beautiful, funny, sad & true

Last night’s dream took a while to get going, but it ended in a classic BFST way.

I am sitting in the back seat of a van in the driveway of my childhood home in Yakima with my two estranged stepsisters and one’s husband, drinking a concoction that the younger stepsister made from lemonade, vodka and whiskey or something.  We are sitting and talking awkwardly, and the husband calls me by a different name, so I say automatically, “You mean Todd.”  He gives me a little laugh and shrugs it off.   I set down my mostly full glass, stand up, climb out of the van, and walk across the front yard into the house.

As soon as I get inside, the dream’s location changes to that of a busy office setting.  I duck into the bathroom, pull down my pants, and start to. . .um. . .go Number Two.  As I’m doing that, the door starts to open.  It’s C, one of my real-life friends, so I tell him, “Hey, I’ll be out in a second.”  I reach over to lock the door, but the lock is broken.  I stand by the door, pants down, and try to  maneuver the door into position in such a way that it will latch and lock.  C says, “Oh yeah, I think they said something about the lock being messed up.  Here let me just [he opens the door enough to reach through] try and jimmy it.”

I say, “Just. . .hang on.  I’ll be done pretty quick.  Let me finish up in here first.”  C ignores me and continues to fidget with the door.  Pretty soon, there are five or six people walking around in the large bathroom, which turns out to be sort of a hallway that leads elsewhere in the building; a very high-traffic area normally.  I tug at my pants and tell everyone that I’m almost done, and that they should be patient for just another minute.  I finally get them corralled out the door, when a co-worker of mine runs into the room, smiling mischievously, knowing that she’s consciously disturbing me.

I make a sort of growling noise under my breath, and she asks, “What?”  She has her hand over her mouth, and is clearly trying not to laugh, which makes me totally furious.

I can’t contain my anger anymore.  “I’M WIPING MY ASS, EVERYONE,” I say loudly and exasperatedly.  “GO AWAY.”

She runs out the door, and I wake up, laughing at another crazy ending to another crazy dream.

It seems that the town in which I grew up is in the national news again, and for all the wrong reasons, as usual.

A five-year-old boy had an accident in his classroom, and it may have happened a few times before.  Let the record show that the boy spends part of his day in special education and the rest in normal kindergarten.  So what does the teacher do upon finding the accident?  She picks up the poo in a paper towel, stuffs it into the poor kid’s backpack, and sends him home with this note on it:

Nice, teach.  Way to be the adult in the situation.  Oh, and thanks for putting Yakima back in the spotlight in such a poetic and brilliant way.  My previous favorite Yakima Moment, which I’ve written about before, was the upholding of the ban on Ralph Ellison’s book Invisible Man by the Yakima School District.

It absolutely made my day to find such a hilarious picture of what appears to be one of the school board members holding the actual note in the Yakima Herald-Republic’s coverage of the story.  Here’s the story on CBS News, too.  Better yet, do you want to watch a video about it on CNN, in which the kid’s father is trying valiantly not to laugh?

Priceless story.  These things can’t be made up.

I just got tagged by Carolina to reveal six random things about myself.  You may be surprised to find out that I’ve never been tagged in one of these things before, so I’m rapidly trying to think of what I can write about, since I usually have something in mind before I ever start writing.

Okay, here goes.

NUMBER ONE:

I love Bach’s organ music.  I mean LOVE IT love it.  If I could marry it, I would.  I love it so much that if it’s playing, I can’t do anything else because I get absolutely sucked in by its perfect structure and beauty. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.  E. Power Biggs playing “The Jig.”

One of my favorite memories of my dad (How many times do you hear me say THAT?) is when the two of us were attempting to play this particular piece on a beautiful pipe organ in Ellensburg, Washington. I was sitting on the bench, playing the manuals (that’s organ terminology for keyboards) and my dad was on his hands and knees underneath the bench, playing the pedals with his fists. It was hilarious and touching, even moreso when I think about it now. I’ll never forget that moment.

NUMBER TWO:

Speaking of Number Two, I find it absolutely repulsive to have to listen to someone go Number Two in the bathroom (I’m thinking of the bathroom at work, by the way), especially since most guys are notoriously disgusting and loud when it comes to this particular activity.  I’m so disgusted by it that if there’s someone else already in the bathroom when I walk in, I’ve been known to go downstairs so that I don’t have to listen to that happening.  I mean, really.  The sound, the smell, everything.  Ewww.  And if they’re sitting there tapping away on their cell phones, that grosses me out even more, because I imagine them wiping their asses and then grabbing their phones before they get the chance to wash their hands again.  NASTY.  I hope no one ever has to borrow their phones for any reason.

NUMBER THREE:

I used to have two mullets.  No, not at the same time, but consecutively.  I liked them so much that I grew one out until it got all scraggly, and then I cut it off and grew another one, which was only a slight improvement over the previous one.  Here’s a picture of the first one, in progress, in 1988. . .

. . .and here’s a picture of the second one, in full effect, not long before it got cut (THANK GOD) in 1995:

I know; I was hot.

NUMBER FOUR:

The longest time that I’ve ever dated someone was five years (on again/off again).  The shortest time was three days.  Does that count as two things?  I don’t know, but I’m counting it as one two-part answer to one two-part question.

NUMBER FIVE:

I have no tattoos or piercings of any kind.  I used to have my left ear pierced, around the time of Mullet Number One, but I only wore an earring in it for about a year, and I haven’t worn one since then, so the hole has long since closed up.  No, I don’t have any pictures of that.

NUMBER SIX:

I’ve made more money playing the accordion than any of the other instruments I play.  It’s paid for itself many times over.  The cello is in second place, then probably the electric guitar.

NUMBER SEVEN:

There is NO Number Seven.  Thank you.

So, which six people would I like to tag and to see respond to this in kind on their own blogs?

Andrea

Josh

Emily

Sarah

Jo(e)

BoringFish

Thank you to Carolina for including me in this, thank you to YOU for reading, and thank you six participants (or anyone else who wishes to) for lending your metaphorical voices to this endeavor.

OneYearAgo

Yesterday was my mom’s birthday, and I called her last night.  We talked for a while, and one of the things she mentioned is that she occasionally checks in on my blog to ‘see how things are going.’  My mom reads my blog, and she’s apparently been doing it for some time now.

Great.

With all those posts I’ve written about Satan and feces and third grade memories, not to mention all the copious amounts of premarital sex weird dreams and my judicious but regular smattering of naughty words, she probably thinks that her real baby son must have somehow been swapped in the hospital for this devil’s spawn.

But the most egregious thing of all (for her, anyway) has to be my non-stop trash-talking about Yakima, which is decidedly well-deserved, but she can’t stomach it.  I have a kinda funny story about that, actually, which involves my niece’s favorite TV show, which we all couldn’t help but watch with her while we were at the beach a few weeks ago.

It’s a national show, which you probably haven’t seen, let alone enjoyed, if you’re over the age of ten.  It’s about PrecociousTeenageGirl, and it’s set in Seattle, where Niece lives.  The grandparents on the show even live in Yakima, where one set of Niece’s grandparents live.  The hijinks ensued in one episode when it looked as if PTG was going to be sent to live with her grandparents.  She didn’t want to go, and she kept making all these lame jokes about Yakima and how bad it is (“oh, the sweet smell of Yakima”, et cetera).  I kept waiting for them to actually take her there, and have some scenes set in the town, which I’m sure they would have filmed in Salinas, California instead, anyway.  It has the exact same feel and look as Yakima, except for the fact that Salinas has the brilliant John Steinbeck rooting for it.  Raymond Carver and I are Yakima’s vox populi spokespeople, and we have nothing good to say about the place.

But that’s neither here nor there.

I found that episode surreal and hilarious.  No wonder it’s Niece’s favorite show; the writers practically frickin’ wrote it for her, and set it in the two places she knows best in the world.  I couldn’t stop cracking up at the irony of the situation, so between my incredulous laughter and the show’s cloying laugh track in response to every generic joke, my mom got angry and had to go upstairs to get away from it all.

I couldn’t tear myself away from the stupid show, and I actually watched the thing in its entirety. You’ll be glad to know that PTG did not, in fact, get sent to live in Yakima, because GenXGuardian (her older brother?) came through in the end to prove that despite his slacker appearance, he really was quite the responsible young gentleman when it came to raising her.  Awww.  Wipe my tears and cue the organist.

I suppose I don’t have a real reason to feel weird about my mom reading all this.  She knows (pretty much) what I’m like, this is all real stuff, and I feel like it’s a good representation of me, slightly-glossed-over warts and all.

But it still does feel weird.  I’m sure you understand.

This entry is dedicated to my friend Mark, who couldn’t care less about the whole blogging ‘thing’, and who absolutely does not understand the impulse that people have to write and publish their little stories about their little lives. And who can blame him, really? For people who don’t like blogs, this is what mine probably looks like:

Blahblah life blahblah me blahblah Mark & John. Food blahblah music blahblah drinks with friends. Isn’t this funny/exciting/wacky/dangerous?

I went NumberTwo today. Here’s a picture of it. I’m just kidding. Isn’t that funny/wacky/crass? I’m such a kidder. Blahblah.

I like movies. I mean, really. Aren’t they good and stuff?

Blahblah JennyOrganCaseyMichaelMatt. Good times.

Blogging rules!

by Todd
the end

Yeah. . .I’d say that’s a pretty accurate description of our dinner last night. It’s too bad, too, because when you read between the lines, the night was very fun, and surprising, and long overdue. Here’s to many more nights like it.