Ms. Procrastination here, reporting to you mere minutes from deadline. We're sitting here, laughing and thinking of ways to pre-empt an assault on our good names. We're also sitting around, listening to the wind howl and trying to interpret the schizophrenic weather reports. One minute we're promised a Nor' Easter, the next a blizzard, and then a horrifying combination of the two. In fact, most of the reportsusing terms like convergence, and upper atmospheric disturbance sound like promos for The Perfect Storm. Right now it's just raining. I'm addressing this topic now, since whenever I write about something topical, things always change by publication date, rendering my column old news. In this case I hope I'm old weather.
Earlier in the day, when it was just misting out (San Francisco-ing), Bonnie and I drove to the end of the Boardwalk by the Henlopen Hotel to join dozens of cars lined up and staring at the ocean like it was a drive-in movie. We watched the waves crash majestically ashoretaking much of our beach away. As it started to look fiercer and fiercer I could have sworn I saw George Clooney's fishing boat climbing up one of the horrific swells.
Ah, to be back in Florida, where for residents there has been a terrible drought, but for visitors it's been heaven.
We've been visiting my parents in Sarasota for a week each February for several years now and we just got back from the annual trek. The drive's an ordeal, dining at Stuckey's, avoiding Cracker Barrels (we're still boycotting them for anti-gay hiring policies) and reading miles of ugly billboards for fireworks, South of the Border Motel and banning reproductive freedom. We improved the ride this year by buying doggy seatbelts. Snapped into little harnesses and clipped to the regular seatbelts, the boys can sit and lie down but no longer catapult into the front seat on short stops. Nonetheless it's a pretty long ride, what with everyone's bladder schedules. Once in the sunny South however, we had a wonderful week.
My father's routine consists of sleeping late, having breakfast, doing the N.Y. Times crossword, having lunch, napping, having cocktails, going out to dinner and complaining about his busy schedule. By Day Two, we had to take Valium to keep down with the pace.
While it's great fun to visit the parents and relate as adults something fairly inconceivable back when Lyndon Johnson was in the White House (gee, wouldn't you just love to see what that old Texas Coot would think of the new White House Texan???) it's also a little daunting. I mean why do adult children returning to the nest immediately revert to their inner (and sometimes outer) children. No matter how many Cosmopolitans I order at dinner, I always feel that my folks are watching to see if I eat my broccoli. The whole thing is so very back to the future.
And who can tell what era it is. Everything is so darned retro. I mean you wake up one day, there's a George Bush in the White House and page one of the Times announces bombs dropped on Saddam Hussein. My God, the 80s are back. With Santana in the Top 40 and Charlie's Angels at the movies it could even be the 70s. Then again, we're fixated on the 13 Days of the Cuban missile crisis, so it could be the Sensational Sixties. But wait! We're listening to Judy Garland (and watching the incredible Judy Davis TV performance!), and hearing John Ashcroft describe his views, so it's gotta be the 50s. How do I practice my yoga mantra of "being in the moment" when it's impossible to tell what moment it is? Is it any wonder they sell so much anti-anxiety medication?
Though Survivor is down under this season, Bonnie and I had our own version returning from down South. There's a sick "joke" circulating the internet about the ultimate Survivor scenario being four gay people driving a BMW through Georgia with a bumper sticker saying "Support Gun Control". Tell me about it. It came to mind on our ride back from Florida as we drove like hell through South Carolina in our rainbow-stickered Lesbaru Outback. Several cars made a point of passing and staring at us. Several other folks actually made obscene gestures. Oh. Dorothy, we're not in Rehoboth any more.
Most of the hostility involved unintelligible shouting or common slurs, but Bonnie and I had to give one fellow credit for inventive eye-hand coordination. He stuck his head out the window, made the V for victory sign with his hand and then proceeded to stick his tongue through the V and gesticulate. Oh my. We laughed so hard we practically drove off the road. But we kept driving. Fast. And it felt really, really great to get home.
Once here, we had to deal with this lunatic weather and an unfortunate aftermath of the tripBonnie's back was dreadfully achy from 18 hours in the car. This is where the problem of our reputations comes in.
Bonnie was bent over like Quasi Moto and moaning about her back as we visited friends earlier today. One of them suggested we try to massage her sacroiliac with this device they were given for just such a task. Well, here comes my buddy, eyes atwinkle, with the biggest damn electronic er, um, massager I've ever seen. You know, the kind generally advertised in the back of magazines, with pictures of folks using it on their necks but secretly thinking of other places it might prove useful. It looked like a cross between a giant electric car buffer and the Washington Monument. Whoa. The Terminator. You could enter Punkin Chunkin' and launch a gourd with it. And I have no doubt that these empathetic folks actually used the device in lieu of a chiropractor rather than in lieu of anything else. Nevertheless, we all stared at the thing and snickered.
So we buzzed Bonnie's back with it and she noticed a bit of relief (although I think it was the laughing and smirking that perked her up) so we took the device home. Once in the house, I stashed Mr. Massager out of sight and prepared for dinner guests.
Some time during the evening, everyone wanted to see Bonnie's now-finished bathtub tiling job, so we all trouped into the master bath for a look-see. It wasn't until our guests were safely back in the living room that I noticed the Terminator, on the bedroom nightstand, so conspicuous even Mr. Magoo wouldn't have missed it. Ohmygod. Short of running into the living room and telling everyone it was something the dog found in the back yard, what were my options? The chiropractic story, though true (I swear), sounded flimsy even to me, so I just skulked back into the room, looked to see if the guests were staring at us funny and went about making dessert.
When our company left, presumably to start the gossip phone tree ("so we were on the way to the master bath and you can't believe what....") Bonnie and I called the mechanical chiropractor's donors and we all had a good laugh.
So now, as I prepare to submit this missive to my editor, let me say that it's still raining and gusting. No snow yet, and luckily it seems headed for New York instead. It is, however, still raining. As for knowing where Michael J. Fox's DeLorean has taken us, the decades are still hopelessly garbled. Today's wonderful headline is "Bush to clarify Iraq policy." Ugh.
But on the matter of most importance, just let me say, if you've heard the intriguing rumors about my household, be curious no more. The official statement from Spin City Damage Control is clear: Let me assure you that the artifact spied on our nightstand was just something the dogs dug up in the backyard.
A national award winning columnist, Fay Jacobs is a regular contributor to Letters from CAMP Rehoboth.
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 11, No. 2, Mar. 9, 2001