Waiting For the Bus

It was at a party for her daughter's eighth birthday, in the midst of a whole lot of hoopla, that we had this conversation, the other mommy and I. As parents tend to do when en masse, we talked about our children - their quirks, their cleverness, the lengths to which our love for them had driven us. We each had a boy and a girl, but in my case, the girl was older, and in her case, the boy was, by just a few years.

Image: Teece Aronin

Our daughters were classmates at school, and that was how the other mommy and I first met. She was flamboyant and loud, but in good ways - extroverted, I should have said. She was tall and sexy and could make smoking look almost as glamorous as people thought it was back in the fifties. She could also drink like a fish but didn't seem to lose control from it. I could never imagine her sick on booze, cooling her face on the bathroom tiles like a lot of people do when they've drunk too much. She seemed to take everything in stride, made everything she did look easy. And she was a loving mother, a hands-on mother, the kind of mother who makes mud pies with her kids.

Since children's parties and parent-teacher conferences were our usual conversation venues, we didn't talk often, but I enjoyed her when we did. One time she listed for me all the reasons she'd preferred to work outside the home even when her kids were babies. She said the same thing as a lot of women who work, when financially they can afford to stay home; that the adult interaction made her a better parent. Then she jokingly confessed the "real reason" and laid it smack on her daughter's playhouse doorstep: "That kid always talked way - too - damned - much."

But that was a different time and not the conversation I'd started to tell you about. This other conversation, as I said, took place on the occasion of her daughter's eighth birthday. But we weren't talking about her daughter; we were talking about her son. We were at her home, a comfortable townhouse she shared with her family. Being at her place always cheered me up because it was cluttered and chaotic even when she entertained, and she made no apologies for it. It cheered me up because when I entertained, I either compulsively bulldozed the clutter out or compulsively apologized for it to my guests. How could I get as comfortable in my skin as she was in hers, I wondered.

Anyway, there we were, the other mommy and I, grazing from the veggie plate, when she told me that when she was a girl, she used to make fun of the "short bus," the smaller buses used to transport kids with special needs to and from school.

So this is how the kids who teased, the kids who bullied might turn out, I mused. I had never met an adult with the guts to admit to that kind of behavior, but this one had, and she'd grown up to be . . . well . . . good, in a lot of ways. I don't know if she made fun of the kids themselves, the kids with special needs, I mean, or if she just joked about the bus itself, telling her friends they belonged on one and that kind of thing. I suppose it doesn't matter now.

For the life of me, I can't remember how we got onto the topic of her son's first day of kindergarten or what possessed her to tell me something so personal, but she did. She said that she stood at the curb with him, waiting for the bus, and the picture of them was so clear in my head, her standing there with him, her son, born with Down syndrome.

And she said that what looped through her mind over and over were the words: "Please God, don't let it be a short bus. Please God, don't let it be a short bus. Please God, don't let it be a short bus."

I don't remember if it turned out to be a short bus or not, but maybe that doesn't matter now either.

Clodchunk's Revenge

Ever since Homo erectus struck his first match, mankind has sought satisfaction in the communal consumption of burned, dead things. And when some Neolithic dude or dudette searching for a good buzz discovered alcohol, we were off to the races.

These two pivotal discoveries, fire, and later, alcohol occurred roughly 136,000 years apart, yet each helped pave the way for the modern-day barbecue. Not that there has to be alcohol at barbecues, but if you saw the caliber of folk I hang out with, you'd know it could only help.

So today I started thinking: What was the first barbecue like, the first one with alcohol on hand? This was probably during the Neolithic period, so imagine with me if you will . . .

. . . a sunny day in Asia Minor, a block party is in full-swing and the blocks are granite. The event is a B.Y.O.V. (Bring Your Own Vessel) gathering. Oonka Ugga is scolding her children for bothering their father.

“Goon-Goon! Morsquat! Leave your father alone! You know it takes him forever to build ONE SIMPLE LITTLE FIRE! And you know he’s even slower when people WATCH HIM!”

“But we wanna learn how to build a fire!” whines Goon-Goon.

“Well, you certainly won't learn by watching your father! Now scoot!”

Clodchunk Ugga is a man on his knees, literally and figuratively. Sweat is beading on his brow. A tiny spark kindles amid the leaves and twigs before him. A fragile flame takes hold and Clodchunk Ugga can’t believe his good fortune. Excitedly he blows on the fire and . . . the fire goes out. Clodchunk’s thirty-third time’s a charm, however, and this time the fire leaps to life.

”Hah, Oonka!” he yells derisively, pointing at the flames. “Take that and shove it where the hot and golden ball don’t shine! And while you’re at it, stop belittling me in front of the kids!”

Oonka groans, dismissing her husband with a wave of her dainty, calloused hand. “Oh, puhleeze. People have been building fires for 136,000 years and it took you that long just to build that one! Do you have any idea how slow you are at fire-building compared to Wham-Bam Boom-Boom?”

“Now that’s just great!” yells Clodchunk. “It’s been all of five minutes since the last time you mentioned him! Congratulations, you broke your own record!”

Despite his bravado, Clodchunk feels emasculated. Soon he is pouring his first gourdful of bite-bite juice. Several gourdsful of bite-bite juice later, Clodchunk is itching for a fight and if it turns out to be with Wham-Bam Boom-Boom, why, that's even better.

It’s just a matter of time before Wham-Bam saunters over, all cocky and arrogant-like. He is tall - nearly 5'7" - and his jet black hair stylishly glistens with boars' fat. He sneers at Clodchunk then gives Oonka a long and leering once-over.

“Well, hi there, Oonka.”

“Hello, Wham-Bam,” Oonka demurs, coy and blushing.

Wham-Bam directs his attention to Clodchunk.“Who started that little flicker for ya, Cloddy old boy? Did Goon-Goon do that? Or was it Morsquat?”

Clodchunk pretends to ignore Wham-Bam, squats down near the flames and points. “Hey, wow!” he yells. “A diamond – right there by the fire! Well, will ya look at that!” He reaches toward the flames then jerks his hand back. “Ooh! Ooh! It’s way too hot for me to even touch it! I guess I’m just not man enough!”

Wham-Bam rushes over to where Clodchunk still squats. “Where? Where’s the diamond? I don’t see it!”

“Right there!” Clodchunk bellows, still pointing. “You can’t see that? Why, it’s huge!”

Wham-Bam gets down on his hands and knees, his rump in the air, his face practically in the fire. “I still don’t see it!” he yells.

"It's right - THERE!" grunts Clodchunk, shoving Wham-Bam's head into the flames which instantly singe off Wham-Bam's eyebrows. "Oh, sorry, Wham-Bam. I guess that was nothing but a big - dumb - rock . . . kind of like you."

Alarmed, Oonka hurls a gourdful of bite-bite juice at Wham-Bam’s head in an attempt to cool him down, but the alcohol, combined with the boars' fat and an errant spark, cause his hair to erupt in flames. Explosions can be heard for blocks. A second dousing of bite-bite juice only makes things worse for some reason.

Grinning, Clodchunk jerks a thumb in the direction of Wham-Bam’s smoking, bald head. “Now, that,” he boasts to Goon-Goon and Morsquat, “is how you build a fire!”

My Favorite Word is "Cup"

When I was married, my husband and I used to watch Inside the Actors Studio, talk show hosted by writer and actor, James Lipton. Lipton interviewed A-list actors, directors, and other high-profile theatre and film types. The show had a segment in which Lipton asked the guest a list of 10 questions. One of the questions Lipton always asked: “What is your favorite word?” 

Illustration by Teece Aronin

For some reason, every time Lipton asked the question, the word that leapt to my mind was “cup.” Yup, “cup.”

Lipton’s glitterati usually said things like “freedom,” “heroism,” “gratitude,” and “grace.” I always said, “Cup.”

            

When I confided this naively to my husband, the cupboard door slammed loudly on any chance I’d ever have to keep that information on the downlow. Even now, long after our divorce, he often brings it up and laughs as though there’s something weird about it.

But “cup” sounds good, and it feels good just to say it. “Cup.”

There is something immensely gratifying in the sound of the “hard C” used to say “cup.” Sometimes the hard C comes out sounding somewhat soft, but sometimes (and this I love) it is as crisp a sound as a knife tapping on pewter. I don’t know why that is; it just is.

            

Cups are little girls’ tea parties, a queen's high teas, and coffee-scented mornings in a cabin. There is the Stanley Cup, there are peanut butter cups, and there are loving cups, and what sweeter notion is there than cups that love?

            

Cups are round, little vessels filled with something warm. They are colorful, fragile, yet paradoxically durable. They are a ride at Disneyland. They are my abandoned childhood and the old age I secretly, sort of, almost look forward to. There are cupcakes, buttercups, and teacup poodles. Cups have their fingers in so many things, but mugs don't; they just can’t pull it off.

            

There are other even more left-of-center words that might appeal to someone whose favorite word is "cup," "cumquat," for instance, but even though it starts with a hard C sound, the word "cumquat" does nothing for me. There’s something mysterious and dangerous about the word “barista,” yet even though baristas work with cups every day, that word could never be my favorite. Canoodling is a hard C word I kind of like, but it can’t hold a candle to "cup."

            

So, that’s it. My favorite word is “cup.” Like my ex-husband, you probably think it’s weird. But I won't let that get me down, because there's also "in my cups," which is where I'm headed now.