Head in the Sand ... and other unpopular positions (2 page)

Me? I drive cars old enough to vote and
listen to “Weird Al” Yankovic. I know, I know. It doesn’t make
sense to me, either.

But I take hope for the future of our family—because
my kids drive nicer cars than I do . . . and listen to Pink Floyd
and Johnny Cash.

Dear Santa,

I’ve tried to be a good
wife and mommy this year. I’ve hardly ever cursed under my breath
upon finding the toilet seat up . . . in the middle of the night .
. . in the dark. I only cut off idiot drivers on the parkway once
or twice . . . a week. And I almost never find myself saying things
my own mommy used to say to me, like, “Your face is going to freeze
that way,” or “I’ll give you something to cry about,” or even, “If
I hear that instant message sound
one more
time
!” Okay, fair enough. My mommy never
used to say that last one. But, she would have.

With my otherwise stellar behavior in mind,
Santa, I offer you the following wish list for the next holiday
season:

I want the secret of how to maintain a clean
house without having to worry about things like wiping down the
baseboards. Baseboards are a tool of the devil.

I want a vacuum cleaner with a remote
control. One strong enough to pick up signals from, say,
Hawaii.

I’m not impressed with a window cleaner that
doesn’t streak. I want windows that don’t streak.

I want mothers to come with built-in
recording systems to match our already uncanny knack for
remembering conversations verbatim. Because no matter how many
times I can quote to my teenager his promise to finish cleaning his
room, unless I got it on tape, I got nothing.

I want to be the kind of person who doesn’t
panic when she hears one of her “tidy” friends say she has to get
home to take down all her mini-blinds and soak and scrub
them—“because it’s spring.” What is that supposed to mean? She has
to be O.C.D., right? I take mine down only when the three-year-old
gets a glob of bright blue Colgate tartar-control gel smeared on
them low enough for someone of average height to see. If he smears
white toothpaste on white mini-blinds, I figure I’ve got another
few months before it calcifies. And, if he flicks it so high that
only a basketball player can see it, I know I’ve just bought myself
a good year and a half without having to think about it . . .
unless Wilt Chamberlain stops by. In fact, I can probably group
that mishap with another event to be named later and then decide
that the two events combined warrant taking the blinds down.

I want a software program that will not only
balance my checkbook but will deposit extra money into my account
when I’m overdrawn.

I want some sort of
written guarantee that, when I lose weight (okay,
if
I lose weight), it
won’t all come off my chest first and my gut last.

I want a cat that knows the difference
between my leg and a scratching post.

I want a dog that knows the difference
between my leg and . . . never mind.

I don’t want a shampoo with the conditioner
built right in. I want a shampoo with the hair stylist built right
in. If I can’t have that, then just let me use the shampoo and
conditioner separately. Time in the bathroom is the only time I get
alone these days, and I want it to last as long as possible.

Oh, and yeah, I almost forgot: I want world
peace. And let it begin with my kids.

Thank you, Santa. I look forward to working
with you again this year.

My husband, Wayne, saves
everything. And I mean everything. He saves more than a Unitarian
Jesus.

In my husband’s pockets you’ll find crumpled
up old receipts from trips to McDonald’s drive-thrus for a diet
Coke. Just a diet Coke. No sandwich. No fries. No
two-hot-apple-pies-for-a-dollar. Just the Coke. These receipts are
so ancient and wrinkled that the purplish mimeo ink has faded or
smeared so badly you can’t read it. Not that you’d need to.

He saves envelopes from
our bills. Well, you say, you need those envelopes to send the
payments back. Well, I say, no we don’t, because we pay all our
bills online. Besides, I wasn’t even talking about
those
envelopes. (And
yes, before you ask, he saves those too.) I was talking about the
envelopes the bills came to the house in. The ripped-open envelopes
that now have absolutely no earthly use at all except to scribble
down impromptu grocery lists. And no, he doesn’t use them to
scribble down impromptu grocery lists. He just saves
them.

He saves catalogs. And not
just to give himself something to read in the bathroom. I’m talking
department store catalogs so old they’re having sales on leisure
suits and Earth shoes. (“
Hurry! Sale ends
in 1972!
”)

He saves phone numbers and
addresses. All of them. In his computer. In his cell phone. In his
PDA. He syncs more often than a lead balloon. Well, you say, this
is a good thing. You never know who you might need to call or send
Christmas cards to. And, if that were all it was, I’d agree with
you. But every Christmas I ask him for his half of the Christmas
card list (the addresses and names of his friends and family), and
I always get a handful of names on his printout with multiple
possible addresses. Seems people move once in a while, or change
phone numbers. And when they do, he doesn’t just replace their old
information with their new information. Nope. He
saves
the old phone
numbers and addresses. Like, what? Are they going to change their
minds and move back to the old house?

So, when we needed the
phone number for a campground we visit, he dug three phone numbers
out of his PDA—unsure which one (if any) was the right one.
Naturally, the first one had long since been disconnected. The
second one was an answering machine, but at least it was the right
phone number. I’m still not sure what the third phone number was.
Probably their
future
phone number.

He saves bent nails, plastic bags, old
sneakers (and I don’t mean just the previous pair he used to wear—I
mean three and four generations earlier than the pair he wears
currently), old underwear (can you say, “dust rag”?), old T-shirts
with holes and pit stains (can you say, “big dust rag”?), old pairs
of glasses (is he expecting his eyes to revert back to an earlier
prescription?), old raffle ticket stubs (the contest is over, he
didn’t win, but he’s taking the phrase “eternal optimist” to new
heights), old physics textbooks from college (great bedtime
reading, I guess), old AAA guide books filled with places that have
long since closed or burned down, and anything else under the sun
about which he can say, “You never know. I might need this
later.”

Which, as it turns out, is just about
everything. It’s a battle cry for the ages.

Does it bug me? Actually,
I’m awfully glad he likes keeping all his old, useless, broken-down
stuff . . . because that includes me.

I have an unexplained rash
across my body. People talk in hushed tones around me. Dogs whimper
and run for cover when I go outside.

It isn’t poison ivy. I
never get poison ivy, ever—even if I chew on the leaves and wash
them down with a sumac chaser. This is an insidious,
crawling
thing, covering
me like a creeping fungus.

After I give up on home diagnosis, I go to
my new, young doctor. He scratches his hairless chin, peeks under
my paper gown a little, says things like “Huh!” and “Gee!”, and
shakes his head.

“
Can I call in an
associate? I have
no clue
what this is.”

We call in an associate.

Doctor #2 prods me a
while. He looks twice the age of Doctor #1. He scratches his chin,
peeks under my flimsy paper gown a little more, and says things
like, “Wow!” and “You’re right!” He shakes his head and asks, “Can
we call in
another
doctor?”

Doctor #3 is added to our motley crew, and,
judging from the dialogue, I’ve stepped right into a Marx Brothers
movie.

The only thing they agree
on is that I should see a dermatologist. Like,
yesterday
. One dermatologist offers
me an appointment for next Thanksgiving. Did I mention how much I
love my new HMO?

After my doctor’s receptionist badgers
another dermatologist into an appointment the same week, I feel the
resolution can’t be far behind. I return from that visit with the
following information at my fingertips (which are the only parts of
me left without the rash):

•
The good news
is
that the dermatologist had to ask me only two simple questions
before she made a diagnosis.

•
The bad news
is
that I’ll have to pay $125 for that five minutes if my new
insurance hasn’t kicked in yet.

•
The good news
is
that the disorder has a name:
pityriasis
rosea
.

•
The bad news
is
that even that homeschooled Indian kid would have been stumped on
this one in the National Spelling Bee.

•
The good news
is
that it’s not contagious.

•
The bad news
is
that people don’t believe you that it’s not
contagious.

•
The good news
is
that it’s like chicken pox: You get it only once and then develop a
lifelong immunity.

•
The bad news
is
that it’s like chicken pox: It itches like crazy, spreads
everywhere, and looks absolutely disgusting.

•
The good news
is
that it will go away on its own.

•
The bad news
is
that it will go away on its own because no one knows how it gets
there in the first place. “It will go away on its own” is a
doctor’s catch-all phrase for ninety percent of the ailments I have
ever had.

•
The good news
is
that there is a progression this rash follows, and it looks normal
for the three-week mark.

•
The bad news
is
that it lasts eight to twelve weeks.

•
The good news
is
that the dermatologist prescribed two steroid creams for the
itching.

•
The bad news
is
that one of them burns off three layers of skin, and the other one
does about as much good as rubbing Crisco on my
torso.

•
The good news
is
that my pharmacy has a drive-thru window so I won’t have to go
inside with this ugly rash.

•
The bad news
is
our new health plan isn’t accepted at this
pharmacy.

•
The good news
is
there is another pharmacy with a drive-thru window only a few
blocks away, and they take my health plan.

•
The bad news
is I
have to walk in anyway because the plastic drive-thru vacuum tube I
am supposed to put my prescription into slips out of my hands and
rolls under my car, and I accidentally run over
it.

•
The good news
is I
slip past the front counter without anyone seeing me carrying fifty
pieces of crushed plastic.

•
The bad news
is
they are all staring at my rash instead, and the pharmacists in the
back of the store probably wonder what other medications I am on to
have demolished a big plastic tube at one mile per
hour.

•
The good news
is
that oatmeal baths relieve the itching enough to go to bed at
night.

•
The bad news
is
that my husband prefers Cream of Wheat.

It is bad. Really bad. We
rip up the old living room carpet and realize we have to sand down
the shredded chunks of petrified wood underneath. My husband,
though, is giddy with anticipation. As I wrestle the furniture out
of the room, he runs to the basement and drags out his belt sander,
ripping the ratty old belt off and slipping a new belt on with
ease.

Then he reaches for the thingamajig that
tightens the belt. It isn’t there. None of the handles on the
contraption tighten anything—except his forehead, which is pinched
so tight I fear an aneurysm.

“
Why don’t I look in that
drawer where you keep the owner’s manuals for everything you’ve
owned since sixth grade?” I offer.

“
Somebody gave this to me
second-hand. I never had the manual.” If there’s anything Wayne
loves more than a new tool, it’s a
free
tool.