![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
"Do you hear that?"
It's around two in the moring. I've been asleep for about half an hour. Groggy, I open my eyes, and look over to Corb, sitting in shadows in the chair across from me. "Wha...?"
"The neighbors on the first floor. They've been keeping me up all night."
I rub at my eyes. "What are they doing?"
"They've been fighting for the past hour. Sounds like she cheated on him, and the guy who she on him with keeps texting and calling her, and he texted the boyfriend to say she had herpes. And the guy asked her if she had herpes and she denied it, but he just discovered a herpes sore on his lip and he's freaking out. He's talking to his mother on the phone right now."
I move over to the window. The boyfriend is standing by his car, shirtless. The lights from the front of the apartment glisten on his smooth body. "I'm leaving, ma. I'm leaving! She gave me herpes, ma." A pause, as he paced around the car. "Yeah, I'm sure! I..." He bangs on the car, a little embarrassed. "I went down on her, ma."
I turn to Corb, trying not to laugh. "He just told his ma he went down on her?"
"He's very close to his mother," grins Corb.
Another bang on the car. "Yeah, I'm leaving, ma. Getting outta here! I'm just hanging around until I sober up."
He moves away from his car. Looks up at the apartment building, at our floor. I duck my head so he can't see me. We hear the door to the building open, then close. I sit on the bed for about twenty minutes, waiting for the next eruption.
###
Nine o'clock in the morning. Corb's in the bathroom, brushing his teeth. He gives one last good spit and then moves into the room. "He's still here."
"No way! He didn't move out?"
"Not yet." Corb sits on the chair across from me, an impish smile on his face. "Think if I left a bottle of Herpex outside their door they'd get upset?"
Neighbors. Better entertainment than television, I tell you.
We haven't had a lot of neighbors stories lately, so it's nice to have some entertainment. The place we live now is fairly subdued and quiet. The first building we lived in was far more entertaining. We had a neighbor who smashed the windshield to her boyfriend's Mustang with a can of beans, for example. The best story was Thor, a rather addled obese man who decided to take off his clothes one day and wade in the pond located in the center of the complex, raising his fists to the heavens and shouting, all the while. That was quite a show for everyone. (PS: Corb took pictures.)
As I've been typing this, we've been watching an old eighties movie, something starring Kevin Dillon. Ashes and her eighties movies...she was forcing us. Just as I got to that part in the story, we suddenly hear a loud noise from the sky.
"What's that?" asks Ashes.
"Sounds like a plane." Corb strains his ears. "Or a helicopter." He pauses, runs over to the picture window, excited. "Can you see it? Something is happening over in the other building. Can't you see everyone running to it? Oh wow, they're air lifting someone out of one of the buildings. Something pretty bad must have just happened. LET'S GO SEE IT!"
Thrilled beyond belief, Corb and Ashes run to put on their shoes and exit the apartment, as if it were on fire.
I hang back. I know I'll get the full report in a few minutes. Besides, I want to wrap up my story.
Sometimes I don't need to be Gladys Kravitz, you see. Sometimes it's more fun being Gladys Kravitz by proxy.
Me, at a friend's show this afternoon.
See, here's the thing. I'm a terrible person to take to see a live theater event. Movies, too.
Usually, watching television with me is not so bad, for some reason, although I have been known to have my moments. And even then, I really prefer total quiet. I HATE it when people talk during a show that I like. It totally spoils the moment, for me.
But for movies and live theater, I can be just horrible. Corb hates going with me. I frown, make faces. I squirm and kind of shake my head. After the show's over, I can be the last person that you'd want to speak with, if I didn't like what I was seeing.
I've spent some time thinking about why I am the way that I am. The conclusion I've reached is this: a live event, or something that involves a big screen and surround sound, excites my senses. It overwhelms me, gets me jazzed. And I'm the kind of person that likes to be overwhelmed and swept away by things. It's not that difficult to do, either.
But here's the down side: it's also far too easy to take me out of the moment. If there's something I feel is untrue to the intention of the world that's been created, or is a plot flaw that contradicts what's been established, it gets me angry. I can't get past it. It throws me out of the moment, and that's all I will focus on, from that moment on.
It's happened on all sorts of occasions. There's a James Bond film I can't bear to watch because it involves an invisible car and what takes place doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I can't stand the second Mission Impossible movie because the fight sequences at the end are all in slow motion and look ridiculous. I can't watch Phantom of the Opera on Broadway because the second act is all just filler until the end of the show. Josie recently invited me to see a friend perform in a show, and I know she was looking for me to just say nice things at the end. I did, to the actor in the show. But I let her know what I really thought, afterwards.
On the plus side, if I think the show is consistent throughout...if the world that I bought into at the start of the journey isn't violated in some fashion, and stays true, then I can be the most agreeable of viewers. And I'm not a snob about things, either. It doesn't matter if it's a Broadway show or a high school musical. If I can believe what's going on, if it's done with passion and commitment, then I am there for the ride.
As an example, this afternoon, I went to see a middle school production of a play written by a friend of mine. I went into dreading it, especially because the play was about a subject that is very easy to screw up: Time Travel.
What I found is that I totally bought the premise and the plot line was consistent throughout. The show was about a scientific genius whose future self contacts him to ask him to create an invention that will save the world. Of course, he does.
Time travel is a tricky subject to deal with, but despite this, I was able to accept the way it was handled, even if there is one potential flaw to be found at the resolution. Which is: if your future self contacts you to prevent something from occurring, and you prevent it from occurring, then by the very nature of that act, you should have no recollection of being contacted by your future self, because by fixing the problem, they would have no need to contact you in the first place.
What saved me from getting upset about the fact that the kids remembered everything was the following: the second episode of "Last of the Time Lords" from Doctor Who. In that, the world is saved and everything goes back to where things where before the time paradox occurred, and everyone forgot what happened, except for those at the center of the Time Storm, who still remember what occurred.
I decided to apply that theory to this story, even if it didn't really involve a time paradox. Still, that was enough of a bridge to allow me to enjoy what I was watching.
I wish everything was that easy!
WHAT IS A MOM?
Someone who performs everyday miracles
Someone who does the work of six
Someone who works magic with a twitch of her nose
Someone who beats you with a wire hanger.
HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY, TO ALL MY FAVORITE MOMS!
"I'm going outside to walk around your apartment," Ashes said about two weeks ago, looking grimmer than grim.
I saw the paper she was holding in her hand, and new something was up. "What's that?"
"It's what I was talking about in the car." She held it up for me to see. In bold black magic marker she had scrawled, "NEED A DATE TO THE PROM."
I was interested to see how this would play out. In the first place, I didn't think she had the nerve to actually stand outside and hold the sign up. But if she did, I had severe concerns about the sort of person that would actually take her up on her offer.
Five minutes later, I had my answer. She was back in the apartment, looking somewhat sheepish. "I couldn't go through with it," she admitted.
Somehow I wasn't surprised. "Why don't you put something up on Facebook saying you need a date to the prom?" I asked. "What could it hurt?"
She looked visibly repulsed, as if I had offended her sensibilities. "Dad!" She shuddered. "That would be so embarrassing."
"More embarrassing than holding a sign up outside my apartment, looking for a date?" I grinned. "Look, why don't you just ask your best friend to go with you? You don't need to go with a guy, you know. You can just go with a friend and have fun."
"Bring Jo-Ellen?" Ashes frowned. "The whole reason for going to the prom is so you get a photo of you standing next to a hot guy. Otherwise, what's the point?"
"Well, anyway, I think you should go to the prom," I replied. "At the very least you can say that you went. It's like a right of passage. I know my prom wasn't the best of times, for me."
That was putting it mildly. I took my friend Pauline, and I didn't have a car, so I had to beg some friends to let us go with them. Eight kids packed into one car. It felt like a sardine can, and it got even worse after the prom, when the other six, who were actual couples, wanted to go parking. We had to wait outside in the rain and cold while the other couples fogged up the windows making out. It may have been the longest twenty minutes of vicarious passion in my life. How many times can you say, "Well, isn't this fun?"
A week later, Ashes called me. "I've decided to go," she said.
Well, I'm glad. And tonight, after one week of tanning, a serious do, and a new gown, I picked my gal up to take her to the prom. Her best friend Jo-Ellen went with her. And both of them looked beautiful.
About five minutes ago I received a text message from Ashes: "We're gonna go straight home."
"How was the prom?" I texted back.
Her response: "It just sucks."
Well, I can't wait to hear all about this. But I still contend, at least she went. It's a memory. And Ashes needs more memories. She needs more getting out there, she needs more interactions. Besides, she still has half an hour left.
Maybe a handsome prince is just around the corner.
This morning, I woke up at the (well, relatively) early hour of nine o'clock, in clear defiance of the four cosmos I had consumed the night before. The drinks had been downed at a crushingly boring Miriam Hospital fundraiser. I wish I could say a more entertaining evening would have led to less drinkage, but my dear, you know I'd be a liar.
The drinks had been good (especially the Raspberry stoli in the last one), but the event? Well, they had elected to hold a celebrity chefs cook-off, starring...get this! Folks I never heard of! I don't much care about that (who am I, anyways, and you get who you can get), but here's some advice for folks planning fundraisers in the future:
- DON'T plan a celebrity cook-off, because they are boring as hell to watch.
- DON'T hold the event itself AFTER everyone has eaten their meal, because honestly, who in the world wants to watch four very pampered chefs sit there and eat food and then talk about the food they've consumed when your belly is full?
- Finally, if you're planning to plan such nonsense, DON'T hold two rounds of it. One round was bad enough...at least I could gobble up my dessert. Tacking a second round for the "celebrity" chefs to cook a main course? People couldn't race to their cars quickly enough.
ANYWAY, after that...I woke up that early to clean the apartment, and then head off to set construction for the Eldredge Players production of The Drowsy Chaperone, which I just happen to be directing. You know, the way that I do every year. Right? (except, that this is my last year directing...but shhhhhh! Don't tell that anything about that, okay?)
Now, the house where we do our set construction is located rather close to Wheaton College, where the production is to be performed. Both are located in the sleepy little town of Mansfield, a place that doesn't have much going for it other than Wheaton College. Other than that, there's a police station, a CVS, a hardware store, a few restaurants, a drug rehab facility, and well, there you go. I mean, what more does a town need, really?
Well, wild turkeys, too, I guess. Because there I am in the Stang, driving down a rustic and charming, practically bucolic, country road, when all of a sudden, what should scuttle across the road quickly but a brown and white absurdity with a blue head and a nutsack for a chin.
He somehow managed to avoid the bikers coming down on the opposite side of the road. Scuttle scuttle, right in the path of the 'Stang. I cried out and put my foot on the break, and tried to swerve to avoid it, but BANG! Collide it did, right with my front grille.
I watched it fall back, into the opposite lane, clearly injured. Then, it started walking forward. Did it make it? I wondered. But how could it possibly have made it, there's no way...
Then, it shuddered and fell to the ground. Just like those stories you hear of how chickens move around for a few seconds after they've had their heads chopped off.
I panicked, I must admit it. I've never hit a wild animal before. I had no idea what to do next. Should I stay to wait for the ambulance? Notify its next of kin? In a kind of a fog, I took solace in noticing that the bikers were pulling over. Oh, good! The turkey hospice was in the hands of Hell's angels. They'd know what to do.
Desolate, inconsoleable, desole beyond desole, I continued onward, made my way to the house where set construction was taking place. I stumbled out of my car, a frown etched on my face.
"I just hit a wild turkey with my car," I said.
The set crew, who are...well, set people and not necessarily actors, looked at the absurd wreck that I was, slightly amused. "Did you kill it?" one of the guys, who is a self-professed shit kicker, asked.
I nodded my head.
"And you didn't put it in your back seat so we could eat it for lunch?" he asked. Everyone laughed.
Hey, this isn't funny. I now have the weight of a dead turkey on my soul. I have killed, dammit! And so has my car, too. And now that we've tasted blood, will we want more? Will my Stang turn into Christine, and hunt down other fowl, then small animals, the creatures with limited intelligence, like Newt Gingrich? And me...what about me? Will I start to become more bloodthirsty? Join the NRA, eventually? Worse...gulp...become a Republican?
Or maybe not. I will say, though, I have noticed an increase in the number of wild turkeys trotting around here. I never used to see them anywhere until about five years ago, but now they're around all the time, usually on rural roads, usually in packs.
Man's encroachment on Mother Nature? Maybe. I guess it was inevitable that I would hit one someday. And maybe that should provide me with some small comfort, but it really doesn't.
Wild Turkey Killer, that's what I am. Today I bear the name of Ted the Wild Turkey Killer. It's murder most fowl, I tell you.
Somehow, I must learn to atone for my sins. But how?
Hmmm. Maybe not have seconds on Thanksgiving?
"Do I have a story for you."
It was a text message to me, from Corb, and two hours later I received the news: his grandmother had fallen out of bed that morning and suffered what they believed to be either a mini stroke or possibly a seizure. Either way, it wasnt good, and she had been rushed to the hospital, right after Corb's brother Scott and his wife had collected their kids and taken them over to pick grandma up from her bedroom floor (which did strike me as a strange family outing.)
I thought for sure this had to be the story, but when I questioned Corb about it later that night, he frowned and then said,
"Actually no. That wasn't it at all."
"So, what's up, then?"
Corb shook his head and idly continued playing the Sims. "Work. You remember the problems I've been having with the girl in the cubicle next door and her gay best friend?"
"Of course."
It had been brewing for quite a while, practically since the day he had started. The girl next door was an unhappy wench, with a habit of falling asleep at her desk and an allergic dislike of perfumes that rendered her slightly smelly and also, caused her to be deeply offended whenever the smell of perfume or cologne wafted their way to her nostrils,
She also hated Corb. Deeeeeeeply hated him. Perhaps it was his cologne (she liked to call him "the French whore," just for fun.) Whatever it was, though, she spent her days taking her unhappiness out on my poor guy. Some days she was nice, although that was usually when she wanted him to stand guard for their boss while she napped. (However, that was a request he usually ignored, which meant she got in trouble, which would piss her off even more.) Most of the time she was hostile, and lately she had taken to talking about him loudly behind his back to her gay best friend. Usually while he was within earshot.
Which was actually the reason for the story he had texted me about, before his grandmother fell ill. It appears that a few days before, her gay best friend had decided he wanted to be the boss, and had taken to calling people to his desk, to tell them how they could improve upon what they were doing, or the mistakes they were making in the system (usually his suggestions were wrong, by the way.) He had called Corb over at one point, but Corb found the whole thing annoying, especially because the gay best friend hadn't been asked by the boss to do it, and also, what he was basically doing was trying to undo the procedures that the boss was trying to implement.
So, I imagine Corb had been a little snippy.
When Corb came back from his break later on in the day, the gay best friend was standing in his cubicle. "What's going on?" Corb asked.
"Oh, nothing," said the gay best friend. "I just wanted to, um, check something at your desk." He moved in close to Corb, something he liked to do, which always made Corb feel a little uncomfortable. And then he lifted up his hand ans stroked the side of Corb's cheek. "Bye, sweetie!"
Now, look. Corb's not a big fan of public displays of affection, even with me, and he's also not the type to be overly demonstrative. The Gay Best Friend is a completely different type of gay, the kind that lives for public contact...rubbing of shoulders, touching your arm, that sort of thing. Corb had been cool with that, although he didn't like it, but stroking the side of his cheek was...well, just weird. Like something out of Little Britain weird.
Later on in the day, he working at his computer when he heard the gay best friend move over to the smelly girl next door.
"What's HIS problem today?" Meaning Corb, of course.
"Oh, you know," she said, loudly. "He's just being a raging vagina today. Like always."
Well, apparently the comment had not gone unnoticed. It had been heard by enough people, because the next morning (the day of the text message), Corb's boss had tapped him on the back and said, "Let's go for a walk."
Oh, Egad. Corb felt his heart fall into his stomach. Had he done something wrong? Dreading the conversation, he fell in step behind her, out of the old industrial building, toward the river that wound its way past the warehouse area.
Corb waited a few minutes, traded small talk. Then: What's up?"
"Well, the thing is, I've received a few complaints about Mary the past couple of days. About her attitude. How she's been saying some pretty inappropriate things. Yelling at people without having a right to. The funny thing is, all the people that have been come to me are mentioning that she's particularly mean to you. But the funny thing is, the only person who hasn't come to me to talk about this is...well, you."
"Oh."
"Why is that, Corb?"
I think I have my theories about why Corb wouldn't go to her, but he didn't go into anything. Instead, he just said, "Well, I wasn't sure exactly what to do about it."
"You should have come to me, that's what. So, what has she been doing?"
Then it all came out. The name calling (raging vagina, cunt, bitch), the times she would get mad at him and scream at him, then stop talking to him for the day (some of these were during training.) The hours she would spend talking on her cell phone, on personal calls, about the guys she had hooked up with the night before. The times she fell asleep at her desk. And then, the weird things, like the time she had come to work and said,
"So Corb, how's Dianna Dufres doing today?"
That was his mother. Corb was taken a little bit aback. "Excuse me?"
"And how do you like living at Oak Haven in Eldredge? Are they nice apartments?" Then she laughed, seeing that he was looking a little upset. "Oh, I was just doing a little bit of research last night at home, on you. Useful stuff to have!"
The whole episode had kind of freaked him out. It just seemed a little stalkerish, in a "Fatal Attraction" sort of way. Which was another reason he hadn't gone to anyone. Given the way she was acting, he was afraid she might go postal on him, or something.
His boss looked at him, appalled. "Corb, you realize that as your supervisor, I have to do something about this."
Corb kept walking, not looking at her. "I know."
"I'm going to have to report this to HR." A pause. "Would you being willing to talk to HR about this, Corb? It would be completely confidential, of course. And, we'd be interviewing other people, too."
Corb had reluctantly agreed, and about a half an hour later, he was called into the office of the vice president of Human Resources. He told the whole story. It was right when he returned from his office that he had received word about his grandmother.
He learned about what happened next from a friend at work. "Mary totally freaked after you left,"she texted. "She was called into the office, and half an hour later came storming to her desk, saying that's it, she's done. She's done this with place, and unless she gets a new supervisor and is moved far away from you, she's never coming back."
Four days later, they started clearing out her cubicle. Corb spent the days afraid that she was going to come in and try something overly dramatic. But she hasn't. The only thing he's heard is the gay best friend, going around telling everyone that Corb made up stories about her, which he doesn't believe, so Corb must be lying.
Also, the gay best friend was reprimanded for inappropriate touching. He's furious with Corb, even though Corb didn't say a word about it. That was someone else, entirely. He claims that Corb is homophobic, even though that's clearly not the case.
I have to admit, I'm kind of happy that I don't work in call centers. These sort of mini-dramas are something I don't miss one bit. It's a shame that Corb had to weather this storm, though, and that he had to patiently endure it, mostly in silence. That wasn't fair, but it's nice to see the bullies get their just desserts, in the end.
Hopefully, that's the happy ending to this story.
"You mentioned that," I said. "You're really liking it, right?"
"Yeah." She played with a strand of her hair, contemplative. "It's funny. Jo-Ellen really likes that movie, and tried to get me to watch it a while back. I could barely focus on it for five minutes. Why is it that whenever someone I know tries to get me to watch something or read something, I can't do it, but when I find it out for myself, I usually like it?"
I grinned, a secret smile, all to myself. There's my girl. All set to major in Psychology next year, and unaware that the Oppositional Defiance Disorder diagnosis she received years ago is still alive and kicking.
But she's learning about herself. And self-discovery is the important thing.
- Last night's rehearsal was the kind I love. I was all over the place, doing a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Started with a set construction meeting, which I stayed at for a half an hour, then let them do their thing. Then blocked one two-person scene, then moved on to work with Man in the Chair, then discussed Monday's rehearsal with the choreographer. In the meantime, people kept coming in, peppering me with questions. Exactly the way I like to work. Three ring circuses are really my thing.
- Then went to karaoke. Not so great. It was fine until I sang. Hot Coco chose a song for me--a Bill Idol song--and I had to sing it low, and it was too low. Did not flatter me, and as a result, I succombed into karaoke funk. Left shortly after, slightly grouchy. Yech!
- BUT! Today is a vacation day! And tomorrow I will be going to either Cape Cod or Newport with the Corbster for a huge walking spree. So, karaoke funk is officially over, today is a new day, and fun will be had. I am determined to make this so.
