"You There, With The Mohawk!" (on forgetting my kids' names)

 Erma Bombeck was the nation’s most beloved suburban humorist when I was growing up.  Today I still love her work, and channel Erma in the same way that author Julie Powell channeled Julia Child, (just without the Ephron screenplay).

   One of my favorite Erma-isms comes up frequently at our house: someone scavenges the fridge for a snack and comes across a leftover that seems to be going bad.  JUST as they try to toss it in the garbage, I throw my body between the trash and the leftover shouting, “It’s not READY to be thrown away!” Erma and I are all about the leftover... with hope.

  My actual life is full of not-ready-to-be-thrown-aways.  And, yes, I do aspire to become a feature on an episode of Hoarders, but that’s not what I mean. 

   I am talking about my brain.  

   It seems to be going bad, but it’s not ready to be thrown away.

   

  Fortunately, I’ve reached the age where I can blame estrogen loss for losing track of keys, names, entire days, my train-of-thought, an actual train-ticket. Because back in the day, when my word-retrieval issues first started, people suspected crack-abuse.

  

  In winter of ’94, I was enrolled in several secondary ed courses at a nearby college. One early morning, I drew upon my novice skills as a future English teacher, and impressed my son and his friends with my linguistic prowess.

   “Nick,” I said cleverly, as that is his name. “Aren’t you guys cold at the bus stop without one of those … um--”

  “What, Mom?  We gotta go.”
   “You know. The warm wraps that--”

   “You mean a scarf?”

   “Not that. One of those … you know!”

   “Gloves, Mother?”
   “No. Those…coats for your head.”

   “You mean, a ‘hat’?”

   “YES! That’s it! A HAT!”

   As their little naked heads bobbed toward the bus, one of the tots doused his cigarette sniffing, “How come we never hear about the parties your Mom goes to?”

   I couldn’t understand it.  English was not my second language.  It was something for which I’d acquire a license to teach in another year. Yet language at the most crucial times escaped me.  Never anything tricky like anthropomorphic.  Or cellulite.  I forgot words like plow.

   “Look out for that – wide thing – pushes…white, cold … stuff.”

   “Are you referring to the plow we passed a mile ago with a football field between us?” queried the Master’s Degree-d Science Wiz actually driving the car.

     “Oh.  Plow. Missed it.  Good.”

     It’s fortunate I was training to be an English teacher and not a transplant specialist:

  

“. . . with seconds to go before shutting down the respirator, the fate of vital organs hanging in the balance, Dr. Given is passed the Tolstoy Articulating Retractor with which she … retracts articles.  She tracts.  She retracts, until the respirator sputters to a halt.  The only audible sound is that of… retracted things: a viscous surgical symphony playing to the petulant tick of time.

   “Okay, we’re ready,” says. Dr. Given.  “Hand me that … oh you know, that breathing thing. No, fool! Not beating.  That thing only pumps. What?? Ah yes, the LUNG, thank you, nurse.  Now did everybody get that? Alrighty, then, let’s –oops!  

    “Well, I hope you’re all happy.  Now the patient is …like, uh -- he’s—“

    And it’s a darned good thing my husband and I pored, for months, during each of four pregnancies, over Baby Name Encyclopedias so I could knowledgeably call each offspring ‘Yo’ at dinnertime.

   

   “Yo! Dudes. Come eat.  You, there, with the faux-hawk – grab your brother.”

   “Which one?”

   “Six-one, dark hair.”

   “Nick?”
   “That’s him. And call Zach.”

   “I’m Zach. You want Jake.”

   “Him, too.”

   “Should I get Abigail?”
   “Huh?”

   “You gave birth to her in 1990.”

   “I was there so don’t be fresh.  And feed Frank.”

    “Mom, you had her put to sleep.  The NEW cat answers to ‘Selina’.”

    “And YOU can answer to Wise Guy so just march to your room   --young man.”

    “Forgot my name, huh?”

     “—Maybe.”

     “It’s Zach, but I’ll go anyway.  Can I have pizza in my room?”

    “Pizza?”

     “Round cheesy food that your kids – and I’m one – eat for dinner.”

    “Dinner?  Right. Hey, call the rest of the kids, would you? It’s time to eat.”

  

   While they ate, the kids (Nicholas, Jacob, Zachary and Abigail) voted to forbid me to seek further advanced degrees. They said any new knowledge would “p-l-o-w” away even more reference data about them, and I’d be reduced to calling their names in simple code by tapping a rubber spoon against a drool-cup.

   “You know, Mom,” the one with the braces pouted.  “We never forget your name.”

   “Duh!” I said. “You all call me, ‘Mom’. And I’ve seen your Emergency Contact cards at school.  You list my first name as ‘Mrs.’, my middle as ‘J’ – and, sweetie, I haven’t been 27 since the year you were born, but thanks --

   “Okay, listen up! ‘Mom’ is not my given name, although Given is my surname, not my maiden, which was Smith.”

   “What?”

   I didn’t graduate summa cum brilliant from my English Teacher program for nothing! I graduated for – umm …gads.  Let’s see … Perhaps the income for a copy of Luminosity and some Hormone Replacement Therapy.

  Or simply the right to have finally ‘caught up’ to my “early neural maturity.” Ol' what's-her-name Bombeck would have totally agreed.

   

Ban Childproof Lighters and Restore Democracy

For my niece A.P.S. who is Smoke-Free for one week today, which through NO coincidence is as long as this blog existed -- such is the Power Of The Blog . . .

Long ago, I decided to give up smoking.  Oh, sure, it was a glamorous habit, bringing me endless hours of joy through social ostracism and fear of death.  But the one health risk I could no longer ignore – one afflicting millions across the nation – was damaged texting-calluses from operating childproof lighters.

Did you notice that texting came into fashion around the same time restaurants, federal buildings, and the Actual Outdoors  banned public smoking?

 I feel CERTAIN these events are linked:  If smokers fruitlessly flicked away at flame-free lighters, the damage to texting-thumbs would collapse the cell phone industry. (I’m no conspiracy theorist: but does the cell phone industry NOT thrive today??) 

Meanwhile, thousands of ex-smokers’ homes now boast Nostalgia Bowls brimming with childproof lighters…  just itching to be awarded as door prizes at the next religious holiday-gathering or children’s birthday party.

Do you recall how this all began?  It was the year that clerks at convenience stores stopped handing out free matches with cigarette purchases.  The public was told this was done as a safety precaution, under the guise that convenience stores sell gasoline, and that matches and gasoline combust.

Actually, it was a campaign to raise state revenue by making people PAY for matches, which people started DOING. 

That’s when they took away the matches and made people pay for lighters.

So successful was this effort, they took away the flammable kind that folks paid money for, and came up with a lighter that could not produce flame. (The original non-flaming lighter was marketed as a novelty item at Newbury Comics, next to candles that don’t blow out.)

Pharmacies soon got hold of them and sold them to parents as a means to encourage their teenagers to quit smoking.  HMOs gave them away at smoking cessation clinics.

Before we knew it, they appeared in toy stores so parents could give them to their three-year-olds (who are born knowing how to ignite them) to bolster their self -esteem. (Back then self-esteem was a federally-funded project Democrats worked on feverishly until they proved it should be included in public education.  Soon, federal educational grants included a year’s supply of childproof lighters.)

But still, the purchase of childproof versus lighters small children weren’t interested in was left to the consumer.

That’s when the Republican Congress, bored with cutting federal funding to the arts, decided to ban ignitable lighters.

Today Americans have no choice.  Our country’s fourteen remaining smokers are being forced to bolster children’s self-esteems whether they want to or not.

Everywhere you turn, you’ll find self-esteems being bolstered left and right, mostly right, and it’s producing a future generation of smarmy, self-righteous Republicans.

This raises an important question for 2016.   Without two different parties, won’t elections suck?

I say, if this great nation is going to endure, by GOD we’ve got to start selling tiny ice picks to disarm that safety switch.

And GET those childproof lighters -- AND those children -- out of public schools. If adults wanted to be made to look stupid by chubby, overachieving school children, we wouldn’t stop smoking in the first place. 

Anxiety? Depression?? Or a Bad-Day-Cluster?

   After my spousal unit’s diagnosis with myeloma, it was data that kept our family sane. I addicted myself to the Myeloma Beacon website and their daily, newsy updates about breakthroughs and clinical trials. It was the right thing to do:  myeloma is one of only a few diseases where successful trials lead rapidly to change in treatment protocols.  I actually said to my spouse the other day, “If only you were diagnosed YESTERDAY instead of WAY BACK IN AUGUST.”

   The first time I realized how important information is to one’s mental health… was when I hypochondriacally diagnosed myself as clinically depressed. Turns out I was having a series of bad days:  my four kids ranged in ages from ten to eight months at the time, and most of them were contagiously vomiting on each other. I was simply experiencing a stretch of bad days. WHAT A RELIEF! 

   I love the theory about ‘good versus bad days.’ On ‘good days’ your very own angel makes the sun shine relentlessly just to catch your blonde highlights.  Your bank teller remembers to wear her patch making her SO excited to see you, she notices your highlights and gives you a lollipop the color of the happily shining sun.  You believe that life is good.

   Then there’s the super-ball rubber-check day, the “return of your favorite cold sore” day, a Jehovah’s Witness FINDS you day.

   On Bad Days, even Burger King is out to get you.

   “Sorry.  We’re out of beef.”

   But Stephen Hawking would tell you that good and bad days are scientifically impossible. His computer would say, “From the perspective of dimension-splicing and protonic time-reversal, ‘days’ as we know them do not exist.  They are mythical units of measurement created by man to explain why we wake up one day looking old.  ‘Ahh,’ we say.  ‘The Earth-Sun Thing has happened many times.  Enough to expose my face to radiation so I am wrinkled enough to die.’”

   But Stephen KING would tell you Good and Bad Days are no myth. They are made of bad spirits that led to reality TV.  You can actually see them at work in older movies like Carrie or Backdraft. (In these films, Kurt Russell and Sissy Spacek are ostracized by spouses or cheerleaders, Kurt’s budget is cut, Sissy’s Mom won’t buy tampons, then they both die, finally, blazingly, of thrilling special effects.)

   Some people believe that Good and Bad Days exist for a purpose:  that they are karma’s way of making humans experience polarization.  Like a polar windstorm juxtaposed by a tropical drought -- to prove that misery would get even more boring than the curse of perpetual bliss.  So karma alternates them.  That we may enjoy each to the fullest.

   Sometimes people try to enjoy Good and Bad Days at the same time.  Karma intends this to entertain psychologists, so they get to use the term “rationalization.”   

   “It is GOOD I am working 85 hours per week.  Now I earn enough money to pay a therapist so I can learn to balance my time.”

   Occasionally, Good and Bad Days marry to create such balance, we can’t tell the difference.  Like when our dog is struck dead by lightning, but we win $3,000 on a scratch ticket.  Really.  What do we feel then?

  And when a string of ‘bad days’ cluster up on you insidiously, you, too, might diagnose yourself as “depressed.”  But the only way to know the difference … is information:

   See if you can tell in the following scenarios whether Julia is having a Bad Day, or is simply “Depressed.”

   Scenario One:

   Julia’s very last “retro” glass bottle of Pepsi has a cap that refuses to twist off.  Her church key is broken, her corkscrew is lost, so Julia uses the edge of a mahogany table to lift the cap, but instead lifts off the bottle neck causing a volcanic spray of glass and soda to erupt on a carpet she just had cleaned.  Julia says, “Oh shit.”

   Depression?  Or just a Bad Day?

   Scenario Two:

   Julia goes to the refrigerator for a Pepsi only to discover there is just one left.  Julia screams, “Why ME?” then impales the Retro bottleneck into her chest and falls into the refrigerator to bleed until EMTs arrive.

   A Bad Day? Or Depression?

   If both situations overwhelm you to the point where you have to lie down, you are depressed. If Scenario Two depresses you, you are having a Bad Day.  If Scenario One makes you giggle with self-recognition, you need to put your corkscrews back where they belong. And anyone having a Good Day is having too much fun to read this so I hope my point is clear.

   There are good days, there are bad days, depression is a mythical unit of measurement created by Stephen King, and all of us should only do banking with tellers who wear Xanax patches.

   Truly, life is good.
  

Seratonin-Endorphin RUSH from Humor Blogs, GREAT FOR MYELOMA

I’ve been WAITING for the right opportunity to empower this blog to cure cancer – and here it is, straight from David Freudberg’s public radio show, Humankind:  "I think [laughter] is a tool, like swimming or meditating, that helps you live, that keeps you buoyant, that keeps you afloat, that gives you mirth, that's like a life preserver in a sea of difficulty. But it can't be instead of. I mean, I've cried so much in the last couple of years and that's been so necessary."

-- Marion Grodin, comedian and cancer survivor   

Indeed. By Thanksgiving week, I had become so obsessed researching clinical trials for multiple myeloma – a blood plasma cancer my spouse was diagnosed with August, 2012 - that one of my best friends suggested I revisit humor-writing, to re-orient myself (so I’d remember to buy a turkey and cook it Thursday).

This strategy worked. (I even remembered our kids were coming in from various parts of the world, so I washed sheets and comforters.)

This is my second opportunity to become a researcher and caregiver for an immediate family member diagnosed with cancer: my mother survived a rare but treatable form of acute leukemia, only to contract end-stage ovarian cancer and succumb a couple years later.  I guess this is my third rodeo. But each has been very unique, very special.

There are myriad blogs today for cancer survivors of all diagnoses: for the newly diagnosed, for their families, for veteran survivors and clinical trials.

The only reason I would add mine to the global array is that it uniquely does not focus on, say, cancer-markers plummeting after the third of eight cycles of novel drug therapy.  It COULD.  But it is not a myeloma blog – or any of the sort that so elegantly share journeys with and triumphs over malignant disorders. There are beautiful ones out there: the Myeloma Beacon is a wonderful website; there are hundreds of blogs:  I follow Pat Killingsworth and Nick van Dyke. 

But THIS? It started as a place for me to re-balance and re-ground. Sure, to remember Thanksgiving, but also to re-charge sufficiently to return to the work of getting this family hitchhiker under my spell. I’m a Myeloma Wrangler.

That said, though, if David Fruedberg’s public radio show Humankind devoted part of its series to treating cancer in large part with humor!? Then this blog IS a part of that purpose. To that end, I now offer today’s gut-splitting laugh-fest, “Juliet The Cat Died Tragically Yesterday Morning” … OR …“JTCDTYM”

When my spouse discovered Juliet Saturday, we were reminded of something my Mom used to say to me all the time:  “You can’t have anything nice.”

Our cat Juliet was nice. 

She was the black-and-white replacement for Katie-Ophelia, who’d died in the same tragic manner. (We also had cats in living color, but they were named things like Morris and Tiger, so they died of natural causes.)  It’s true: for Juliet and Katie-Ophelia, they died of Shakespearean names.

Also, the street we live on.

It’s deceptively rural.

Our house is located RIGHT at the spot where the road begins to ascend a bit upward -- at Summit-Ski-Style Grades --  maybe 75% … toward a gorgeous lake. It is precisely at our house that folks go from 20 MPH to 45 in nanoseconds. 

We’ve lost … oh, as of Juliet... four cats this way over a quarter century. And although my spouse would disagree, I say the treatment for Death-By- Shakespeare-and-Cars is a brand new kitten. 

. . . and the only way to get one of these is the Miracle Of Birth, like the one I experienced many Junes ago, during the zenith of the full moon: the perfect time for public schools to release my four kids for summer . . .

I was on the sofa half-dreaming, half-listening to the morning news, when vague kid-conversation jostled me from sleep.

 “It looks like she’s smiling.”

“She WAS out for four nights.”

“She’s gotta be pregnant.”

“Her mammals are huge!”

“They’re not mammals, you moron.”

“Whatever. They’re huge.”

“Let’s tell Mom.”

“Dude. No way.  It’s summer vacation.  We wanna LIVE.”

  I considered this exchange for five seconds before rolling over, vowing to never again partake of Stephen King AND clam dip before bed.

  Meanwhile, Precious The Cat, within seconds of her diagnosis, began to inflate until she resembled a pelted mylar balloon held down by four clawed stump-ettes.

   The children danced gaily around Precious during her confinement, cooing the words Big Mama, patting her great belly, pouring her great saucers of milk, and fanning her greatness during heat waves.

   “Trollop!” I said to her each day, which made her purr and grow still greater.

   Bitterly, I phoned the friend who gave us an originally un-pregnant Precious The Kitten to ask, “How much greater can a pregnant thing GET?”

 “She’ll have them when it looks like she’s going to explode.”

   This news entertained the children.

“Better stand back, Mom.  Looks like she’s gonna blow.”

“Three seconds to critical mass!”

“Quick!  To the shelter!”

   On a doleful July evening at the start of another full moon, a small voice cried out, “Mom, her water broke!”

   I didn’t know cats had water.

   Drawing on my skills as a trained English teacher, I did what any rational person would do in a birthing crisis.  I called three girlfriends and went out for hot fudge sundaes (At Roland’s Pink Cone on Route 16!) 

   On my way out the door, I shouted, “Stick Precious inside Daddy’s suitcase!” and fled.

   Having done exhaustive research on feline obstetrics, I knew Precious’ first litter would be small and she wouldn’t deliver for at least three hours.  But I called home anyway when I got to Roland’s Cone.

   My 16 year old answered the phone.

   “Yo, you’ve reached Hell House.”

   “Nick?  It’s Mom. Any sign of—“

   “Seven. We have seven wet, black kittens and there are more where they came from.”

   “That’s impossible, I’ve hardly been gone seven minutes.”

   “She’s feeding them all now.”

   “Cut it out, Nick, or put your brother on the phone.”
   “It’s true!  They’re deaf, they’re blind, they look like rats, they—“

   “Get Jacob.”

   “Mom? Hi!  Did you know that kittens are born with their amniotic sacs intact?  The mother chews off their umbilical cords and then—“

   “I have to go, Jacob.  I have a business meeting.”

   “Wanna hear em ‘mew’ cuz I can stretch the phone cord and—“

    *click*

   One girlfriend fairly dropped her mocha nut when she learned I’d just had kittens.  “Get me the biggest male you have.  I need a Killer Guard Cat.”

   In fact, that night at the Great Cone, I unloaded two more kittens on other dairy-addicts.  Fortunately, Precious stopped at seven kittens, as I had run out of co-dependents.

   I soon learned that our quiet town is the quintessence of “community.” Before the paint dried on a FREE KITTENS sign the kids duct-taped to a tire swing, two would-be pet owners perused the four kittens still unclaimed.

   But Nature giveth … and She taketh away.  Two of the original seven, sadly, did not survive.  (Precious The Mutant only came with five 'mammals.')

   By the time all five healthy, remaining kittens were weaned, each was spoken for and would be adopted into loving homes. 

   The more I think about THIS blessed event, the more I must revisit the concept of “miracle.”  

   And even “replacement kittens.” 

   I’m thinkin' … dog.

  

Using My Training in 'English' To Comp Out Bills

   It takes less time to get pregnant and deliver the baby than it does for car transmissions to be rebuilt.  By the time I got my car back, my future grandkids outgrew their car seats.

   *Note: I am not talking about the eons it took for the work to be done.  I am referring to the day I picked up my vehicle.

   Peter, my short transmission man, looked up at me soulfully and apologized for the ski-season that I was car-less.  Then he handed me the bill.

   I did not sense that Peter received much training in consumer relations.  Or in women who know Tae Kwon Do.  And until I saw my bill, I had not sensed that my vocabulary contained so many alternatives for my transmission man’s first name.  Of course, I am an English teacher.

   Peter was surprised that I did not happily relinquish all of my male offspring, my diamond, and the deed to our house as a down payment on this bill.  In fact, he seemed surprised I had not anticipated the infinite range a transmission bill can encompass.

   “You must recognize,” Peter insisted, “all of the man hours it takes to rebuild a transmission.  Not to mention all the parts.  There are hundreds and thousands of parts.  There are rings, gaskets, dozens of separate clutches with their own modulating flow valves and agitation torque compressors.  There are 100 bands, 12 converters, 60 barking seals – you look pale.  Would you like a donut?”

   Peter decided it would be helpful if I were permitted to watch a broken transmission being disassembled before my eyes – that I may gaze upon ten thousand parts, smell the burnt clutches, fathom the complexity of unmodulating a single compressed torque.

   “I’ll take that donut now.”

   “Well, just a second.  Come take a look at this.  You see this smoking seal?”

   “Look, I wouldn’t recognize a drinking walrus.  I want to go home, Dick.”

   “It’s Peter.”

   “Please give me my keys and my donut.”

   “But you haven’t paid your bill and I want you to feel comfortable about the work we’ve done for you.”

   “Just so I’ll pay my bill?  Will I get my donut if I pay my bill, Richard?”

   “It’s Peter and I am shocked that you think I am interested only in your money. I want you to be happy.  We here at Speedy Shifts are committed to your happiness.  Happy customers make us happy and—”

   Peter was relentless. He got out a new Maserati gasket and held it next to a Mitsubishi O-Ring explaining how much more expensive they were than my transmission parts.

   Then he brought me invoices.  Exactly 896 of them from last week alone, for satisfied customers who understood the transmission business… enough to pay their bills without trying to die from boredom and hunger… next to a floor display of Japanese bi-valves (which looked especially delicious).

   As I licked the filling from an empty donut box, Peter was droning on about Hyperbaric Pressure and an Extended Warranty.

   Well.  I’d had enough of his linguistics.

   I tossed that box aside and met Peter’s gaze.  “Peter.  I’ll see your Hyperbaric Pressure AND the Extended Warranty and I’ll raise you TWO Hyperbole Climactic Tension Devices and an Extended METAPHOR.”

  Peter smiled.  “Who are you?”

   “Why, no one, Peter.  Just a transmission consumer.”

   “Sure you are.”  His eyes held mine for several seconds.  Then he sighed.  “Okay, Carolyn.  May I call you that?   How about we credit your account the first 500 bucks?  Call it ‘professional courtesy.’  Then I’ll take you to the International Pancake House and buy you a real breakfast.”

   “Quickly, Peter.  Hand me my keys.  I’ll road-test us there at once.”

    You gotta know how to talk to these guys.

   

Space: The Final Frontier

   Until I became chronically under-employed by struggling alternative education sites, we used to replace our vehicles every three or four years. 

    But this current economic downturn is lasting so long, I’m going to have to get cozy with our 10-year old vehicles – or live in the past.

    I choose the latter.

    I think my favorite car-upgrade was the time we got our first van.  Usually, the trade-in process was a solemn event marked by ritual weeping and speeches.  “Goodbye, Fiat Spider! I’ll always remember my first trimester when I threw up in your console.”

   But the year we got The Van, my family threw up their hands and wept with joy, then marched to the old car to spit on it.

   For nearly half-a-decade, I had tamped all six of us into a five-passenger compact, The Battlestar Asphyxia.  It was a four-year Close Encounter with random odors, tandem seatbelts, and the time I was arrested for driving extra kids to school. (The police thought we were mooning them, but there was just no space to sit.)

   We traded The Asphyxia in for a van and never looked back.  Just hoisted our selves aboard the new, gluttonous freighter, dancing with Wanderlust and listening for an echo from our feet.

   It was overcast the day we launched The Van.  After fastening all six of us into our very own restraints, I set us adrift with the pedal…I in the driver’s seat, Dad in the back, the babe in the front who prepared for her nap.  The boys – cresting moons out one spacious window – gave a luster of mid-day to compacts below.

   Suddenly, we heard the prancing and pawing of rain on the roof.

   My hands blindly traversed Mission Control to find a windshield wiper switch, activating cruise control, the high beams, my left directional, smooth jazz, and finally, popping the hood.

   We pulled over to consult the manual.

   Twenty pages later, the wipers were clearing my view with a soothing rhythm that flowed with smooth jazz and we were on our way.

   What a jolt I got when I checked my side mirror.  Some Bozo was right on my rear fender, gaining with impossible speed.  I tried to shout out the window but I couldn’t roll it down, and I was afraid to beep the horn lest I ignite the airbag.  So I shouted to myself, “What kind of asshole would drive so CLOSE!?”

   Six-year-old Zachary looked behind to determine what kind and replied, “It’s not an asshole, Mommy, it’s the back end of our VAN!”

   The baby chose that moment for a Houdini Car Restraint Escape where she deflates and slips to the floor like a noodle.  But the Van’s Revolutionized Harness System would not permit a safety breach.

   It locked at her chin like a noose.

   I screamed and leaned to where she WOULD be in a Compact, but undershot by half-a-yard, toppling face-first into the abyss between our seats. 

   The Van veered to the right.

   My husband made several feckless attempts to unfasten himself – confused by too many buckles – and accidentally released the six-year-old.

   He might have released a ballistic missile.

   Zach vaulted four rows of seats from rear to front, flipping like a Ninja and whooping a War Cry, ‘til he dropped before his sister, whose bulging face testified to oxygen’s triumph over man.

   By now I’d negotiated the climb from floor mat to my seat where I marshaled The Van into a controlled wheelie. 

   360 degrees later, we were pointed in the right direction, listing in breakdown mud.

   Zachary, with the strength of an addict on crack or raw plutonium, flattened the baby’s face with his fists to squeeze it past the restraint.

   His technique evinced in me odd seizure symptoms where I twitched and gurgled in horror.  But he did it.  The baby wriggled free like released aquatic life, then shot under the dashboard to chew wires.

   By then, the rest of the family chewed through their own restraints to join the tangle up front.

   As we huddled together, breathless from each other’s exhale, it was The Battlestar all over and we finally felt safe.

   Space – and more of it – is not always the final frontier.

  

Latin is Intense -- and other linguistic folly

   Intensity has gotten a bad rap.  I for one believe this is due to the Latin origins of the word. The Global Home-Book of Etymology defines ‘intense’ as: 

            the state of ‘tense’ that  you are ‘in’ – as in ancient Sumeria when

           Ronclad the Great entombed his daughter in gold to punish her for

           her beauty. (It distracted Ronclad’s warriors.)  Ronclad said to

           her, ‘Vrap Molkik Stempkins Bort!” which means, “I cast you unto

           a golden tomb,” which, by 112 AD, came to mean, “inside tension.”

           Latin: tensorium intesticles: to be bound within that which you

           may never escape.  See Egyptian Mummification, Volume 4.

   By the 21^st Century, the word had evolved to mean “productive” and “industrious” (which is why Latin and etymology remain under-enrolled at institutions of higher tuition).

   Indeed, modern intense people from industrialized nations often become inventors or excruciatingly rich. They are driven to resolve the un-resolvable, to get to the bottom of everything, to “find a better way.”

   In under-developed countries, they squat over straw mats for days picking mites from hooves of llamas.

   People who are not intense are lazy.  That sounds intense to say, but it can be illustrated. 

   Take, for instance, unemployment.  An intense person will be incensed by losing her job.  Unemployment is one of the worst states of tension one can be bound within.  It causes poverty, world hunger, pedestrians, street mimes, telemarketing, impotence and death.

   Beyond that, intense people cannot stand having nothing to do. They will email –within an hour of receiving their pink slip – 2,000 resumes to unsuspecting employers worldwide and they will land a job by sundown.  It doesn’t matter what the job is, and when the glamour of ferret-skinning or selling blood to the Red Cross fades, more intense employment will be found.  Like blending energy-smoothies for yoga students you teach in your unfinished basement.

   Jobless people who aren’t intense amaze intense folks by not dying. They sorta hang around reading a lot, picking at bills and watching movies.  For a lark, they circle want ads then snail-mail typo-infested resumes to no one in particular … and when the spirit moves them, they land a job.  Like initiating hostile takeovers on helpless industrial corporations.

   People who are not intense look at intense people and sniff, “You should RELAX!” or, “You are OBSESSED!”

   Which is silly. 

   Intense people can only relax when they hold their breath, concentrate and push – which is pretty exhausting for people who should be busy saving the earth.

    And there is a big difference between being intense and being obsessed. Obsession is defined in the Family Almanac Word Book as “intensity gone bad. (See  Perimenopause, pg. 262.)”

   Technically, intense people are not obsessed. They are “focused.” This is good for swat teams, brain surgeons and deactivating nuclear bombs.

   It is bad for relationships, ironing rayon and microwave snacks.  (Once I actually weaponized a Ham and Cheese Hot Pocket.) 

   Suppose, for example, a great song comes on the radio.  Un-intense people really enjoy it and sing along.  But intense people “focus” on the song, then lunge for volume-control to dial-up ‘Mega Blast’ until the woofers rocket out of the speakers, splitting the sound barrier and time-traveling through a wall.

   Focus: the concentration necessary to enjoy things 'til they break.

   Several years ago I wrote an article about intensity only I didn’t know it. I had defined emotional extremists as people who dance the fine line between perception and paranoia, commitment and fixation, creative license and a lawsuit.

   Intensity, when it reaches a state of art, is the ability not to cross the line. 

   Only then may it be celebrated as a vehicle to excellence and overachievement.

   I mean, without intensity, the world might accept substandard conditions like, “This can’t be repaired,”  “That’s too much frosting,”  “I’m not aroused now,” and “No.”

   Indeed, as I write this, the standard for “average” is being raised to “nearly good.”

   Soon mediocrity will be rendered extinct and may be placed next to those tensorium intesticles that took out Ronclad’s daughter.

          “Intense:  to boldly go where no man has gone before – even if that is

           inside gold tombs in which pretty women are buried alive.  See Tomb

          #9: Given, C.; Under-employed English Teacher.”