Bell threw a large stone over the snake, just in case it had not died under his foot, to keep it from returning to the dryer vent… where… it can only be assumed… it has lived these past 12 months knitting a sweater from the dryer lint, to keep itself warm during the cold winter months. “We should go see if its still there,” my mother gleefully chirped. Of course, the fact that we were in the midst of the first spring thunderstorm, held no consequence to her. This was a woman on a mission! Off to the music room we went; past the five-foot Baby Grand Piano and my Gran’s antique Hammond Organ; past the five wrought iron Baker’s Racks stocked full of my mother’s Beanie Babies; to the front door.

“You know, if the snake isn’t dead, and the rock wasn’t large enough to hold him, it might be that it has crawled up to the door and is coiled and waiting for you to welcome him into the house.” My words were no match for the adrenaline that was coursing through my mother’s veins. She would not be sidetracked from this adventure. She flipped the light switch and the door swung open in one timeless moment, and there it was! There was the massive deadly creature that had haunted the sleepless nights of my mother’s dreams for so long.

“You have GOT to be kidding me!” The tone in my voice was the first thing to break through my mother’s conscious thought. “That is the snake? I mean really… that’s it, right?”

“Well of course it’s the snake. What does it look like to you?”

“It looks more like a giant earthworm than a snake! Seriously… Mom… is that it? Are those markings the same as those on the snake you saw last year?”

“Yes.” My mother was proud of her ability to remember the markings on this unruly beast. I can only hope that she never witnesses an event that would require her to give a description of a criminal to a police sketch artist. Had one been called last Easter to investigate the “viper sighting”, the drawing would have more likely resembled the Loch Ness Monster. “That is the same snake as last year.” Her voice was naturally calm now that the terror was, at last, safely held underneath the rock.

“I see.” I waited a moment for dramatic effect before I completed my thought. “You know Mom… I hate to burst your bubble… but that snake is not close to being two feet long.”

“What are you talking about? Are you looking at the same snake I’m looking at?”

There were so many replies to that question floating in the cosmos of my brain, that it was difficult to choose only one. I concluded that any sarcastic remark would be wasted and resolved to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I cleared my throat before proceeding:

“It would appear that this snake is considerably smaller than two feet long… and is really only about as thick as my index finger.” I picked my index finger for fear of utilizing my middle finger in a manner not becoming a southern lady. Realization was beginning to sink in for my dear mother who could only reply, “Well, it looked a lot bigger last year. It may be coiled up underneath the rock so that you can only see the head and tail.”

“Mom… the rock isn’t big enough to cover a coiled snake.” I left it at that and began moving through the house to greet our fearless leader, and my mother’s hero… Papa Bell.

“Quite some snake you’ve got trapped under that rock on the sidewalk Dad.”

“Yep!” I could see his chest expanding with pride. I imagined him as a daring young Indian warrior who returned from his first test of courage. I saw him in my mind’s eye receive an eagle feather for bravery after overpowering a bear in the wilderness of the Great Smoky Mountains. “I stomped on his head and threw that rock right on top of it.” The image of the young Indian warrior quickly vanished as my father’s toothless reply crossed the threshold of my eardrums. The whistling ‘s’ bringing me back to reality so fast that I was grateful to have been standing behind him for fear that he would not have appreciated my doubling over with silent, contained laughter. I struggled to regain my composure.

“It’s not quite the size I imagined from the description given last year at Easter. Is this the same snake?”

“Yep”, his pride was undaunted. “It’s about two feet long.”

“Have you resorted to Old Testament Biblical measurements? Back then a cubit was from your finger to your elbow.”

“You’re just talking nonsense now. That’s a two foot snake.”

“That’s a five inch earthworm that I’m thankful Leon couldn’t spot! I’d hate for him to have unleashed the artillery he packed with him last year to kill a garden snake.”

My mother was quick to reply, “That is an Eastern-- Ring tailed—snake”… her words carefully and evenly spaced to indicate the seriousness of this subject.

I was getting nowhere fast. I moved on.

“So, will you ask the pest control people to dispose of it on Monday when they come spray the house?”

My father replied, “I figure a cat or dog will probably snatch it away. I don’t think the pest control guys will handle snakes.”

“I don’t either… but earthworms… they can probably deal with those.” I quickly walked away and pondered, yet one more time, whether there had been some sort of switch in the delivery ward of the hospital on my birthday.

Easter Sunday at the Bell House - 2003

Easter Sunday at the Bell house is never one to be boring. As a child, I always had the white hat/gloves/shoes/purse combo, and my father always bought a flower for me to wear on my dress. We’d get all dressed up for church and have our pictures taken. While I may have complained about my shoes being too tight, I didn’t have it as bad as my little brother. I remember specifically the year he had the linen shorts/jacket outfit that I’m sure one of our grandmothers bought for him. He hated wearing it, almost as much as I hated looking at him in it. We have a picture of him in that outfit, and to this day he will tell you he has deep psychological scars from having to wear it.

This Easter Sunday was not boring either. I woke up late, raced through the house to get ready for church/work… grabbed the flower that my father still buys for me… gave him a quick thank you kiss, let my mother take my picture, and then was gone. I came home after the second service to a house that was jumping! When I arrived, I found my mother wringing her hands and my father doing what he does best... sitting and watching my mother wring her hands.

It appears that we have a friendly snake in our yard. Black with yellow stripes... since identified in the old World Book Encyclopedia (circa 1950's) as a non-poisonous, eastern ringed tailed something-or-other. Depending on whom you ask will depend on the size of said creature. My mother swears it is a good 4 feet long while my father gives a more sedate measurement of between 10-12 inches. That is quite a discrepancy, but not an unusual one. The colloquialism “there’s two sides to every coin” takes on a new meaning at Casa De Bell. It is a rarity indeed when my parents share an opinion of something. It amazes me that they've not just weathered, but have successfully kept their marriage alive for 50 years.

At any rate, he (the snake) has shown himself twice, but neither time long enough for anyone to get close enough to take a whack at him. We’d sic the dog on him, but we have a poodle, and according to my mother, the snake is larger than the dog who would only be a nibble away from a fate worse than death.

Being the only sensible member of the family in the time of crisis, and being unable to locate either of my brothers... I contacted my friend Leon. Now, I’ve known Leon since we were in the third grade. We went all the way through school together, went to our senior prom together (we were each other’s mercy dates), went our separate ways during our college years when he entered the Air Force, but kept in touch all along the way. Leon is now an over-the-road truck driver and still lives in relatively close proximity to our house.

A word to the wise… don’t call for help unless you are ready to accept it in whatever form it manifests itself. Leon showed up ready to take on the snake... with a 9mm handgun in one hand and a 20something gauge shotgun in the other. I didn’t ask for the crocodile hunter, but that was apparently what I got. Its not like we live in the outback, we’re in a nice quiet middle Tennessee neighborhood with people living all around us. I started looking in the trees to see if there was surveillance equipment. I needed to know I wasn’t about to get “Punk’d”. To his defense, I’m sure that Leon wanted to be prepared for a snake that had perhaps been lost from a traveling circus passing through town. It may be a cobra or a rattler… but Leon would have the upper hand. I suppose he just wanted to keep his options open.

I quickly relived in my mind the only one other incident I remember my mother having with a snake. She was raking leaves in our yard when I was in elementary school. The leaf piles were pretty large. As she reached down for the last little bit to go into the trash bag, something in her hand moved. In one electrifying moment, she screamed, ran, and tossed the leaves (and accompanying snake) straight up in the air. A neighbor was mowing his lawn and saw the leaves go flying. He was quite taken aback at the fact that my mother was barreling down on him and his lawnmower. Before he had a chance to say anything she whipped the push mower from his hands and headed back to our yard, cutting a large and rather crooked swath on her way. She said nothing at all to the neighbor.

The poor snake never had a chance. Before it could have even thought about slithering away, it became compost… scattered all around the back yard. My superhero/anti-snake mother calmed herself and returned the impromptu snake execution equipment to its rightful owner with a simple “thank you.” I believe she treated him later that evening with a homemade cherry pie for his assistance in ridding the community from such terror.

So, when Leon broke out his arsenal, I was mortified. I was really opting for the old cut-'em-up-with-a-hoe method. It was perhaps a little bloodier, but hopefully less likely to have the police storming down on you. Gratefully the snake didn't show himself again. I was elated that I wasn't going to have to call all the neighbors to tell them my parents had determined that 50 years truly were enough and they’d been forced to shoot each other. I was also thankful that I wasn’t going to have to explain to the authorities that I had not shot either of them.

Of course, I did have to deal with the fact that Leon saw the location of the dryer vent and remarked to my mother that it appeared low enough to the ground that the snake could actually have crawled into it. That was exactly what had happened to his father once, you see. He went on to describe in vivid, Technicolor detail the time that his father opened the dryer one afternoon to get clothes out and there was a snake! He continued the story as I stood in a state of dread and watched my mother’s eyes get larger. I’m sure that I actually did see gears turning in her head. I also saw my father gingerly pick up the poodle and go inside the house.

My mother now will not get near the dryer, and won't allow any of us to either. She has plans to put some sort of grate over the vent. It makes me long for the days of my youth when as a young girl, I would hand clothes pins to my mother who was hanging our clothes on the line to dry. Then I remembered that we live in the 21st century, and clotheslines don't exist anymore.

Kamikaze Mouse

A Christmas Tail... er, Tale
Christmas Day, 2004

Having been raised by a father who has a love for history, and particularly for World War II history, I know my share of military jargon and tactic.

My first drive-in movie was “Patton” in 1970. I was six years old and seated squarely between my mother and father in the front seat of our station wagon wrangling popcorn and a soft drink and watching with keen interest the monologue of a General wielding a riding crop and standing in front of a large American flag. My little brother was asleep in the back seat having worn himself out with me earlier at the playground as we waited for dusk to arrive and the movie to begin. After all the fireflies had been captured and set free and our obligatory trip to the drive-in bathroom and concession stand, it was time to settle in for the evening’s adventure on the big screen. I am as sure that the devastation I witnessed on that screen went clearly over my head as I am that I had about a thousand questions for my father about the movie itself. I am also sure that by the time General Patton had his first discussion with Field Marshal Montgomery, my father was tired of having a discussion with me and willed me to the backseat to join my little brother in blissful slumber. I have watched this movie many times since I was six years old and have marveled at its cinematography every time and have never walked away disappointed.

As I joined the student ranks and began taking Social Studies and later History classes, my father’s influences were clearly etched in my psyche. I can still, to this day, hear bombs bursting in air and find my father either watching a History Channel documentary or an old war movie. While my friends basked in what I deemed to be a waste of entertainment time with a half-naked Brooke Shields romping through “The Blue Lagoon”, I was enthralled with “Midway” or “Tora, Tora, Tora”. My father usually at my side giving tidbits of information that made the movies appear to have a “Pop-up video” feel to them. He was never without information and was always willing to share it.

It stands to reason then, that I would understand the term “Kamikaze”. There are other reasons that I would understand this term as it relates to a vodka-lime juice concoction, but that bears little meaning for this venture. The Kamikaze that I refer to now is the terror that plagued our American soldiers in the Pacific as they fought against Japan in the 1940s. The Kamikaze pilots were a group of Japanese men that had been instructed in how to take off and fly a plane, but had no training in landing an aircraft as they were suicide missionaries out to relieve the south Pacific seas from the evil Americans. “Kamikaze” translates into “divine wind” by the Japanese, who believed they were leaving this world with honor and a courage unsurpassed by any other fighting man on the face of the planet. They were sadly misguided.

The Japanese are well known for a pride that surpasses any other culture. Their samurai and other soldiers were taught from the beginning what honor meant to their families, their culture and their country. The feudal system of Japanese government in the 1600s developed Harakiri (translated: open the belly)… an act by which a soldier could elude dishonor by taking his own life by… oddly enough… opening his own belly with a dagger. This notion has generally left Americans scratching their head and asking for another Kamikaze to make sense of it all.
Suicidal tendencies among bipeds are often considered irrational at best and maniacal for the most part. Suicidal tendencies among quadrupeds are truly without reason. Why is it, one wonders, that a coyote will gnaw off its own appendage to escape the metal teeth of a man-made trap? The fight or flights endorphins in this species have run amuck, as it were.

Mice, on the other hand, are a different story. You never hear of mice that have willingly gone to their death trap for the sake of springing it on themselves so their little mice friends can stand over their lifeless bodies and retrieve the cheese that was tempting them greatly. You never see a brave mouse with his determined beady eyes set on a five course meal and willing to plunge itself head-on into the gravy boat, which will certainly be its demise.

I imagine the most honorable mouse is named “Mickey” and has set out to rid the world of any preconceived notions that mice are icky and evil creatures destined to spread disease and rid our society of the best gorgonzola on the planet. He has a fan base in the millions and is a snazzy dresser to boot! He has his own club, the likes of which Annette Funicello has given way to Brittney Spears, and a money-making empire that makes him the most beloved creature in Western Pop Culture. He even has a girlfriend… and they have been together without getting married, longer than Brent Gambrell and I.

It probably wasn’t long after I saw “Patton” with my father that I had my first real life encounter with a mouse in a house. It was scampering through our home in Burkburnett, Texas when my mother first saw it and screamed loudly for my father… who, I can assume, was either watching the news or reading the paper. My courageous father began tracking the mouse, while my mother planted herself on the kitchen cabinet and began to frantically wave her hands in gestures to my father, who was looking for a weapon. That mouse would have been better off to do himself in than to meet the fate that was my father raining hellfire down on it in the form of a two by four. I can still see the little bits of flying… well… guts… coming over the shoulder of my father, and then the sight of my mother running to the nearest bathroom with her hand over her mouth. In a world before color television, with the highlight of Sunday afternoon being the Lawrence Welk Show and the aforementioned Mouse…this was entertainment.

My next personal encounter with a mouse came in my own bedroom as an older, wiser, preteen girl. This was after my mother wallpapered my bed room in pink roses, but before all the Bay City Rollers posters covered her handiwork. This was in a time where Barbies still ruled my life, but music was on a fast track to over take it! I remember that Barbies were still present because the mouse came out from under my bed and scared the mess out of me. Having received training from my mother, I promptly jumped onto my bed and began screaming at the top of my lungs, all the while keeping a sharp eye on the intruder of my bedroom. The door swung open and my older brother (I am sure that my father was a work) came rushing in with my mother right behind him. As I explained our predicament and the location of the mouse (now in my bedroom closet) my brother began looking for something to rid the world of this mouse, and my mind went immediately back to the flying gut scenario. I was unwilling to live through that horror again, until I realized that my brother had grabbed my Barbie doll house and in one quick motion, had swept the trespasser into it and was heading out the door. I’m sure that Barbie and Ken had to honeymoon for the next few days in a new location as I waited for my little brother’s GI Joe ranger team to infiltrate Barbie’s home and rid it of any reminder of the mouse and all the horrors that came with it.

I have been in contact with mice from time to time in my adult life, and they have always met their untimely end at the hands of a trap, or a bored dog that caught a glimpse of them eyeing the refrigerator. I have never really cared for real life mice and have felt no remorse for their lack of ingenuity for getting caught in the never-ending pursuit of cheese or other food morsels. Even when my father was still in the military and he took me to the lab with him, and I saw the mice that were being tested on… I never thought “Oh… that poor mouse…” I usually thought “Hmm… good thing Mom’s not here.”

What was it in me this afternoon when I found myself face-to-face with what appeared to be a tiny baby mouse next to my car? Where did this sympathy and maternal instinct to protect this creature arise from? Why would this happen on Christmas? As I went to warm up my car on this very cold Christmas Day, what to my wandering eyes would appear but a tiny life form… so small and delicate… unmoving except for its shiver from the sub-zero temperature. Had I become the transformed Grinch? Had my heart that was two sizes too small burst through the confines of a metal frame? Why was I suddenly intrigued and amazed at this helpless rodent? Why were those beady eyes now very large, brown… doe-like? Why didn’t this mouse move away from me when I approached him? I was… essentially… about a million times larger than it was. Was he frozen? Was he searching for his mother? How had it suddenly taken on a gender and found meaning in my life. Had I determined that this same mouse could have been a descendent of a mouse that, in Biblical times, witnessed the very birth of the Christ child? And why was I suddenly talking to it?

I found myself explaining to this now precious pet, that I was about to turn on the car, and for it not to be frightened from the loud sound it was about to hear. I began to plan my own escape route should the engine frighten the mouse enough that it would scamper towards me, up my pant leg and jump into the car with me, where I would never be able to drive until I could find this creature, now lurking about waiting to nest in my hair. I turned the key… the engine started… and the mouse didn’t move.

“Oh my… he really must be cold.” There was an abundant amount of sympathy for this woodland creature and the need to help relocate him with his family, who were certainly desperately worried about his location and… more terrifyingly… had sent out a search party with thousands of his kinfolk. But I dared not touch him… it was fear of the mouse cooties all over again.

I returned inside where I told my parents, now firmly in their 70s, of the little lost mouse by my car. “Run over it”, was my mother’s Nazi reply. She had no inclination towards sympathy. “Just back up over it… its not big enough to even feel it under your tire.” How could I have come from this woman’s womb? Where was her maternal instinct? Obviously it was tucked safely in the drawer with my father’s. “Just kick it with your foot. It’s probably half-frozen anyway. Or… we can send the dog out to deal with it.” Um… right. My father’s prancey, not-so-masculine poodle is going to rid the grounds of the mouse. More likely he would sniff at it… pee on it… and bark his way into the annals of family history as being the dog that did nothing with the mouse. If it came down to a fistfight… I was putting money on the half-frozen mouse.

My horror was only increased as I stepped back outside to load a few packages into my car for a Christmas exchange with my friend Connie. The mouse had indeed moved… to a position right behind my back tire! Oh No! I was certainly in a quandary now! What was I going to do? This poor, pitiful creature had determined that life was no longer worth living and saw me as the Dr. Kevorkian of the mouse kingdom. I has horrified that this resolute little being was throwing all his chips in on the big poker game of life and was waiting for me to deal his death blow. I couldn’t move. I tried to reason with the little fellow… I tried to explain that there was indeed more cheese in the world and that he could not possibly give up now.

When that failed, I took a new approach. I began to call upon the spirits of Walt Disney and the One True Mouse! I explained to him the Circle of Life and sang “Hakuna Matata” in the key of G. He would have no part of it. I would not be the Mufasa to his Simba. He was determined to meet his end… He was determined that I would play the part of Cruella D. Ville in his dastardly plan. He was… the Kamikaze Mouse! Upon closer inspection, I even saw a “K” emblazoned on his fur, and a little Japanese headband appeared while he was sipping his ritual sake.

But… I would have the upper hand yet. I leaped over his shivering little body with the grace of Bambi’s mother and procured the nearest broom. Then, just as Mary Poppins would have done, I swept him into the flower garden that was about 8 inches from where he had taken his last stand. He cowered and remained motionless for about 20 seconds. I wondered if I had killed him after all. Then… he moved. He stirred about. I explained the benefits of the leafy nature of his new-found home. I told him he would find warmth there, and possibly food. I exhorted him to remain on the outside of the house, where pleasures and the natural food chain of life afforded him a greater adventure than the seemingly warm house where he would certainly find his demise under the strong boot of the Fuehrer and his Fraulein.