Weekend

I would have posted before now, but I appear to have a decision making disorder that makes it hard for me to commit words to paper (or computer screen) until I know where I'm going with the point I'm trying to make, but I've put off cleaning the house--or as it is currently known: Brokedown Palace--as well as grading the half kilo of papers I brought home with me yesterday so I have a moment to express a thought or two. I know I won't be the first person to say this, but two days for a weekend is really not long enough. Especially if I'm expected to be completely ready for work on Monday. I'm going to need at least three days, mainly because I require an entire 24 hours just for all the crying. I wish I was kidding.

How bad is the behavior at our school? So bad that during morning announcements over the PA system-- (Wherein the entire school collectively recites THREE pledges--national, state and the school pledge to be a better citizen and not stab anyone until we get home--so who are all the jagweeds out there on Facebook claiming school kids don't say the pledge anymore and the country is going to hell? No really! Find them for me so I can kick their asses right now, because it takes my school eleventy-five minutes of pledging instead of receiving instruction every day and as a result I've got students who think the name of our continent is Antarctica and one who just this week spelled the word the word shovel thusly: sufol. Time is of the essence, friends. OF. THE. ESSENCE!! This cannot be overstated. And no--I'm not suggesting that our kids can't read or spell because of the Pledge of Allegiance, so simmer down all you flag wavers out there.)  --our sweet principal has us clap in unison for the number of days our little dumplings go without a disciplinary referral to the office.

I'll wait while you digest what I just said.

Yes. It has come down to clapping for the self-restraint shown when young children make it through the day without setting fire to the bathroom, though rhythmically speaking what we do really resembles that slow "clap out" that all the prisoners did for Robert Redford when he played a warden in the movie "Brubaker".  By the way, that smell you've probably just noticed? It's the smell of failure. Thanks for noticing.

It was a good idea, in theory, to assess our progress with regard to in-house violence. Sadly, we got as far as 10 days of relative calm during that first week and a half, which had our teachers in a kind of mouths-wide-open-yet-cautious state of mild shock and disbelief and then things went south as they are wont to do here at Lord of the Flies Elementary when a bi-polar/schizophrenic third grader-- who is built like a small tractor and whose mother neglected to administer purchase his insanity pills-- roundhouse punched another classmate right in the face while in the cafeteria. Current total of claps as of yesterday? Three. Hope springs eternals, folks.

And then it is stomped until lifeless by someone wearing dirty Air Jordans.

In other news I saw something on Pinterest about a Chocolate Ding Dong Cake with caramel and sea salt and when you add that bit of happy information that to the fact that I also just this day stumbled onto the existence of Candy Corn M&Ms? Let's just say I may have discovered my reason to go on living. It's either that or risk censure when someone discovers me "drinking" my lunch out in the teacher's parking lot, though I don't think there's a jury in the land who would convict me if they had spent even a day with me. The invitation is open, but you'll have to bring your own kevlar vest. Don't say you weren't warned.

I'm headed out tonight to my husband's class reunion. I'm actually looking forward to it since I purchased this miracle cucumber eye cream that somewhat diminishes the suggestion that I'm storing small dark coin purses beneath my eyes. I'm not saying it's like a facelift or anything, but it shaves a whole three years off my appearance. When you consider that I was coming out of ICU three years ago and--even then--looked more rested than I do after leaving work every day? Well....I'll take what I can get and going backwards in the time machine known as "GETTING OLDER" is better than forwards. If you don't know that yet you are probably still in college, in which case you probably should be studying instead of pondering your mortality. There's plenty of time for that.

Story

That whole "youth is wasted on the young" adage is true for more than just the reason it is generally used. Most people have grandparents for at least a while and when you do you're probably young and when you ask your simple questions you get answers--or maybe you don't ask any at all, but you're too unobservant to notice. Because you're stupid about the brevity of life you fail to realize that these people who keep the Dr. Peppers extra cold in a special garage refrigerator just for you are the keepers of your DNA in story form. And their visas for life on the planet have a limit. It's not that youth should be used for only one thing but that the patience and foresight you need about the swiftly passing years don't come until later.

Still-- you do hear about the twin sisters with rhyming names that your maternal grandfather tells you about, but only because you ask him while he's having his coffee in that maroon melamine cup he always drank it from. He probably wouldn't have told you otherwise because he's a quiet man. They were jumping from the hayloft and later one of the twin girls died and they carried her casket in the wagon past her old schoolyard one last time and played her favorite hymn which your grandfather could still sing. And he does in a low soft voice that raises the chill bumps on your arms almost as much as the unlooked for news that children die sometimes. What the hell?

There's the story your grandmother tells about a tornado that blew away her childhood home while they were hiding in the storm cellar and maybe a fire where someone risks his neck in order to duck back inside the burning structure to rescue the newly purchased suit of clothes. 

Your other grandfather with the spooky laugh and kind eyes teaches you words from his native Germany, but you scarcely get to know him before he dies of a heart problem which leaves you with the grandmother who taught you to knit and play cards but who shows disapproval more easily than affection. And who never wants to talk about where she came from.

One day it's as if every tale they've ever told you gets an instant replay in your head until you remember a detail or two that doesn't quite make sense and when you start to question it all because now you're actually interested and you have the time? The people you need to ask are out of time. Everyone's gone. You could have spent at least a few more hours with your mom's mother, but her last years of bad health coincided with the beginning of your teenage dating career and you couldn't possibly have known how important those old people were going to be until they weren't there anymore. Those who would have told you the most--had you bothered to ask-- exited the planet first-- leaving you with the grandmother with all the secrets and half truths. Ironically, strokes later relieved her of the need to continue whitewashing the exposed parts of her sad early life that couldn't be hidden--the part that took place before you even got here. 

There was that new start in America after leaving either Poland or Russia...no one's really certain because the story changed depending upon who was telling it. Her father who drank. Her mother who lost one baby after falling down the cellar stairs. The mysterious sister whose children were taken from her and whose ultimate end no one wants to talk about...even fifty years after her death. The great-uncle you never knew about who died when he was two. The institutionalized nephew. Her handsome baby brother, killed in a jeep accident in Puerto Rico. Her marriage to a man --my grandfather--which was never all that happy. The fact that a month before she gave birth to my father, her own father shot and killed his wife--her mother-- in their home on Olive Street before turning the gun on himself.  And the years of family members self-medicating with alcohol which make me more than convinced that if there was ever a family crest to discover, it would probably feature a bottle of gin and a bowl of peanuts. If these are the details we do know, imagine what there must be that she and her other siblings were keeping to themselves?

I remember my youngest sister's foray into geneology, which my other sister and I later followed.  One afternoon she called me and said, "Well...the good news is we've got some really artistic people on Dad's side of the family. Painters and people who write or create. The bad news? Lots of c-r-a-z-y and alcoholics everywhere." Awesome.

The grandmother who loved risque' jokes, and long neighborhood walks where she picked up spare change off the street,  talk show host Jack Paar and later--inexplicably-- a nurtured fixation for an actress named Della Reese; the grandmother who loved hearing your true stories but who was less anxious to tell you anything even remotely unvarnished, left behind a lot of objects which were physical talismans of the time I spent in her house. A commemorative John F. Kennedy spoon. Her telephone table. The best platform rocking chair ever made. Some mixing bowls. Her method for salting homemade french fries. Those are--every one of them-- treasures and they remind me of her every time I see or think about them.

However, I'd trade all of it for a copy of her missing salad dressing recipe and the truth about everything else-- no matter how shameful she probably thought it was. It's all just story and one of the last things we learn in life is that the best ones are those that no one wants to tell.

Sunday

You know those things that always bugged you about your parents which suddenly make more sense than you ever though possible? I'm having one of those moments. Actually, it's not a moment...it's a day. In my family, Sunday was always the day that made my mother sad and that had a lot to do with it also being the day we went back to college after a rare weekend in town and that--for her-- signaled the beginning of the the slow drift away from the old homestead. Roger that, Captain. It's already happened.

It's been a really full day. I made the most of the rain and the solitude. The Hubs was gone on a campout and I grocery shopped and made stew and a flotilla of cookies to mail to the boys. I graded papers and did laundry and made lists. I listened to music and read the NYTimes. I fed the animals and talked on the phone. I saw and bought candy corn at the store and that got me to thinking about this being the first Halloween (I know...it's only September) without any kids living here. After that, the day was shot through with amber tones of both serene contentment and nostalgic melancholy.

You'd have to live here to know, but it's nearly impossible not to think about the past while in our home. We live in a house that is pushing seventy...with creaky hardwoods and cabinets which--when chipped--reveal a lovely stratigraphy of paint colors. Apparently our kitchen used to be Robin's-egg blue. The Hubs was at one time an archaeologist. One of my college minors is History. Both of us are blessed and cursed with the ability/need to look backward even as we seek what awaits us ahead. There's too much here that speaks to what has been as well as what is to come. Kids' art framed on the walls. Photos from beach vacations. Our sons' childhood handprints pressed into the plaster of their bathroom walls. Mail that still comes here addressed to them. The fireplace front I tiled in a mosaic fashion along with pennies pressed into the grout...each one bearing a son's birth year and one for the year I married my best friend.

There's no doubt that this is a tough transition. In the real world it might seem to others as though I'm completely fine with my newfound independence and in many ways.....I am.  We are. But it is clear to me that---because of the times I seem to return to this theme in writing---I'm grieving too. Every corner of this house is a museum to our family's happiness and an inescapable reminder of all that will never come to pass again. Did I just write that? Jesus! Someone tell me a joke.

Today I found a paper that the youngest son wrote when he was in the 1st grade. It was one of those Daily Oral Language things where the teacher calls out simple sentences and the students write them down. Probably one of many I glanced at--smiled briefly at the effusive 100 scrawled in red ink--and then placed it in a memory box with so many others. Today I actually looked at it (Thank you, Jimmy the cat, for dragging it out from under the bed) and read the words our son had so laboriously lettered: Can Sam skip? Will Roy jump?(Should Mother have some wine and just shut up already?) I trace with my eyes the curving penciled lines and stems he made on the 17th of October. Twelve years and one month ago as of tomorrow.  On any other day I might look at it, smile and then put it back in the box. Not today. Today I keep it out for a bit. A souvenir of a sweet time that was way shorter than I ever knew it would be.

Who knew that Monday would be so welcomed?

Canada: Still Not a State

You'll forgive me if I reduce this post to a mere grocery list of thoughts, but lists are pretty much the only complete sentences I can guarantee these days since I have to reserve all my strength for children who alternately delight, frustrate, bewilder, and anger me most every day of the week--none of whom did I bring into this world. It's like riding in that last car on the roller coaster. You might survive, but it will probably require showing up the next day in a neck brace and high on Tylenol 14. Or something like that.

1) When rebooting one's iPhone it is always important to be able to distinguish between the terms "reset" and "restore". The difference being that one is a bustling Costco jammed with all manner of things that make life enjoyable while the other is a sad and very suddenly empty warehouse.

2) I'm going to need a ton of cheap wine compasses if I'm ever going to be expected to teach these children about the world they live in. Namely, that Canada is not a state and that children who live in Texas should actually know where San Antonio is, given that a very important battle was fought there. They need to know that it is Kennedy's assassin who is buried in a nearby cemetery and not the guy who shot Lincoln--for the love of God! Or that the sun does not really rise or sink. I think when I told them that NORTH was not "UP" I may have caused a couple of spontaneous brain implosions. Today I asked one class if they knew which country (The choices were Mexico or Brazil) was further north and one child raised his hand and said with great confidence...."CHINA!" I think it was my father who used the term "Couldn't find his butt with a lantern in both hands". These precious children? Precisely that.

3) After two heart attacks, a blood infection and pneumonia, my tough-as-shit father-in-law was released from the hospital today. Two arteries are currently still completely stopped up with what is surely a  78-year old paste of cheese, pork, cigar smoke, more cheese and Glenlivet, but he stands a better chance of healing at home in order to survive his future bypass than he does in the ICU with people coughing their phlegmy, staph-coated body fluids in his general direction. I wish him luck. He doesn't have my own father's sheer Teutonic will power, but he's got whatever it is that occasionally makes you want to grab a crowbar and sneak up behind his stubborn Scotch/Irish ass. Either way, my money's on him.

4) If I'm not meeting with a parent--or attempting to hang myself in the elevator shaft after a particularly trying day, I enjoy closing the door to my classroom, turning off the overhead lights and listening to music by lamplight and what little sun that comes in through the very tiny windows the school's architect saw fit to throw our way.  Typically, I grade papers while doing so.  Today's selection was Leon Russell's "Back to the Island". Maybe you're too young to know who this guy is and if you looked him up you might think he was just some homeless man wearing a jaunty hat. You'd be right about the hat. But I've learned to keep my eyes closed and listen only to the music. His is the voice of the very last years I lived at my parents' home. Seeing what time has done to those who created the background music for my youth and young adulthood only shines an unforgiving spotlight on how many years have actually passed, but closing your eyes leaves you with just the music and THAT remains mostly unchanged. I did it when I saw the Doobie Brothers, and again in July when I saw Donald Fagen, Michael McDonald and Boz Skaggs. I did it when we saw Paul McCartney.  I wish I could do the same for myself. Looking in the mirror can be really feel like a mean thing to do to some days.

5) The empty nest continues to alter the way I think about our house. Our three sons are doing so well where they are and I love getting reports about every new thing that they're seeing and doing. Mostly, they're learning live to without us. I keep a lamp on in their old rooms at night...just so that their end of the house isn't dark. Lately doing so feels a little like hanging on to the wrapping paper after you've taken the wonderful gift out of it. What's left in there that needs a light anyway? The books they don't have room for and clothes that mostly didn't make the cut. Winter coats they don't need just yet. Awards from school, old yearbooks, and a folded note from a friend that gathers dust under a bed. The Hubs and I are fine and we are enjoying the extra time we have together. However, those boys changed us in a big way and daily life that doesn't somehow involve finding a pair of pants in the living room that someone just stepped out of and then totally forgot about is strange indeed.

6) I like walking along our city's river trails on the weekends. I plug in "This American Life" and let Ira Glass gently speak to how many different human stories there are out there in our world. And it reminds me that my story--even though three very important parts of it have moved away--is far from over. Some days are harder than others to remember this.

Things To Do in the Cardiac ICU Family Waiting Room

                                                                   

1) Use ear buds and iTunes to block out disturbingly funereal Celestial Kingdom -style music that is being piped in for the benefit of those in various stages of fear or grief.  I'm not sure how we should be expected to think positively with the auditory assault of "Nearer My God to Thee" drifting through the air. It would seem we're only minutes away from an alter call at a tent revival and an old woman playing beseeching spirituals on a Hammond organ.

2) Lacking as one might (in an emergency situation) an available sleep mask or even a burlap sack to pull over your head, you'll need to bring polarized sunglasses on the off chance that you will wind up bunking down for the night on one of the sofas provided since the lack of a dimmer or off-switch makes it nearly impossible to sleep due to the visual sting of florescent lighting. I've never been to the "Land of the Midnight Sun", but it's probably a lot like this. You have been warned.

3) Destroy all healthy eating habits dictated by the "Lose It!" app on my phone and--instead--eat  greasy cafeteria pizza, white powdered doughnuts and Twizzlers from the vending machine. As a bonus, inexplicably rack up a $20 credit with your bank card on those same vending machines which--when you need it most--refuses to cough up a lousy package of Cheetos.

4) Bring a sweater and a blanket. Possibly a light parka. It's like "Ice Station Zebra" in that waiting room... all day every day.  I've watched enough ER and Grey's Anatomy to know that sometimes heart patients are put on ice to keep them alive. I didn't think it was supposed to happen to those of us who aren't queued up on the surgical tarmac awaiting the knife.

5) Finish Stephen King's "11/22/63" (849 pages). Did it. On to the next thing.

6) Have roundtable discussions as to reasons why the largest art installation in the waiting room depicts an enormous painted Jesus presiding over similar smaller renderings of an EKG readout,  people having surgery, families waiting on ill loved ones and a person in recovery. Also?  A picture of a man bowling.

                                                               WHUT??

7) Finish grading three sets of tragically lettered spelling tests without forgetting how many letters are in my own name. It's harder than you'd think.  Join me for a victory dance, won't you?

8) Listen to stories about how your critically ailing father-in-law--an imposing local attorney who had just arrived by ambulance-- was describing his symptoms to the doctor in the "cath lab" and cutting up about that BBQ-ed pork sandwich he'd had earlier when his heart stopped beating. Just like that.  I'm thinking it's a rule of thumb not to crack wise about your impending multiple "code blue"(s) unless you want God to smite you with something that requires the doctor to shout "CLEAR!" before applying cold gel and some paddles.

9) Give your youngest brother-in-law a temporary "pass" for behaving like one of the biggest assholes in the entire hospital, including any you could stumble over on the proctology floor. And it's not just because his father is ill. He elected to castigate me for referring to our 10 and 12 year old niece and nephew as young kids. SRSLY, dude?  He wanted to go to the mat with me over those two words. I'm not even sure what his real issue was, but he spent the rest of the afternoon passive-aggressively saying and doing crappy spoiled baby things (including forcing me to step over his unmoving feet and legs when they were in the way and everyone else was moving theirs so that I could go use the bathroom). Trust me when I tell you that it has taken everything in me not to grab him by the lapels and "schrisper" (scream/whisper) "I know way too much about you for you to think you can get the upper hand here and now, Mayor McCheese. Don't make your personal life failures all about me." In the words of Will Smith, "Don't start somethin' and it won't BE nothin'". Also? Take off those sad bastard/sagging emo skater pants, busted Teva sandals and start dressing like a MAN for a change.

10) Realize anew that outside this building we're all moms and dads, lawyers and shop owners, gardeners, and baseball players, musicians and writers. Inside this building? We're bones and blood and flesh and terribly, terribly vulnerable. I remain profoundly grateful for the fact that there are people here who know how to attend to our physical human frailties. The man 20 feet away from me has a hideously annoying ringtone and his voice is far too loud. His assembled family includes young children who are too young to go into the ICU and serve no real purpose in the waiting area (just my opinion) but to create havoc and get bored. But I'm going to give him a pass too. He's waiting on the same kind of news that we are. Still hoping God gives my father-in-law the same consideration.

Guess What? Chicken Butt : Random Thoughts on the Road Ahead

"Teachers go back on the 20th and classes start one week later."

 I wish I had a dollar for every time I've uttered that last phrase lately. Like a lobotomized robot who's been force-fed Prozac (which would take some doing because you'd have to be really strong to pry apart its can-opener jaws, but who cares because this post is not about robots --surprise!)--it's become my doomsday mantra. An dutiful air-raid siren of words that I repeat with emotionless facility every time someone asks. There's bad feeling aplenty, as one might imagine, but it's best not to expend the energy crying over it now. I'll need it all later in order to resist going on a shooting spree after being auditorily claw-hammered by a parent's inability to speak using simple subject/verb agreement and an inside voice.  Some of whom will likely show up to Meet The Teacher Night looking like a first round draft pick for the Gary Busey/Snookie Lovechild Olympics. Classes haven't started yet, but my brain is already in pieces and because of that, this post is going to unfold similarly.

1) Pardon my food baby and cankles. In other words,  I did not succeed in my attempts to lose the 10-12 pounds necessary to exit the self-imposed cone of shame I've forced on myself of late. It appears as though I'm going to return to school/work looking like I've spent the summer living in one of those tragic veal-inspiring pens for young cows while enjoying a diet rich in diabetic-flavored cupcakes, pork cracklins' and Big Red. I'm sorry, pants. I've failed you once again.

2) I'm wondering if it's too late for the school district to restructure my contract to include pauses in the day for naps. Half the walkie-talkies (used for emergency communication) in our building are broken and since we serve a population of children whose unchecked aggression is only encouraged by their low expectation-having families, I would also like to request some form of portable self-defense. Complimentary packs of Chinese throwing stars or maybe a blow-dart gun loaded with napalm. Otherwise, I'll be forced into fashioning the arm of my big paper-cutter into a scimitar. Welcome to Thunderdome. Confront at your own risk.

3) If I thought it might work I would postpone the inevitability of summer's end by scheduling surgery where I donated one of my wine-soaked kidneys to anyone would would take it. But for reasons made evident in the description of said kidney, I've been advised against it.

4) In other health-related news? Welcome to Hot Flash City. I'm the mayor.

5) The youngest son leaves for college tomorrow. We're swimming in a gravy boat of sad around here and as I write, the sky is crying too. If I wasn't writing this anonymously, I'd post a picture of him here. I miss the days when I could do that.

6) I have to add that our district has decided to adopt a "get tough" policy, but it's not about bullying. Or cheating. Not on drug/alcohol possession, weapons, or student discipline or even parental accountability. Nope. The scourge currently dragging our public schools down to a third world status is..... the teacher dress code. Of course! Forcing teachers back into neckties and panty hose is going to erase that achievement gap in record time! By all means allow the female students to wear neon bikini tops instead of bras underneath cheap cotton uniform shirts and-- for the love of God-- PLEASE don't stop a mom from visiting at lunch wearing broke-ass house slippers, see-through Dora the Explorer pajama pants and a bedazzled shirt that says "BEER ME!" Instead? Taking away my ability to wear jeans one extra day each month is somehow going to turn the "lame and halt" into National Merit Finalists. Our delusional district actually believes that parents and students look to us as models of behavior, dress and speech and that --one day--it will pay off. I've got news. I could show up wearing a floor length nun's habit and conversing like some Masterpiece Theater actor and nothing is going to change. It's like expecting to fly coach but wearing your church clothes to the airport in the hopes that you'll get bumped to first class. It never happens. Ditto for the children of parents who think that Amazon.com is a place you can get to by car.

7) Just thinking about #2 and #6 makes me crazy. Not authentically crazy like the type that causes you to drive your car to the store naked (Poor Randy Travis!), or in a diaper (Poor astronaut!) or where you claim that there's a tumor made of meatloaf in your brain and it sings old Glen Campbell songs to you when you're trying to sleep. But more like the gently daffy double rainbow type of non-dangerous imbalance where you cry a lot every time you push your cart past the grocery store's school supply aisle, order alarming quantities of unicorn figurines and Marie Osmond dolls from the Home Shopping Network and then arrange them into families....or make homemade sno-cones from Thera-flu and that excess frost scraped off of a bag of frozen okra. Yeah. That kind of crazy.

8) I'm so excited about the fall television lineup that I've marked the season premieres on the calendar typically reserved for PTA meetings and pediatric appointments. It's sad because it's true.

9) Despite all of the above, I've spent $500 of my own money to buy school supplies for my classroom.  That's also sad because it's true, but it probably means that I'm ready to try again. Pray that I can conduct myself with dignity and respect, no matter what happens. And that whenever you hear a mutual exchange of gunfire in the vicinity, it won't be me. Probably.

Eleven

I WANT TO BE HERE!!!!

At the risk of revealing my exact location to those individuals who might turn around and show this blog to my employer, I'll just say that some people in the general region where I reside might refer to this particular moment in my life as "nut cutting time".  Others with more delicate sensibilities would call it "The Eleventh Hour". To me the next eleven days more accurately resemble a sad and panicked ON ramp into nine months of H-E double Hockey Sticks. That's right. It's time to go back to school. I could be wrong, but I'm using last year as my predictor and since I'm looping up with this same set of inmates--from 4th to 5th grade--I feel safe in the assumption that there is little I can do to escape all the crazy that's going to come raining down on me in Biblical proportions.

I have a lot to do in the short amount of free time I have left: 1) Finish Stephen King's "11/22/63",  2) clean out my closet,  3) lose 10 pounds, 4) move the youngest son into his new college home and 5) learn how to make popsicles out of Robitussin for those especially frustrating work days when simply nothing seems to be going as planned and the prospect of taking an all expense paid vacation to the Manson Family Compound seems like a viable alternative.

Like many other teachers, I've spent the last couple of weeks getting caught up on self-maintenance so that it doesn't cost me a sick day later on when I'm not so much sick as I am parked in a waiting room with bad wallpaper and raggedy issues of Highlights and Consumer Reports. So yesterday I drove myself and a questionable looking mole to the dermatologist where the traditional wait time is usually so lengthy that whatever skin infirmity you think you might have has for sure already morphed into full blown melanoma by the time you actually see the doctor. Upon reading that last sentence I feel I need to clarify that I had a mole growing on my arm that I was concerned about. I did not provide automotive transport for a strange looking mammal belted into the seat next to me. Because that would be weird. Moles don't go to the dermatologist.

                                                  MOLE: NO   MONKEY: YES

My friend Mrs. G recently related a tale about her great-uncle and his Capuchin monkey named Judy. I insist you click over and read it --right after you read this. Anyway, her tale brought to mind my own monkey story. Everyone should have a monkey story. I'm completely serious.  Good stories usually have a beginning, middle and an end. This one? Does not. Because of all the parts where I would typically write pertinent information--but instead am forced to write I DON'T KNOW due to crucial facts that I lack. Trust me--there are more of those spots than there should be. Anyway, here goes.

When I was little I had a much-older-than-me (13 years) cousin who was either drafted or elected to go to Vietnam. I offer both scenarios because....I DON'T KNOW which is true because I was a little kid.
Anyway, when this cousin (I'll call him Adam) came back he had a Silver Star and all kinds of fascinating half-stories about mysterious bath houses where women were paid dollar bills to walk on your back in their bare feet which my grandmother--who didn't even like it when you played cards in her house because of possible gambling--didn't like. I say half-stories because that's about all my sister and I were able to hear before my grandmother hushed him up. Insert another I DON'T KNOW here since I never heard what else he did there. 

Anyway, one day Adam came by with what he said was a "gift" for my grandfather. Later, I learned that--aside from the normal kind of present which comes wrapped and can mostly be counted on to smell good--receiving a gift from your grandson who is still not quite the same person after Vietnam can really mean that he needs to park his squirrel monkey at your house for awhile. The same squirrel monkey that seemed so cute and a really, really good idea to buy at the time but which now makes an unholy mess and mostly just smells bad. Oh yes--and he bites when you pick him up. 

"Happy Birthday, Pops! His name is Hambone.  Say, where do you keep your band-aids?"

My sister and I already loved visiting our grandparents, but they just had one television which was frequently tuned to the news or Lawrence Welk and most forms of entertainment were exhausted pretty quickly there, so you can imagine the unbridled excitement we felt over the prospect of a monkey playmate right there in the house. However, our dreams of dressing Hambone in baby clothes and cunning hats, carrying him on our shoulders or teaching him to eat with a fork were dashed when we realized that Hambone was going to be the kind of pet you mostly just looked at due to his predilection for grabbing your nearest appendage--usually a finger-- with his tiny monkey hands and sinking his needle-like teeth into them.

Sure, it was entertaining to watch him eat with his fascinating fingers or imagine what he was thinking as he watched us with his glittery black eyes. His expressions were inscrutable which made it tempting to put small items close enough to the chicken wire in the hopes that he would take whatever it was and turn it over and study it the way a human would do. Things got really exciting when it was time to clean out his cage because Hambone had to be removed so that fresh shavings and newspaper could be spread on the bottom of the cage and the old poopy liner carried out --and hopefully-- burned. This required the use of heavy falconer's gloves for the person holding him. If all went well, he would sit quietly on the curtain rod and not choose that moment to release the contents of his digestive tract nor resist the attempts to put him back into what must have been his own personal Hanoi Hilton when the time came.

Both my grandparents were scrupulously clean people, but my grandmother was more vocal about her simmering hatred for Hambone and--truth be told--his entertainment value didn't play out nearly as well as we children had thought. Also? The smell. I won't camp too long on the description, but if you can imagine a baby's fully loaded diaper dipped in a mixture of hot mayonnaise, pencil shavings and old celery, you'll have an idea of what an assault the monkey's presence had become when it came to our olfactory sensibilities. Sorry for over sharing. The standard for cleanliness was also at stake and people were running out of fingers. This--we came to understand--wasn't going to end well.

One day we came to visit and Hambone was no longer in residence. The enameled table which normally held his cage now featured a doily and a non-ironic bowl of bananas which had no connection to the departed guest. Or so they said. 

There were vague explanations about where Hambone had gone, though I'm almost positive that no foul play was involved, but where exactly had he gone? I DON'T KNOW. The End.

See? I told you the ending was inadequate.

Anyway, I'm going to try to be positive about the school year despite my feelings regarding the dreadful way the last one unfolded. It may require starting every morning by playing "Eye of the Tiger" on the classroom boom box and possibly something involving a starter pistol.

And --of course-- alcohol popsicles.