Bowie-dog leaps up into the car. I close the hatch and climb behind the wheel.

“I’ll drive,” I tell her.

“I’ll pretend you’re doing a good job.” She crosses her legs.

We head to the bark park. The bark park is a place to run leash-free and sniff anything attractive. The dogs can do the same.

It is a sunny spring afternoon in April. It is, in fact, Good Friday. My wheels crunch the gravel as I pull into the parking lot, and at the far end I can see two sheriffs’ cars parked side by side, window to window, one facing in and one facing out. The cars appear to be whispering. Or mating, like earthworms. The cops could be swapping anything: launch codes, secrets, bodily fluids. It is both intimate and terrifying. A shaved organ-grinder could do this job of patrolling the park for windshields without stickers, but no, there are TWO Oakland County Sheriffs parked here in the cop-car equivalent of a sixty-nine, scanning the lot for the winner of today’s crucifixion. Those aren’t night sticks, they’re hammers.

I am not terribly alarmed by the ménage à cop because I have a park pass, but still I keep an eye out, in the same way a baby seal watches a killer whale. Just because a predator is well-fed does not mean he won’t bite. Just because he can. Or because his hammer slipped.

I have a park pass because I bought a park pass. There are three previous years’ worth of stickers pasted vertically up the left edge of my windshield parading my allegiance. I am a veteran. These are my flags.

I have a park pass, but… But it’s in the glove box. It is red, it is valid, but it is not stuck to anything except a few stray dog hairs.

See, my windshield is cracked. By applying simple logic, I assume I can just temporarily tape this red sticker to the inside of my windshield until I get the windshield replaced. Windshields in Southeast Michigan crack all the time. Driving through gravel-hauling country is not unlike driving through the Gaza Strip. Stoning is common. So is getting hit with rocks. And since the crack is way down below my field of vision, replacing the windshield is on my “Round To It” list. I’ll get around to it. And in the meantime, I’ll tape this (current, paid-for, red) sticker to the cracked windshield.

But logic, as it turns out, is silly of me.

I pull into a parking space well away from the cop cars, (no reason to poke the orca, I figure), and I tape the red sticker to the inside of my windshield at the top of the column of retired flags. (Of course I have cellophane tape. All law-breakers carry office supplies.)

I open my car door, and before I can even walk around to release Bowie-dog, one of the deputies, a female officer, hustles out of her car and hails me. She waves a flipper from 50 feet away and swims towards me.

“Do you have a pass?” She asks, approaching me in big brown horse strides. I was wrong. They’re not flippers, they’re hooves.

“I sure do.” I smile without rancor. I am righteous and in compliance. I’ve got my sticker. I can’t wait to show her. I lift my sunglasses up off my eyes so she can peer deeply into my innocence.

“I didn’t see any sticker,” she says, her mouth a slit of baleen. Obviously she was watching for my red park pass, or as I’m beginning to think of it, my bullfighter’s cape. She leans in and jangles something, possibly her bridle.

“It’s right here.” My eyes narrow, but I keep smiling. I am virtuous. I point to the sticker I just taped to the windshield. The red one. The one that’s valid for this whole year.

“Oh, no. That won’t do,” the officer shakes her head. Her blowhole shudders. “You have to take off the backing and affix it to the inside of your windshield.” She loves this word.

“But look here,” I say, rubbing my finger over the crack, still pretending she’s a rational person. “My windshield is broken and I need to replace it, so I don’t want to permanently affix the sticker.” When in Rome.

“You have to. You have to affix it to the windshield. Those are the rules.” Her tail flicks. A fly buzzes.

“Um, it’s cracked…” I try again and caress the wounded glass in case she missed it the first time. “And if I put the sticker on permanently, and then I get my windshield replaced…” I let the thought trail off, hoping that she at least graduated in the middle of her class.

“No.” She shakes her head and paws the ground with her hoof. Shoe. She’s probably wearing shoes.

She tilts toward me, breathing too hard. “You have to affix it to the inside of the windshield.” She tinks the jagged break with a raptor’s claw. I flinch. “Then when you replace the windshield, just scrape the sticker off with a razor blade and take the handful of slivers with you to the park office, and they’ll give you a new sticker.” She holds her hand in a little cup-shape, offering me an imaginary handful of insane sticker shards.

I look at her now, really look at her. Her hair is pulled back in a severe red ponytail. She’s about my age and about my height, but she’s “been rode hard.” I doubt she was ever “put away wet,” though, since this bitch has not been moist since the 1980s. I am trying hard not to think of her as the B-word, because in fact she’s rapidly moving down the alphabet to the C-word.

I tip my head and lower my voice.

“Does this make sense to you?” I say softly, and I rub my finger over the crack again, showing it tenderness after her late hit. “I paid for the sticker. If I just tape it now, then I don’t have to go through all that scraping. Later. During the abortion.” Okay, I don’t say that last part.

“Those are the rules. That’s what the park wants. For you to affix the sticker to your windshield. Those are the rules.” She again taps the fingers of one hand into the cupped palm of the other where the extruded fragments of a sticker miscarriage will weep. I want to offer her a sugar cube.

I’m thinking that she’s wrong, that’s not what the park wants. What the park wants is for me to buy a sticker. I did that. I’m thinking that she’s victim hunting. I’m thinking that she pees standing up.

I say one more time, very quietly, “And this makes sense to you?”

“Those are the rules.”

I want to tell her that segregation used to be a rule, that shoving Jews into ovens used to be a rule, that cunts like her couldn’t even have her job 30 years ago, because those were the rules. (Oh, she made it big-time to the C-word.)  I want to tell this dried-up piece of horse crotch to stop waggling her dick at me, but she is wearing a badge, a nightstick, and a gun, and I am out-numbered by her phallic symbols.

I look down very obviously at her name tag: Officer Sexton.

Of course it is.

I nod, put my sunglasses back down over my eyes, and swallow my venom. I turn back to my car, open the door, peel the backing off the red park pass, and af-fucking-fix it to the inside of my cracked windshield. Officer SexTongue snorts and cantors back to her car, her gait made more difficult by her erection. She greets the other deputy, a pink balding male, with a whinny. They hitch up their belts and share a “We nailed one!!” high-five. I slam the door too loudly which fuels their “Crucify-Him!” fever.

I am sucking air in my car, a raped baby seal. The predators don’t move. If I leave, I look guilty. If I stay, I look guilty.

I came here to walk my dog, dammit, and I’m gonna walk my dog.

I get out and open the hatch where Bowie-dog has been silent during my humiliation by Officer SexTaunt. I briefly wish Bowie were a rabid pit bull to whom I could whisper:  “That one. Leave no trace.” But no, Bowie is lovely and even-tempered. Useless.

We walk around the park. Well, she walks and I stomp around trying to burn off the adrenalin. It’s not working. Two or three laps do not even begin to dilute the toxic build-up from recent combat. This outing has been poisoned.

“We have to go,” I tell her, and I head for the gate.

“Already? Why??”

“Because killer whales blow!”

“Your metaphors are inconsistent!!”

“Don’t. Test. Me.”

I leash Bowie and put her back in the car. I have to drive by the killing field in order to escape the park. The cops are still leaning against their vehicles. I remotely wonder whether the Brillo Pads on their hairy ass cheeks ever scratch the paint. Officer SexTaint is awkwardly hand-jiving her fat partner, Deputy Pink-Blubber, an absurd sea horse throwing gang signs at a manatee. And as she lifts her left hand with a gesture straight out of “Vanilla Ice Runs the Derby,” I see the glint of a gold ring.

Just kill me. Officer Secretariat has a husband.

I bet he’s a rodeo clown. When he’s not blowing seals.

We leave. I drive. I am simmering with insults about Clydesdales and sperm whales. Half-way home Bowie says, “Don’t be hating.”

“It’s my birthright.”

Bowie-dog scratches her ear, smug with a secret.

“Did you ever put your new registration sticker on your license plate?”

I whip around at her. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Aren’t you driving with expired plates? Hasn’t your registration sticker been sitting in your glove box for six months now because ‘it’s cold outside’?”

I laugh. I laugh hard. I may have whinnied. I want to high-five Bowie-dog but she doesn’t have any thumbs.

“I owe you a high-four,” I tell her in the rear-view mirror.

“Giddy up.”

“Yippee-ki-yay…”

And we finish the swear together.

———

18 January 2015, “True Stories in the Key of E-flat”

 

(This was a wildly magical moment, even by Disney standards.)

 

We were nearing the end of our voyage to the bottom of the wallet. It was the 14^th hour of the 3^rd day, or possibly the 200^th. Our little family was Dopey and Sleepy and Alertness-Challenged despite the relentless bombardment of joy. (“Magic” is the Latin word for “crack,” and “Kingdom” means “You’re gonna need a bigger spending limit.”) Our feet were screaming from all the happiness, and we limped the final furlong of the hundred-aching woods, uphill, both ways.

Our little family had SQUEEEED! through seven dwarfs, two ducks, and a fairy (not that there’s anything wrong with that.) We had haunted a mansion and spaced a mountain. At least one of us had peed her pants in front of a princess (not that there’s anything wrong with that), and we had eaten our weight in funnel cakes. We were now hauling precious Mouse swag in gift bags the approximate size and shape of Dumbo, uphill, both ways. We. Were. Tired.

The final show of the day was about to begin, the title of which was spoken in an impossible combination of whispers and all caps: THE LIGHTING OF THE CASTLE! (Shhh…) I didn’t know whether this meant candles or arson, but at this point it didn’t matter. We were either going to finish this giddy marathon or die. THIS! IS! DISNEY!

We sit. Well, two of us sit. Kelsey and I miraculously find an unoccupied bench some distance from the final show. We can see the castle, but it’s on the horizon over a sea of bodies, like an electric Mayflower. We collapse and sip our coffee. (It is almost 10:00 p.m. This coffee tastes like the reason Moses left the Promised Land. It is MANNA, in all caps and a whisper.) We have been shooting up Disney heroin for three days. (Drink the Kool-Aid! It’s so happy!) Even the young people are hobbling after snorting this much excitement. We sit, and Vincent and Molly stumble off toward THE CASTLE (Shhh…) still holding hands and a ferocious belief in miracles. My adrenal glands can’t endure anymore anticipation, but the lovers want to be closer to the show so that they can hear the music. And the tourists’ heads exploding.

Kelsey and I are quiet, examining our phones as if they contained salvation, or, as an alternative, Motrin. We are almost peaceful despite being surrounded by 90,000 of our closest friends. We breathe in the lights and ignore the sound of whimpering (which is mostly coming from our feet.) The calm is shattered when Vince parts the crowd, his face fierce. An angry prophet.

“Open your bag,” he says. His voice is low, panicked.

“Da fu…?” I don’t enunciate the final consonant because of little Mouse ears.

“Da fu…?” Kelsey echoes, and opens her bag. Consonants fly everywhere.

“What are you looking for?” I scowl and tilt my head, a cartoon.

Vincent jams his hand impolitely into his cousin’s belongings. His face is a ruined mask.

“Molly lost her gift bag.”

Oh no.

If Disney does one thing very well, it’s making it easy to spend your money. There are shops at the beginning and end of every adventure. There are stores for dreams and stores for nightmares, and at every check-out they will take both your AmEx and your dignity with the same flawless smile. And Molly has spent a small college fortune on irreplaceable dangly things.

Oh no.

“We don’t have it.”

Vince runs back through the crowd to collect Molly, who I imagine is huddled at the base of THE CASTLE in a Biblical puddle of tears. Not knowing how to react (and not having nearly enough coffee to formulate an emotion), Kelsey and I stay on the bench and watch the LIGHTING OF THE CASTLE. No matter what disaster has just befallen us, this castle show has earned all of its whispers and capital letters. It is complex. It is astonishing. We sip our coffees and toast the Disney genius.

Vince and Molly break through the crowd toward us. Orphans at Ellis Island were not this miserable.

If Vincent’s face was ruined, Molly’s is a land mine. My guess is that she has cried throughout the LIGHTING OF THE CASTLE, possibly destroying several of the Magic Algorithms.

“We need to go to Guest Relations,” Vincent urges us, trying not to grieve.

“I want some guest relations.” I am an ass.

We get up and walk, or, more accurately, swim. We are schooling both with and against a million-mouse-eared crowd towards the exit of the park, Vince holding Molly’s hand, Kelsey and I holding our coffee cups. We carom back and forth, banging into shoulders and defeat. We are jostled by expectation. Liquids are jettisoned. We are zombie salmon. We may die.

“Let’s stop at the last store we were in,” Vince says, suggesting a miracle. “We’ll just check.”

Yeah, sure. And maybe there’s a burning bush in there, says my inner Detroiter.

We swim out of the throng and into Mickey’s Rugby Scrum, or whatever the shop is called, and three smiling Disney employees greet us.

“Welcome!”

“Welcome!”

“Welcome!”

Despite the fact that Vince and Molly look like they’ve just been waterboarded, the pressed-on happy paint of the Disney cast members never falter. (They are “cast members” not “employees.” And, after today’s performance, they are Oscar-worthy. Except… I’m not sure it’s an act.)

“What can I help you with?” the cast members chorus.

“This is probably a lost cause,” Vince begins, “but my girlfriend lost a gift bag.”

Molly breaks into fresh tears.

“And what was in it?” A cast member named Sarah glides to the front, unsinkable.

Molly bursts, rapid-fire: “A haunted mansion t-shirt, a bracelet with Tinker Bell danglies, a stuffed Sven, and an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot Mulan slingshot!”

“You’ll shoot your eye out, kid.” I am an ass.

“I will check in the back,” Sarah smiles and floats away.

This is a waste of time, says my inner White Trash.

“Couldn’t we just get some guest relations?” says my outer White Trash.

We pace in front of the glass displays awaiting the return of our sentence – death or life without a reason to live. We don’t buy anything, because now that seems dangerous. Anyone setting a bag down in a store might just as well have thrown it off a cliff. In Sparta. It is g-o-n-e.

I swallow the last cold dregs of my coffee and toss the cup in a nearby trash bin. (Littering here would be a war crime.) I turn around just in time to see Sarah Smiles opening a door in the back and carrying… a gift bag.

No.

Sarah holds the plastic blue gift bag aloft in two hands — Mufasa presenting Simba. “Is this it?” She almost sings it.

Molly’s eyes grow as big as tea cups.

No way.

Sarah lowers the bag. Molly’s tiny frame is shaking. She opens the bag slowly like it might contain either oxygen or terror.

“It’s here…. IT’S ALL HERE!” Molly inhales the fairytale.

Molly’s face falls apart, but in the good way, in the way of elation and miracles. It is wet and pained and happy, like a birth. Molly hugs Sarah Smiles. Sarah Smiles hugs Vince. A lot of people are crying, and most of them are us. A male Disney cast member wearing a right smart vest steps out from around the cash register.

“Hey, are we giving out free hugs?” His face wears the ‘aw-shucks, t’weren’t nothing’ glee of someone who found a baby in the well. “I saw you set the bag down.”

The young man opens his arms, and Molly crumples into them. Tears don’t even stain a Disney costume.

His name tag says “Scott” but it might as well say “Hero.” My inner skeptic goes quiet, and for just a moment, there is such a thing as magic.

“Someone found the gift bag,” I whisper to Vince.

“Yep,” he says, holding on to Molly to keep from floating to the ceiling.

“And they hung on to it.”

“Yep. Cast members.”

“And nobody stole it.”

“Nope.”

“And Tinker Bell is real.”

“Clap your hands if you believe.”

“I can’t. They’re full of tissues.”

We finish crying and hugging and wiping our faces. Magic is very salty.

We walk out to the car. I have been converted. I am humming, “Let it go, let it go…”

 

23 December 2014, Erin Waugh

“Disney World and the Magic Bag,” from “True Stories in the Key of E-flat.”

I had packages to mail. The postage was paid, the boxes were sealed. I had printed the address labels at my house, stuck them to flat-rate boxes with strapping tape (one cat hair per package! I don’t play favorites!), and driven to the post office.

It’s always a crap shoot at the post office, sometimes literally. You walk in and people shoot crap at you. This particular post office was in Pontiac, Michigan. Pontiac – that beat-down city whose motto is: “We used to make cars. Now it’s just enemies and tacos.”

The post office building sat too close to a busy and broken thoroughfare. I would not have found it except for Google Maps. The architecture was vintage “bullet-proof.” The building stood invisible and disinterested between pawn shops and liquor stores and specialty businesses like “STD Contracting” (that’s a real name). Sometimes a post office is staffed by the nicest people. Sometimes it’s an episode of Thunderdome. At Christmas, a trip to the post office is like visiting the DMV with a pack of rabid toddlers.

I was in a cheery holiday mood. My packages were labeled and paid for. They were ready. I SHOULD have been able to just drop them in a big blue bin somewhere. Murrica! I walked into the post office with a smile. I looked around. No blue bin. No self-service kiosk. Huh. The room was dark. It was echo-y. It smelled like crying.

I wasn’t sure what to do. I assessed the ground troops and gauged the readiness of their ordnance. There were seven customers in line and two “workers” behind the counter. Everyone in line had boxes with blank labels and incomplete envelopes. I stood behind all these unprepared soldiers, which didn’t make any sense because my weapons were READY, but I didn’t see another option.

“Well this is dumb,” I thought to myself, but the whole sentence rhymed with “suck.”

One minute. Three. The line moved up when one woman stepped to the counter and BEGAN to fill out her forms. I rattled my VERY READY packages. I breathed a yoga breath. I made up new limericks.

Finally, in an audible but well-modulated voice, I asked the room, “Is there a place I could drop off my packages? They’re ready.”

The “workers” behind the counter didn’t even flinch. They never even moved, never looked up. It’s possible they were made of some NASA-grade polymer designed primarily to be deaf. The customers in line, however, began to jostle. The first customer, a bearded man in a Carhartt jacket, tried to calm the ranks. He turned to me kindly.

“You could set them there,” he pointed to an empty counter. “They will mail them later, as long as you get their attention.”

“Get their attention? With what?” I held up my boxes like they were orphans. Or bombs.

The line people grew more agitated. The second woman whipped her braids around at me. “You SAID it, sister. It’s like we don’t even exist.” She flapped her mail at a water stain in the ceiling. The squirrels outside ran away.

Customers #3 and #4 flicked their eyes at me and nodded, prisoners about to break. Woman #5 did that neck thing and sing-song’d, “Um hmm.” The rabble was rousing, but the two post office workers did not acknowledge us. They were highly focused on the very important task of ignorance. Zoo animals with pensions.

I pointed toward the slow loris twins and whispered to my fellow inmates: “If we poked them with sticks, would they bite?”

The general population giggled a little, backing down from “disgruntled.” Woman #2 crossed her arms and muttered “Customer service, my Aunt Fanny.” She stomped her foot and made the sign of Wayne Brady.

We outnumbered them, yet we were helpless. Our shared struggle made us teammates, but our impotence made us useless. We shrugged and gave in as a village. We tucked away our pitchforks.

“I’ll take them,” said the man directly in front of me.

“I don’t know, I think they’ll fight back. The one on the left looks scrappy.”

“No, your packages. I’ll take them up to the counter with me when it’s my turn.”

He was young, serious, maybe 30. Beat-up blue parka, work boots, good hair slicked back with Dippity-Do. White skin, almost translucent from rare outdoor time. Not a hipster, poor.

“You’ll carry these?” I looked down at my packages. “Up there?” I looked up at the sluggish feeding frenzy.

“I will. When it’s my turn.” His grin was lopsided, his teeth were perfect.

I should have tipped him, but I was delirious from renewed holiday cheer, so I grabbed his arm and knocked his package to the floor. It’s how we show joy in the city.

“Thank you!” I beamed and handed him my boxes. “I hope you’re not a terrorist!”

“Me too!” His really good hair fell into his eyes despite the gel.

The townsfolk smiled.The slow lorises scratched their necks with their hind legs.

“Merry Christmas, everybody!” I waved to my new, freed, family.

“Merry Christmas!” They gestured with their packages, not even jealous, and not even a euphemism.

In conclusion, I have a favor in my pocket. And it is ready.

 

“True Stories in the Key of E-flat” 14 December 2014

 

The Chemistry of Rabbit Season

When I was a tween, somebody brought me six baby bunnies. We didn’t have the word “tween” back then, but I was somewhere between young and old, meaning I was half kid and half bitch. You remember those years? Lasted about three decades?

But this story isn’t about me. It’s about raising babies. From scratch. And whether some people should be parents or not.

When I say “somebody brought me baby bunnies” what that really means is this: some little neighbor kid whispered to my younger brother: “Hey, your sister’s old and smart. Let’s show her this thing we found.” I don’t know WHICH little neighbor kid it was. They all looked alike: buzz cut, bruised knees, shirtless. It was summer, so they’d all been playing outside 16 hours a day. The lesions from their sunburns had almost healed.

This kid, let’s call him “Kevin,” Kevin peeked his dirty face into my bedroom door one morning. He was terrified of my maturity, but he was made brave by the five or six clones who shadowed him, a comet trail of identical Kevins fidgeting behind him in the hallway. Kevin and his column of Kevins had justification for their terror. My sister and I were deep inside a discussion about the relative comedic value of Bugs Bunny versus Daffy Duck when we were interrupted. And, according to Kevin, it was rabbit season.

The words tumbled out of him fast like he’d been saving them up.

“There’s a pile of baby bunnies. The mother is dead. She got hit by a car. You should come quick.” Then Kevin scratched his ear with his hind foot.

The old-bitch in me scowled at the audacity of this intrusion, but the young-kid in me was desperately curious. The kid won. I got up and put shoes on.

Kevin and his trail of Kevins led me down a dirt road that sliced through woods on each side. The main Kevin pointed to a mangled place in the grass. He veered right and parted the reeds. Under the weeds was a cluster of baby bunnies.

“Well, shit,” I declared wisely. Six Kevins tried not to giggle.

The bunnies were tiny – walnuts with ears. There were six of them huddled together in a grass bowl. They were covered with what I determined to be rabbit fur (I was so wise!). Their eyes were open, but just barely. It was a snugly armload of cute. Or tragedy. Depending.

“Where’s the mother?” I asked, scanning the deserted road.

Five of the Kevins shrugged. The main Kevin pointed vaguely along the length of ditch into the sunlight. We both squinted.

“Did you actually SEE her?” Six Kevins shook their heads and stared at the ground.

My first great act of wisdom was deciding whether or not to assume the mother was gone forever. My second great act of wisdom was how to get the bunnies back to my house. (I ignored the first act. OF COURSE I was going to take them home. LOOK AT THEM! The bunnies were incalculably hypnotic. They were an abundance of “aw.” I was as helpless as if the Kevins had found gold.)

I picked up one baby. It was warm and wiggly and bumpy with young bones. The bunny did not squeal exactly, but it did peep. If the mother was nearby, she should have been able to hear this. I scanned the ditch.

Nothing.

I made the impossible declaration that these babies were orphans.

I assigned each Kevin the privilege of carrying one bunny back to my house. The Kevins did not squeal exactly, but they did peep. (For the rest of their lives these men-not-boys would tell the story of this important task, of their volunteerism to “help that older girl down the street,” without ever once mentioning how their young faces gushed with tenderness the moment they palmed a baby bunny.) I led the parade home and sent the Kevins on their way.

Now what.

Good grief, now what. What do you DO with a pile of baby bunnies??

Google was a thousand years in the future. The only way we could “look things up” was to ask a parent or to go to the library (although I had no idea what you did once you GOT to the library. Ask another parent?) Our family owned a set of Encyclopedia Britannicas, but the only thing I ever studied in those heavy books were the color overlays of human anatomy. (Is that a nipple??)

I clicked in my head through snippets of knowledge gleaned from years of watching wildlife documentaries. Aha! All I needed was an eyedropper and some milk. There were four Waugh kids and at least six Kevins at our house. We always had milk. And the eyedropper? My father had five junk drawers labeled “miscellaneous.” I had faith. These babies would live!

I filled up a glass with milk and carried it to the make-shift “pen” (a cardboard box lined with a towel pilfered from the “rag bag”). I sucked milk up into the eyedropper and lowered the tip to one bunny’s mouth. I squirted the milk. It went everywhere. It went up the bunny’s nose. It dripped on his ears. Milk flew onto the fur of every bunny in the box. They writhed at my ineptitude for mothering. I realized that the milk was cold and likely unpleasant. (Are you in, genius?)

Back upstairs. I slammed the glass of milk into the microwave. (We may not have had internet yet, but we had a prehistoric microwave that ran on gerbils.) I heated the milk to “wrist temperature” and headed back downstairs. This time I was careful. Each bunny licked the end of the eyedropper with his adorable pink tongue like it was mother’s milk. From a cow.

The bunnies were ravenous. One drop, another drop, six drops. Back to the beginning of the line. The bunnies started climbing over each other. I couldn’t get to each mouth fast enough. This was taking too long.

Wait a second… GRASS!! Bunnies eat grass! Deep in my compendium of wildlife facts I remembered that rabbits as a species were particularly precocious. They “grew up” fast. Maybe I could supplement their diet with grass!!

I raced outside. I ran around plucking different kinds of grass from the edge of the house: long grass, short grass, fat grass, thin grass. Some of each! They shall want for nothing!

I baled my little harvest into a fat tuft and dropped it into the bunny box. They loved it! The bunnies gnawed mouthfuls of grass. Long, short, fat, thin. Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw. A bunny eats grass long ways, sucking it up like a Disney dog eating spaghetti. Unless they’re starving, in which case they eat grass in every direction, like a real dog eating spaghetti. Like maybe Shrek.

They ate their fill and got sleepy, as all babies do. By now it was full dark. I left a few strands of grass in the box so they could snack during the night. I put a lid on their cardboard home and made myself a sandwich, satisfied. I went to bed, worn out from feedings.

I got up the second day to find the six babies making starving sounds, peeping, scrabbling, and crawling on top of each other. Every single morsel of grass was gone. I went outside and plucked up more grass, long, short, fat, thin. I dropped it in the box. Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw. Repeat. Bunnies eat a lot! I abandoned the eyedropper altogether figuring that what they really needed to grow strong was more grass. Pluck, toss, gnaw. Bedtime. Exhaustion.

I woke up the third day and found five of the bunnies making starving sounds. The sixth bunny was jittering back and forth. His whole body was shaking. The sixth bunny would not eat. I fed the five. Pluck, gnaw, bedtime.

I got up the fourth day to find two bunnies making starving noises, three bunnies shaking uncontrollably, and one bunny dead.

On the fifth day, four bunnies were dead and two were on their sides, jittering, dying.

“Well, shit.” Nobody giggled.

Here’s what you don’t know, and what had just occurred to me: I had just poisoned six baby bunnies. I didn’t mean to. I was just doing my job.

My “job” as a tween in the 1970s was to rid our home of ants. Ants were allowed to live outside the house, but not in. This was a reasonable détente that the ants unfortunately never agreed to. Our house was next to an enormous woods and we ate cereal, therefore we had ants. The way we kept ants out of our Cap’n Crunch was to spray the perimeter of the house with a chemical called “chlordane.” You sprayed this toxin on the seams around the outside of your house. You know… where the grass grows long? Short, fat, thin? Chlordane would kill the ants by disrupting their nervous systems. I guess by now you can connect the dots, or in this case, the baby bunnies. All the way to their communal grave in the woods.

And when I say that YOU sprayed the perimeter, I mean, of course, that I sprayed the perimeter. With nerve toxin. Me. That was my job. And it worked. Really, really well.

It was sad. It was horrifying. It was avoidable. Except that it wasn’t. If the mother rabbit hadn’t disappeared, if the Kevins hadn’t found the nest, if my father had not owned an eyedropper, if stupid ants didn’t try to invade our stupid Crunch Berries. If the bunny hadn’t stopped to bark at the moon.

“Survival of the fittest” dictates that two of the babies would have been eaten by hawks, two would have been ravaged by feral cats, and one would have been hit by a car and then pecked to shreds by a vulture. Nature is miserable, man. I knew that. I’d seen the encyclopedias.

But I’m not nature. And it shouldn’t have been me killing bunnies.

Then I realized that, yes, I was absolutely nature.

Bugs Bunny and bowls of cereal are part of the circle of life. Ants, grass, Kevins, and baby rabbits. The circle of life includes a circle of grief, and sometimes the circle shakes apart. It just does, and sometimes you’re the one holding the snow globe. It is Duck Season and it is Rabbit Season. Both. Always.

That’s all, folks.

 

28 August 2014

 

 

 

 

Marching Band Fish – Gorp, Part 1
[reprinted from 4 December 2011]

I have this goldfish who keeps pretending to kill himself. Well, today it actually happened.

At 5:30 this morning, like every Sunday morning for what feels like 2000 years, I gimped out of my bedroom at the crack of miserable and lurched like a zombie toward the coffee maker as if it contained life-giving brains. (It does!). And I nearly stepped on Marching Band Fish’s silent body.

“Oh no. Oh, dammit, Fish.”

The burn from the tears in my eyes surprised me.

“What the hell are you DOING down there, Fish?” I asked him inanely, my lip quivering, my heart sideways.

Why did he have to leap all the way out this time?

(And why was I getting worked up over a stupid fish?!?)  

Because he was MY fish. And he was sprawled out on the carpet at my feet. Fish are just wrong on the carpet.

“Dammit, Fish.”

Fish had been my reliable if absurd companion for three-and-half-years. I “won” Fish out of a centerpiece at a marching band banquet (thus, the name) when The Boy was still in high school. Fish had lived in four different houses with me. He had been transported (without complaining) in a sealed Ziploc bag back and forth to two different states. Fish was a survivor! Yet here he was lying on the floor in a hideous juxtaposition, a wet goldfish on a scratchy carpet. It was an illogical composition. The space made no sense. My art teacher would have called it “contrived.”

“Dammit, Fish.”

I looked up to see my cat Tweak perched on the back of the couch surveying the desecration.

“You couldn’t have DONE something??”  I asked her, shaking my head. “You couldn’t have at least come and GOT me when Fish leaped out of the tank?” Tweak licked a front paw and ignored me.

“Wait a second… Did YOU have something to do with this???” I yelled and inspected her face for fish scales. Tweak scowled at me like I’d gone insane, and I realized that the cat had no culpability. Tweak has no more interest in Marching Band Fish than she has in a “Dawn of the Dead” movie. I turned back to examine the warp in the morning.

“Dammit, Fish.”

Despite my peculiar sorrow, I had practical matters to consider. I faced the terrible decision of what to do with the body. Do I flush him down the toilet? No, that was ugly. Plus, what if he was too big and clogged everything up? I really didn’t have time to un-stick a fished-up commode. Fish stick. (Stop it!)

In the trash? No, too heartless. Besides, that smell would haunt me. Probably forever. You can’t tuna garbage can. (Seriously, stop it.)

How about outside? I believe in recycling and letting nature do her thang, because certainly worms are better equipped than Febreze at tackling decay, but do I toss him out the front door or out the back? This was not trivial. Out the front and the neighbors might see me and judge me, but out the back and Fish could rot into a mass of fragrant flesh that would summon Bowie-dog like, well, stink on a fish. This decision blew chunks. Solid, white chunks. (You should be put down.)

I was running out of time. I was cranky, uncaffeinated, and getting later for work by the minute. Still undecided, I stomped into the kitchen and grabbed a paper towel to wrap Fish in until I could determine his final resting place, when suddenly he gorped.

What. The. Fish.

I stared. Did his little fish lips just move?? I rubbed my eyes (I literally did this, just like in the movies), and looked down again at his shiny pink body.  It was lifeless. Flat. Still. Maybe the gorp was just gas escaping like in those urban legends where the body suddenly sits up in the morgue and squeals, but it turns out to be just some gastric combustion.

I looked harder, and I saw Fish blink. Or, not blink, exactly, because fish don’t have eyelids but… twitch. His eye twitched. No, his eye SHOUTED. It was like the Whos on Horton’s clover. The tiniest “yop” escaped through Marching Band Fish’s eye.

“No way.”

I picked Fish up by his tail with my bare fingers (paper towel be damned!) and laid him in the tank. He swam, lips-up. No, not “swam.” He kind of bobbed, floating in the water like a Goodyear blimp, but long-ways, his tail pointing down toward the rocks, his face to the ceiling. His eyes bugged out at me, startled about birth. He looked silly. And stupid. And alive. His lips gorped once, then twice.

“No way.”

Cat hair stuck to his sides. He was a Chia fish. His eyes shouted again, and his lips gorped more rapidly. Finally one gill, then both gills flapped, sloughing off cat hair and rug fuzz into a halo of freedom. I sort of wanted to lint-roll him, but I didn’t want to impede his resurrection. After several minutes of bobbing face up like a retarded Vienna sausage, he twisted to right himself, re-orienting to his more normal… fish.

Marching Band Fish has never been a particularly attractive specimen: plain-shaped, nearly colorless, with zero distinguishing marks. Not even a tattoo. He is a child’s drawing of a fish if a child had only the poorly-named “Flesh” crayon. But here he was, swimming lopsided, one fin moving slower than the other like the punch line of a “my foot was nailed to the floor” joke, his crooked body spiraling inside an aurora of cat hair and slime. And at that moment he was beautiful.

“Fish, you magnificent son of a bitch.” The tears ran down my smile.

I had no choice but to go to work and leave him to his tepid physical therapy, but here it is some 15 hours later and Marching Band Fish is still alive. He is swimming straight and sucking rocks and reintroducing himself to the scuba diver on the left every three minutes just like old times. Looking in on Fish just now, I think I saw him grin. Or maybe it was just gas.

 

Erin Waugh — 4 December 2011

 

Love Smells Like Crayons.

[Reprinted from 14 July 2009]

 

I was attending a church study group, but it was not at a church. A handful of us had gathered on a Monday night in a friend’s living room in a northern suburb of Detroit. The living room faced west and opened out over a lake through two enormous picture windows. The view of swans and sky and possibility was dazzling. Michelangelo would go silent here.

It was high summer. The days were long and the sunsets were longer. Despite the beauty, I was fidgeting because I was, well, alive. The group was debating the pros and cons of “patient endurance” (I was leaning toward “against it”) when the doorbell rang.

I leaped up to answer the door. It wasn’t my house, but leaping up for any flimsy reason is something at which I am gifted.

There was a man at the door. This house was in a remote location, down a long winding driveway through the woods to the lake. Anyone who came all the way to the door had to be determined. To do SOMETHING. If he was here to kill me, I had gone out with a beautiful view. If he was selling cookies, I would fetch my wallet. If he was a missionary of some kind, I would tell him he was preaching to the piano player.

The man was dressed in a t-shirt and shorts. He was about my age, about my size. Dark skin, dark hair, Latino. He was carrying nothing.

“Hi. I live across the lake,” he said, pointing, “and I couldn’t help but notice that people have been putting motorized boats into the lake from your easement out back. And see, we have some rules about…”

Damn, no cookies. And this sounds official. I’d better go get someone who knows something.

“Okay, hang on. You need to talk to Ben who owns this place,” I said. “I’ll go get him,” and I started to close the door. Then my inside voice yelled at me for my poor social skills and I apologized to the stranger. “I’m sorry. Come on in.” I smiled and motioned for him to follow me.

“So, what’s your name?” I asked, leading him down the hall.

“Ray. Ray Rosales.”

I halted mid-step. He nearly crashed into me.

I shook my head. Nah, couldn’t be. That’s a common enough name. I started walking again.

“Huh. I knew a Ray Rosales once. Where did you grow up?”

“Detroit.”

Full stop. No way. This is ludicrous. I spun and faced him. The right age, the right size, the same pretty caramel-colored skin… I wanted to sniff him.

“Where in Detroit?” My eyes narrowed and I dared him to answer correctly.

“Near Eight Mile Rd.”

My heart forgot to beat and I couldn’t swallow. I stuck out my hand to cover the fact that I was having a stroke.

“I’m Erin Waugh.”

“Erin…” he breathed. And his shoulder fell against the wall.

There’s that risk that you will say your name, and the other person will hear… crickets. And maybe you will try to nudge their recollection: “Don’t you remember when we…?” and the guy will say, “You’re a crazy person. Leave me alone.” But not this time. No, astonishingly, a real-live memory was staring back at me, as stunned as a deer on Eight Mile. Ray Rosales, the first “love of my life,” was standing in a hot hallway with me. And, judging by the way he was recovering, he remembered.

Ray Rosales had been my very first crush when I was 10 years old. My family lived in Detroit in the late 60’s just south of Eight Mile Road, and Ray and I attended Bow Elementary School. Ray lived one street over and he, like all the neighborhood kids, visited the Waughs’ “Kool-Aid House” every single day. (A “Kool-Aid House” is that one house on the block where the mom has a seemingly endless supply of snacks and drinks and “patient endurance,” and all the kids in the neighborhood know it and they swarm there like adorable leeches.) Ray Rosales and I rode bikes and played on the swings and fought with our little brothers.

At least that’s what we did in public.

Ray and I were also, as fifth-graders, both conveniently appointed to be on something called “Attendance Duty.” Or maybe it was “Pencil Sharpening.” Or “You Clean My Eraser, I’ll Clean Yours.” The details of this assignment were immaterial. What DID matter was that once a week, Ray Rosales and I had to collect some important thing from Mrs. Sullivan and, even more opportunely, had to deliver this important thing to an empty art room on the first floor. By ourselves. Together. To an empty art room on the abandoned first floor. I don’t know why it took two of us to deliver this important thing.

Well, maybe I do.

It was behind a desk in that darkened, unsupervised, adult-free art room, that Ray Rosales kissed me. My first kiss ever. A lot. Many. I liked it. A lot. To this day the smell of Crayolas makes me dizzy. And makes me stop in hallways so that people crash into me. Right there in that art room Ray Rosales and I pledged our undying love and vowed to get married and have two babies named Ian and Esperanza to satisfy our ethnic diversity.

But it was not to be. My father was transferred out of Detroit shortly after that art-room kiss (kisses, plural; the two of us volunteered for this terribly difficult assignment for weeks on end), and my family moved to Ohio. I had not seen Ray Rosales since I was 10 years old when we were both giddy with the responsibility of “some important thing,” yet here he was decades later, miraculously, leaning against a wall in a house in Michigan looking like he was trying hard not to get caught by Mrs. Sullivan.

I summoned my Christian virtue and invited him into the picture living room. The group was friendly and we all sat and chatted with Ray, looking out over the lake, trying to discuss the original reason for his visit, namely the invasion of zebra mussels and the introduction of, I don’t know, typhoid or something. I had sort of stopped listening. Ray kept losing track of his own story and turning to me with that 10-year-old’s smile.

“Hey, remember when I pushed you on the swing and you fell off?”

“Remember when we told your little brother to ‘go get lost,’ and he did?”

And the one he didn’t say: “Remember how crayons smell like desire?”

I know you’re wondering, so… Ray Rosales is married, has no kids, and is a tool and die maker in Warren. And, yes, he’s still cute as hell (and has all of his floppy black hair!). He lives right across a picture window from some friends of mine in Lake Orion, Michigan, in the same town as me, where, as the sign says, “Living Is a Vacation.” And sometimes a flashback.

I gave Ray Rosales my card and he gave me his phone number, and we will probably never see each other again.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go color.

14 July 2009

 

Rescuing the Busters by Erin Waugh, 16 December 2010

[This is a reprint from December 2010, but the fact that we still brutalize “pets” with impunity is just as valid.]

Part 1 – Buster Has a Very Bad Day, or a Good One  

The back story: on Tuesday, 14 Dec 2010, Bowie-dog and I went for a hike. This is something we did nearly daily; we were veteran trail-walkers. Even though it was not properly legal, Bowie ran on the trails leash-free, and so did I. It was bright winter day in Cincinnati, sunshiny and 16°, and we crunch-crunched happily up the hill through the snow.

“Bring it!” sang the rhythm of my two feet.

“Bring it! Bring it!” echoed the rhythm of her four.

“COME NO FURTHER!!” barked some vicious cur in the brush up ahead.

We stopped. That’s what you do when animals hurl Monty Python dialogue at you. But only for a second. I could tell that the barking was more tragic than aggressive. We crunch-crunched closer. There, under some frost-encrusted branches, was the source of the warning. This was no Black Knight. It was a terrified young pit bull protecting his newly-created “nest” with every ounce of energy left in his mangled body, which, judging by the emaciated look of him, was about 23 calories worth. His short coat was red and white, at least where it was not ruined by poorly-healing fighting scars. The insides of both back legs were feverish pink with urine mange. The white part of his left eye was angry red, the result of a choking injury. He appeared to have about 2000 ribs, all of which were quivering in the extreme cold and working hard to summon the last of his remaining barks to keep us out of the only thing he owned – these two square feet of matted brush. The energy expenditure of having to make any more noise was going to starve him to death. I backed up so he wouldn’t die of “famine from barking.”

“Son. Of. A. Bitch.” I said, throwing my hands up in the air, inadvertently yanking my Bowie. Fortunately I had not yet liberated Bowie-dog from her leash. Because Bowie is an extremely well-mannered dog, she did not feel the need to point out the fact that I was cursing quite rabidly to no one. And that I was also NOT making any forward progress on her normal run-and-shit-through-the-woods jaunt that she so looks forward to.

I pulled Bowie back away from the very frightened “Buster.” Somehow I had already named the pit bull. The pathetic red dog was now “Buster,” and Buster was still barking at us to get the hell away from his igloo of bent branches, even as he peed all over himself.

Me: “I have turkey jerky in my car.”

Bowie-dog: “Of course you do.”

Me: “And we’re going back to fetch some for Buster.”

Bowie: “Can I have jerky?”

Me: “No.”

Bowie: “Why? Buster is not even your dog.”

Me: “He is right now.”

I opened the bag of turkey jerky and walked back toward Buster’s lair. He barked. “STAY AWAY!” That hole in the brush was all he had. That, and some bright pink injuries on his face that were beginning to ooze. I threw a piece of jerky on the ground in front of him. He barked, sniffed, bent down, barked, gobbled. He barked even as he ate it. I think I heard him mutter under his breath, “Holy shit, this is good.” I threw another piece in the brush. I knew the jerky was way too salty for a dog, but in this emergency I was not going to worry about Buster’s kidneys.

I needed help. Buster was terrified and starving and injured. I couldn’t coax him out of his safe place, not even with jerky. And even though Bowie-dog is a gentle bear of a girl, Buster didn’t know that. Frightened, cornered animals are unpredictable. And his jaws still worked. And I was very fond of my fingers. I was generous, but not foolish.

I found the number for the SPCA on my phone, called. Tried to describe where we were. Good grief. I had NO IDEA where we were! We were at the beginning of a trail in a giant park. I did my best to tell the phone operator how to find us, and she promised a truck would be out there. Some time. Eventually.

I couldn’t just walk away from Buster’s hidey-hole. Someone else coming upon him might react to a barking pit bull with an abundance of hostility. And possibly ammo.

And another awful thought: what if a child came by? Or a smaller dog without Bowie’s wealth of charm? I couldn’t risk it. We had to stay.

Did I mention it was 16°?

We were dressed for the weather (especially Bowie-dog in her pimp fur coat), but we were dressed for MOVING. Standing around in the cold makes your toes brittle. And your attitude. And Bowie-dog was getting antsy.

Bowie: “Why aren’t we walking?”

Me: “Because we’re in a small crisis.”

Bowie: “Does it involve me?”

Me: “It does now.”

I ran out of jerky. Buster was so hungry that I think I could have fed him the entire turkey from “A Christmas Story” and he would still have room for mashed potatoes. I dug around in my car some more. I found an old box of shortbread cookies under the passenger seat. They were stale. Buster did not notice.

Bowie: “Those probably aren’t good for him.”

Me: “You want one?”

Bowie: “Yeah.”

Three hours. Three hours after the first phone call, three hours of pacing and placating and freezing and watching the sun sink lower. Three hours later the SPCA truck finally found us.

The driver was a quiet but sure young man named Brandon. Brandon was dressed in winter gear and a halo. Brandon spoke in the kind of low voice that might summon angels. Using only treats from his pocket and an obvious kindness that radiated from his eyes to his Timberlands, Brandon sweet-talked Buster out of his hidey-hole. Somehow Brandon calmly convinced Buster that coming out was better than staying in there. Brandon could have coaxed Bin Laden out of a cave. This kid was g-o-o-d.

Once released into the sunshine, the violence that had been visited upon this dog was breathtaking in its brutality. The dog was young. Months instead of years. Every limb was battered. His face was a hashtag of wounds. His skin hurt.

Me: “What happens now?”

Brandon: “I will take him to the shelter.”

Me: “And then what?”

Brandon looked down at Buster then at me: “And then, we’ll see.”

And he smiled. Sort of.

Bowie-dog and I headed home, drove through a car wash, and cried.

 

————————————————————–

 

Part 2 – What Happened to Buster?

I drove to the SPCA the following day to find out. I walked up and down the gauntlet of caged dogs. Oh, friends, do not take this stroll casually. Bring an anti-emotion shield. And a tissue. And possibly a gas mask. With the exception of a Romanian orphanage set down in the war zone of Darfur, this is one of most tragic walks of shame a human should endure. I cried past a hundred unwanteds. When I could breathe.

Our Buster was not in any of the cages, so I went to the front desk and spoke with a truly lovely woman named Carrie. I described Buster’s ordeal from the day before and showed her his picture on my phone. Carrie examined some paperwork, but I got the feeling she didn’t have to. She told me that Buster, or Dog #159 as he was known now at the SPCA, was “in the back” and would be held for five days … until. And the room got quiet. And Carrie smiled. Sort of.

“Pit bulls are illegal in Cincinnati,” she told me, not really wanting to say it. We looked at each other.

“In the back” meant that Buster was in the hospital part of the shelter. After five days, if Dog #159 was well enough to be put “in population” (by the way, Dog #159 was only five months old!!), the vet will determine what to call him, by which I mean, what BREED. See, she (the vet) can choose to call him a “terrier mix” or some other less inflammatory name besides the dreaded PIT BULL. And it was obvious that she HAD done so for other dogs, since, as I had cried through the cages earlier, there were dogs up for adoption that clearly had some (wink, wink) “Staffordshire Terrier” in them.

Is any ONE dog savable? Even a poster-child dog like Buster?

I don’t know. (Although I’m pretty sure Buster himself was rather grateful). But I recognize that the problem is so much bigger. Maybe (maybe?) we can make a difference by helping the system as a whole. I looked around at the under-staffed office and the crowded cages and the toxic ammonia smell (it’s visible) and I wished I were Bill Gates. Or at least Melinda. The SPCA, which stands for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, is an extraordinary organization, but the work they do is like trying to stop gang wars with lollipops. And not even Blow Pops. But, like, Dum Dums, mystery flavor.

Fact is, they need money. So… maybe THAT’S what there is to do. Unless you can adopt all the unwanteds (and you can’t ‘less you wanna wind up on an episode of “Hoarders” and please… please don’t do this. Cuz then I’d have to come rescue YOU and take pictures of your nasty house, and your family would sue me for slander, and then I’d lose my computer and THAT CAN’T HAPPEN!!)

Maybe what we CAN do is send money to the places that CAN help, maybe the SPCA. Or any other organization that truly tries to help the abandoned and savaged creatures that we care so much about. Except when we don’t. It’s that old adage: “I can’t do it, but WE can.”

So, that’s my tail. Tale. Buster’s story. Did he survive this violent ordeal? I do not know. Was Buster the only dog that suffered this particular brand of wickedness? Hell, Buster wasn’t even the only dog THAT DAY to have been brutalized and dumped in a freezing public park. And that’s just in MY city. What’s happening in yours?

We love our critters. That was evidenced by the outpouring of kindness by every one of you who read the original posts of Buster’s rescue on my Facebook wall (in 2010). It moved you. It moved me to curse into the sunshine and cry inside a car wash. (That was weird, by the way. Try it.) But the job is bigger than us as individuals. So we ask organizations to do collectively what we cannot accomplish singly.

I can’t, but WE can.

This story is not about pit bulls. It’s not even about one dog. It’s about cruelty and the human condition. Maybe, by enlisting the help of the SPCA, we can feed, house, and warm Buster and all the Busters in our neighborhoods who are howling at people to “COME NO FURTHER!” because they don’t know how good a hug feels, even on an open wound.

Give to the SPCA. Merry Christmas.

(Also, please spay or neuter your pets. And possibly anyone who is cruel to animals.)

 

Erin Waugh

16 December 2010

 

 

 

Yesterday morning I watched these three human snapshots unfold in rapid succession in a strip mall parking lot:

 

1. A woman returning to her car from Panera, coffee in one hand, bagged pastries in the other. She was about 60, well-dressed, thin, summery. She unlocked the passenger door, set the goods inside. She walked behind the car, opened the hatch, and retrieved her blue leather purse. She click-clicked the doors again, got in and drove away. Her car had been parked in the first handicapped spot the entire time. My soul caught fire.

 

2. Another woman, markedly overweight, maybe 45, walking to her car. It was a struggle for her. I could tell that her knees and maybe her hips hurt. She was also well-dressed, but for work. She was parked all the way at the end of the lot. My sense was that she had parked that far away on purpose, that by adding steps to her day she might burn a few extra calories, strengthen her legs. She could walk, so she did. My soul smiled.

 

3. A Dodge Charger roared into that same first handicapped spot that the first driver had abused. Orange. Shiny. A big-ass muscle car. I was ready to pick a fight. The passenger door opened. A woman of about 50 got out and walked around to the driver’s side. I was secretly daring the bastard behind the wheel to finally show himself. Maybe I wouldn’t kick him in the shins, but at least I could Snapchat him for preservation by the internet. The driver’s door opened slowly, and not well. A soft, wrinkled hand reached up to grab the Charger’s window. A curly silver head crested the roof. Barely. The first woman reached into the backseat, unfolded a walker, and handed it to the driver. It took the driver probably two full minutes to uncurl out from the behind the wheel, and even then, not fully. Her body was curved into a permanent “C.” The driver was 140 years old. With her spine and her hands bent over her walker, she was maybe three feet tall. But she had driven her own damn Charger to the Panera to get her own damn coffee. My soul pumped a fist into the air.

 

6 June  2014, ErinWaughWorld