Well, here it is, the federal holiday associated with Veteran’s Day, which was yesterday, November 11. Since that was a Sunday, everybody in Washington took today off so they could honor America’s veterans by observing our venerable national tradition of shopping all day for great bargains. Even men, who, for the most part, are not great shoppers by any means, join in on days like this. With an air of grim determination, they attempt to outshine their wives, those quotidian shopping experts of the family, at doing every American’s patriotic duty. Pursuing bankruptcy with the fervor of blood-soaked grunts running up Pork Chop Hill, they run up debt on their credit cards, usually at outrageous interest rates, with no intention or ability to pay off the balance in full when the bills arrive. It’s a sight to see, and not easily forgotten, which is why I stayed at home today, working.
Besides, I’ve certainly had no lack of things to do since Friday evening, when my dear sister Rose called me here as I perused the Washington Post Weekend Section, trying to find a local theater playing Ang Lee’s “Lust, Caution” that wasn’t already sold out for every performance through Tuesday. Sure, my girlfriend Cerise had told me it’s really good, but when was the last time you, Dear Reader, had a problem getting tickets for a movie filmed in Chinese with English subtitles? I mean, seriously, the last time we were in a theater playing a motion picture like that, Cerise and I arrived just as the lights went down, and we still got to sit in the center of the best row by ourselves. Now, I’ve read the reviews of “Lust, Caution,” and I suppose I can guess why it might be popular – but sold out? Everywhere? Must be one hell of flick, that’s all I can say.
So, in the midst of that, my POTS line rings and Rose is on the other end, beside herself with anger and frustration. Not that she didn’t have a perfectly good reason, though.
Rose: Tom, it’s Rose!
Tom: Hi, Sis! You and Hank seen Ang Lee’s “Lust, Caution” yet?
Rose: Of course not, you brat! We’re married with a huge brood of children!
Tom: Oh, GZPZ, Rose, don’t bite my head off about it, will you please, if you don’t mind? Who told you and Hank to run out and procreate like Lubavicher Zionists on the West Bank, anyhow?
Rose: Well, all I got to say is, you better be glad we did, because somebody’s got to pay the money for your Social Security!
Tom: If it ever turns out I have to live on Social Security, I won’t need it, because I will have died from embarrassment!
Rose: Always got an answer for everything, don’t you?
Tom: As a matter of fact, yes – that even happens to be my job at the moment, if you recall. And who, may I ask, sprinkled your head with hobgoblin spores and turned you into the Wicked Witch of the West today, anyhow? Halloween was two weeks ago!
Rose: Oh, Tom, I’m sorry, I really am. I know I must sound like Kate the Shrew…
Tom: “Katharina the curst” – a title for a maid, of all titles, the worst! But even a meacock wretch knows there is small choice in rotten apples…
Rose: Who are you calling a rotten apple?
Tom: Is it not thy Sir Hanky-Panky, who once slipped thee like a greyhound, but who now holds so sooth fast the pommel of his sword, its sanguine shaft grown so old, its virile blade so rusty, and so besot with a broken hilt, that it will not come forth from its sheathing, even should thou bid it so with thy sweet coral lips and the song of twenty caged nightingales until the mockingbird larks, the dawn lark mocks and thy digital satellite radio alarm clock clicks to exhaust its Snooze Option Count? All this, from running his bowl so ardent and unluckily close up by and against thy bias; a brute and mindless ploughman tilling ‘till no purchase gains there anon; and now, though he swive with windsrage like an angry boar whilst thou chafes, a rare plum, poached in his porcine sweat; alas, and despite – he spies no angel descending the Mount of Venus, nor dost thou sense the sweet gush of tenderly troubled waters from Bacchus’ fountain, rushing through thy floodgates so expectantly open to warm, moisten and seer thy groves of tart, succulent pomegranates and billowing fields of fragrant figs, soft and sweet as velvet, all sown thick, fecund and fertile, aching to bear, whole and swollen as the anciently gravid banks of the Nile. For having taken thy dowry, then, does thy husband now arrange himself to be whipped by his manservant, each morning at the high cross, raining there a shower of commanded tears? Would not an onion do as well for such a shift; and, for thy own self, perchance an appropriately lengthy and suitably stout carrot, nay, even a parsnip?
Rose: Apples, pomegranates, carrots, onions, parsnips, figs… stop it, Tom, you’re making me hungry. Hank and I get along just fine, okay? We like having a bunch of kids. Hank loves my body, every little stretch mark, wrinkle and sag – he knows he’s the one that did all that to me making all those children for him.
Tom: Well, then, congratulations to you, Hank, your progeny, your sags, your wrinkles and your stretch marks. And thanks for calling to tell me about the remarkable bliss that reigns so sublimely among you, one and all. Talk to you later, then…
Rose: Tom!
Tom: Yeah?
Rose: All right, first of all, I need to invite you over for Thanksgiving before I forget.
Tom: Me and Cerise, right?
Rose: Cerise isn’t family, Tom. Must you always bring her?
Tom: Well, first of all, I do not always bring her and secondly, I say she counts as family – you’re just jealous because she’s young and, ah, un-stretched-out – admit it.
Rose: Why aren’t you two married yet?
Tom: You’re trespassing on Mom’s territory now, Rose. She’s the one who gets to ask that question incessantly, not you.
Rose: All right. You and Cerise. But I get to keep introducing her to the kids as “Aunt Cerise.”
Tom: I seriously don’t think she minds that at all. We’ll be there on Thanksgiving at five o’clock, then?
Rose: Why are you two always so damn late?
Tom: When we can, we sleep until noon. Watch us outlive you, Hank and most of your children. Is five o’clock too late, then?
Rose: For Thanksgiving, in this family – my family – Hank’s family, yeah, that’s late, and you know that.
Tom: Three?
Rose: Okay – three o’clock. Now, there’s this other thing, about Anthony.
Tom: Your seven-year old? The one who’s in second grade?
Rose: Yeah. Very serious problem.
Tom: I’m sorry, but what kind of “very serious” problem could a seven year old kid in the second grade have?
Rose: Well, Tom, you know those Aqua Dot thingies? They’re a kind of children’s toy.
Tom: Little multicolored craft beads with assembly trays. Arrange the beads in the trays, spray them with water and presto – visually attractive toddler bait covered with 1,4-butane diol, an adhesive solvent which, when ingested, is metabolized by numerous body enzymes into gamma hydroxy butyrate, or GHB, currently classified by the DEA as a Schedule I substance, right up there with heroin.
Rose: Listen, Tom, nobody, beside you, maybe, knew about that a month ago when I bought Tony an Aqua Dots kit at Toy-R-Us!
Tom: Well, I knew the biochemistry of 1,4-butane diol, but I must confess, even I couldn’t have imagined that anybody would be stupid enough to coat children’s toys in the stuff. But once I found out that the toys came from China, well, it all made sense, in a weird sort of way. So what happened with Tony and his Aqua Dots?
Rose: He had a science project assignment.
Tom: What – the toxicology of consumer products imported from China?
Rose: No, no! The assignment was the water cycle. They were supposed to illustrate the water cycle. They had a choice. They could either show part of it with an experiment or show the complete water cycle with a diagram, drawing or diorama. So little Tony did a diorama of the water cycle constructed out of Aqua Dots. But no sooner was he done with it, than we heard on the news about all this business with the “date rape drug” and all that. We heard about it last weekend, and the assignment was due last Monday! What was Tony supposed to do, rebuild the whole thing in construction paper and Elmer’s glue overnight? You think he deserved a failing grade because of what some unscrupulous Chinese toy makers did? And how do you explain something like this to a little kid, anyhow?
Tom: You’re the elementary school teacher, Rose. If you don’t know, asking me isn’t going to help.
Rose: So we sent him to school with it Monday. He got a Double Check Plus-Plus and two Science Completion Units. And we told him – bring it home Monday, bring it home right away, don’t leave it at school!
Tom: And he did?
Rose: Of course! Tony’s own mother – me – is an elementary school teacher, isn’t she? Tony’s father works for Pabulex, the premiere upscale infant supply company, doesn’t he? All of Tony’s older siblings are straight – A students with plenty of significant extracurricular activities in their schedules, aren’t they? And isn’t Tony the sweetest, best-behaved little seven year old boy you have ever met in your entire life?
Tom: Much better behaved than I was when I was seven, that’s for sure.
Rose: Tell me about it, super-brat! So yeah, of course he was going to…
Tom: Going to bring it home? As in, intended to, but did not?
Rose: How was I to know that the principal had decided to display the science projects in the cafeteria?
Tom: Well, considering that the science projects were on the subject of the water cycle, I don’t suppose any of the exhibits could be expected to affect anybody’s appetite. If the subject was fungi, on the other hand…
Rose: Tom! What happened was, one of the preschool teachers is in her eighth month, and she was on her own that day because one of the other teachers had called in sick with a case of the flu she caught from the kids and the other one had walked off the job the day before, claiming a nervous breakdown, and then the teacher who was left, that I was telling you about, the pregnant one, she had to run out of the cafeteria for a few minutes to deal with pregnancy nausea; and while that was happening, the principal, who was supposed to be backup cafeteria monitor that day because the teacher who was assigned the duty had a impacted wisdom tooth that was suddenly hurting like hell, plus oozing pus, and had to leave to go to an oral surgeon right away because that’s what her dentist told her to do, top priority, since the oral surgeon goes home at three on Mondays; well, the principal’s cell phone rang and it was the principal’s estranged husband’s lawyer, calling because her lawyer had tried to schedule a hearing on a day the husband’s lawyer’s estranged wife had already scheduled a divorce hearing for them, and since the lawyers’s estranged wife was the principal’s cousin, he figured the principal was in on that and just wanted to tell her to mind her own damn business, which I don’t suppose you could blame him for, but the principal got so involved yelling at the lawyer on her cell phone she didn’t see.
Tom: Didn’t see what?
Rose: Didn’t see four little girls, aged three, three and a half, four and a half, and four; and two little boys, aged three and four, run up to Tony’s diorama, rip it apart and start to eat it!
Tom: No! Really?
Rose: And then rip it to pieces and start passing them out to the other kindergartners, who started devouring them with their desserts!
Tom: You think those Aqua Dots actually taste that good? Or is it just the Forbidden Fruit effect?
Rose: Beats me, Tom, I gave up desserts years ago so my butt wouldn’t get any bigger.
Tom: Oh, it’s not so bad. Lots of guys like some junk in the trunk, anyway, you know.
Rose: I don’t think Hank does.
Tom: And I bet Hank ain’t never had no tip drill, neither.
Rose: What the hell is a tip drill?
Tom: Oh, no, Sis, you gotta ask Hank if he’d like one first.
Rose: All right, Tom, if it helps your analysis any, then I think rug rats and ankle biters go for the Aqua Dots because Aqua Dots look like sugar candy. And I can’t imagine that they taste bitter or salty, because kids that age would just spit them right out if they did.
Tom: Sort of makes sense. Those short-chain diols are reported to taste sweet – not that anyone should try to confirm that, any more than they should try to confirm that beryllium tastes sweet, either – or that cyanide tastes like almonds, for that matter. Some things, you are just better off not knowing for sure from your own personal experience. Like the tastes of various poisons – or joys of marriage.
Rose: Tom, I don’t know how you could possibly say something like that! There is simply no comparison between marriage and deadly poison!
Tom: You’re right – compared to marriage, the number of men killed every year by deadly poison is a mere drop in the bucket.
Rose: Say what you want – I’m happy.
Tom: Sure, that’s why you’re talking to me now, because your marriage makes you so deliriously happy.
Rose: Damn it all, Tom, my marriage is fine! It’s my kids that are driving me crazy!
Tom: Thanks for the clarification.
Rose: You’re welcome.
Tom: I stand corrected.
Rose: You’re outstanding in your field, up to your knees in quicksand. Now quit jerking my chain before I begin to cry, after which you will feel like a total heel and you know it.
Tom: Understood. So the little tots tore Tony’s water cycle diorama to pieces in the lunch room and ate it before the principal got off her cell phone?
Rose: They ate about a third of it, anyway.
Tom: And then what, they overslept their postprandial nap time?
Rose: No, they fell asleep in the cafeteria.
Tom: And?
Rose: The principal took one look and called 911.
Tom: After which?
Rose: Several ambulances filled with EMTs showed up and hauled the kids away.
Tom: So where’s the media blitz on this story?
Rose: There isn’t any.
Tom: Why?
Rose: The county recently out-sourced all its EMT services to a company headquartered in Shanghai. The ambulances took the kids to a clinic in Chantilly, Virginia, that’s run by a company in Singapore. The medical technicians pumped their stomachs and loaded them back on the ambulances. By two-thirty, they were all laid out on their cots.
Tom: Right, and since GHB is the “date rape drug,” when they woke up, none of the tots remembered a thing.
Rose: You guessed it.
Tom: And so here ends our Tale of Sound and Fury, told by an Idiot, Signifying Nothing?
Rose: Not exactly. The DEA and FDA came by the school and arrested Tony under the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act. They turned him over to the county juvenile authorities. We called Hank’s uncle, who’s a lawyer down here in Virginia, and rushed over to the court house for the hearing at five thirty tonight so Tony wouldn’t have to spend the weekend as a guest of the county. After we agreed to allow Virginia to try Tony as an adult terrorist, they released him to our custody. Three police cars followed us home with their lights on.
Tom: No sirens?
Rose: No.
Tom: That’s a positive sign, anyway.
Rose: Thank the Lord for small graces, I guess. Two hours ago, we got a visit from the social worker assigned to Tony’s case.
Tom: Social worker? What’s he like?
Rose: “He?” When was the last time you met a male social worker?
Tom: I’ve never actually met a social worker. But in any case, you know that, in absence of information further defining the individual, I use the pronoun “he” to indicate persons of either gender, and such practice is generally considered acceptable.
Rose: I doubt you could have said that to this social worker I’m talking about without some serious feedback.
Tom: Oh. Feminist, huh?
Rose: Yeah.
Tom: Feminist lesbo?
Rose: Warmer.
Tom: Man-hating feminist lesbo?
Rose: Hot…
Tom: Ugly, man-hating feminist lesbo?
Rose: Hotter…
Tom: Fat, ugly man-hating feminist lesbo?
Rose: Hottest…
Tom: Fat, ugly man-hating feminist lesbo oozing tired, incomprehensible Commie dialectic that any normal woman can tell in ten seconds flat hasn’t had decent sex with any sort of human being, male or female, for at least ten years?
Rose: Red hot!
Tom: With bad skin, a chip on her shoulder and a great big axe to grind?
Rose: White hot! Yes!
Tom: Oh my God in Heaven, what did this person do to your child?
Rose: For starters, she convinced him he was at fault in this situation.
Tom: That’s sick.
Rose: Then she convinced him that the reason he was at fault was because his parents don’t love him.
Tom: That’s even sicker.
Rose: Then she convinced him that his parents have been abusing him.
Tom: That’s sickest of all.
Rose: Then she convinced him that his parents put him up to what he did.
Tom: Now we’re getting beyond sick; that’s perverted.
Rose: Then she got him to agree to testify against us.
Tom: That’s sickeningly perverted.
Rose: Then she took out her cell phone and called the police – who were waiting outside with their lights still on, by the way.
Tom: That’s beyond sickeningly perverted; we’re into intensely insane now…
Rose: Then, the district attorney and about six cops of various flavors drag me into an interrogation room and tell me that Hank is ready to testify against me.
Tom: We’re strictly Twilight Zone, right there – surely, you didn’t believe that!
Rose: Of course not – but they can lie all they want, can’t they? On the other hand, they told me something I could believe. The school principal is ready to testify she heard me threaten the students.
Tom: But you’re not just some ordinary parent! You’re another elementary school educator – in the same damn school system! That’s totally deranged, utterly demented, bug nasty bat flicking lunatic madness!
Rose: Yes, little brother, I’d say you’re probably right about that. Too bad I’m not finished.
Tom: Huh?
Rose: According to them, because of the GHB, and because it’s a “date rape drug,” little Tony’s a sex offender, and no matter what happens, he’s going in the National Registry.
Tom: How can a seven year old boy be a sex offender?
Rose: Exactly what I said.
Tom: What did they say?
Rose: In Virginia, under the current federal sex, drug and terrorism laws, Tony’s a child rapist and everybody in his family is an accomplice. So guess where I’m calling you from.
Tom: Jail?
Rose: Yeah. And if you don’t get me, Hank, Tony and the rest of my family out of here by Monday, I have no brother named Tom. Do you understand me?
Tom: Sure, ah, but, uh… look, Monday is a holiday, all right? Can I still preserve my cred if I spring you by six p.m. on Tuesday?
Rose: Yes, but only because you were smart enough to point that out on Friday night!
So Rose terminated our call, without so much as a telephone kiss, smoochy-smoochy, Martini family pet name or anything.
The principal’s name is a matter of public record, of course, and it only took me another twenty five minutes to determine all the necessary identifiers on the social worker. Total piece of work, that lady. I’d wager her curriculum vitae is more corrosive than aqua regia. By Saturday morning, I was calling in chips all over town. By Sunday evening, I had all that would be needed. By noon today, everything was sent out on the Internet.
That elementary school principal, she has a thing called “restless leg syndrome.” I’m no doctor, and I admit I’m not very old, but I don’t recall any accounts of RLS as a scourge of humanity in the past. In the old days, people had epidemic influenza, bubonic plague, yellow fever, smallpox, tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, that kind of thing. True, you don’t hear too much these days about people getting auge or dropsy, though. So maybe diseases come and go, like clothing and music fashions. Maybe wearing top hats and listening to Stephen Foster caused auge and dropsy. Maybe wearing bow ties and listening to Frank Sinatra caused polio and TB. Oh, well, maybe wearing Crocs and listening to Britney Spears causes RLS; or maybe it was brought to planet earth recently on a comet from outer space or something – who knows? Anyway, the only medications anyone can legally take for RLS at the moment in these United States have side effects that might, perhaps, cause a reasonable person to wonder if maybe, just maybe, the cure could be worse than the disease.
Certainly, the principal at Tony’s school probably should have considered that question before taking the stuff her doctor prescribed for RLS. The side effects of substances used to treat RLS are interesting and substantial, to say the least. They include both “compulsive gambling urges” and “uncontrolled expression of sexual libido.” And for just a few grand, I bought a set of videos on the Internet that clearly show a certain principal engaging in lots of both.
As for that social worker – OMG – surely, my cup runneth over. For she has insomnia, and these days, the side effects of insomnia pills are straight out of cheap 1940’s psychodrama. Would you believe, there is stuff on the market, that any old sawbones can write a prescription for, which causes people to sleepwalk so intensely and so in touch with reality, that they can – as this social worker did – get up out of bed, get dressed, leave their domicile, get in their car, drive to the posh Fox Hall Road neighborhood in the District of Columbia, park that vehicle in a secluded place, and subsequently break into and loot the homes of several very wealthy and influential people? Not only that, but check this out – she later gave friends and relatives various expensive objects she looted from those homes as gifts for special occasions, such as birthdays and Christmas, totally convinced that she bought them herself. Small wonder she was eventually apprehended, since sleep walkers don’t exactly make the best burglars. So, she’s on probation herself now, in DC, and, get this – she hasn’t told her employer in Virginia a single, solitary thing about it.
I don’t know if our living is any better because of chemistry, but I have no doubt that it’s considerably more interesting.
At three twenty-seven this afternoon, Rose called to let me know they were on their way out the door of the local pokey. Four o’clock, her family’s lawyer called and told me all the charges had been dropped – neither key witness would agree to testify anymore, for reasons remaining undisclosed.
God knows what poor folks who don’t know anybody powerful and haven’t got the goods on any important people do in situations like this, I’m just damn glad I’m not one of them.
But anyway, tomorrow stands a reasonable chance of approximating normalcy, at least until our government again distinguishes itself, that is.
And sure as shooting, there’s no way I’m buying toys for Rose’s kids anymore. From now on, they’re getting books, CDs and Savings Bonds. And oh yeah – clothes, but only if they are made in the USA.