afternoon at the improv
MAY, 1998:
With one dashingly handsome red shepherd at my side, I passed the days--as I'd done the year before and the year before that and so on--penning news articles and sociopolitical humor columns, freelancing as a cartoonist, bodybuilding, and serving as a test subject out at Three Mile Island, which really gave my skin an enviable glow. Sure, it had taken on a moderately unnatural greenish tint, but, on the up side, I'd never again fumbled for a light switch in the dark, and seating in crowded restaurants and theaters opened up the second I walked into a room. Yeah. That was a great gig...until my third arm grew so long it interefered with my ability to hoist a barbell.
Summer was fast approaching. I was creeping up on the later end of twenty-something and growing increasingly restless. I needed to push myself out of my comfort zone, attempt something new. I was never going to try my hand--the first, second, or third one--at skydiving, so, upon spotting a flyer at a tiny downtown bookshop, I opted for the next scariest thing: stand-up comedy, open-mic night. The date was in August. I had over two months to practice, prepare, and calculate the amount of thrust required to crash a human body through the club wall, like a panicked cartoon character making a hasty retreat.
As fate would have it, at the end of July I moved to Vegas instead. Looking back, despite my disdain for big-city life, the decision was undoubtedly for the best. I can picture the alternative far too clearly. A muggy August night, eager, tragically sober faces staring straight ahead. Me, as socially awkward as ever, standing in a puddle of my own perspiration beneath searing stage lights--mutant third hand nervously fidgeting with the microphone. The whole scenario would have made deliciously hilarious fodder...for the next comic who slipped across the sweat-slicked stage to a similarly dampened mic. If you think about it, I did the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania an enormous favor. No one had to beg, borrow, or steal a pitchfork. No one had to squander their kerosene stash to light the torches. And no one, not a single soul, suffered the exhaustion or needless injury of physically running me out of the state.
I'm still waiting for the thank-you card. Or a nice potted plant.
MAY 12, 2024:
Ah, Mother's Day...that annual occasion upon which Maisie permits us to spoil her so that her infectious joy will, in turn, become her gift to us. Works every time. She's such a clever girl!
Summer is, once again, fast approaching. Dennie's birthday has come and gone, while I creep up on a birthday a few thousand miles removed from twenty-something. I am happy, no longer growing restless, increasingly or otherwise. I still harbor no desire to plunge from an aircraft voluntarily (or involuntarily), and any thoughts of taking center stage (and being pummeled with overripe tomatoes) have long since faded away. This is not to say, however, that there are no parallels between this past weekend and this approximate period twenty-six years ago.
With another beautiful red shepherd at my side, I continue to write, novels mostly, as well as this sort of thing. I continue to glow, in a sense, but with more of a contented rosy hue than a radioactive one. And, with some massive spring cleaning ahead of me, I can't help thinking a third arm, temporarily, might prove exceedingly beneficial. Plus, this Mother's Day, there was the running and the chasing I'd dodged in '98, sans threatening mob, and the expectation of a forthcoming potted plant. Or twenty.
We had no set plans for Mother's Day this year. Normally, this holiday is when we'd fill the deck's pots and planters with brilliant blooms, brightening up the backyard and beckoning swallowtails and hummingbirds back into our humble domain. Only, with too many errands the previous weekend, and this past Saturday dedicated to refrigerator shopping, selecting plants at a local nursery simply hasn't happened yet. Unspoiled sustenance trumps patio beautification every time. Prior to each and every meal preparation, guessing which perishables on which shelf would feel warm to the touch or solid to semi-slushy with ice crystals has undeniably added an extra element of intrigue and surprise to our days, yet it isn't the kind of intrigue we relish or the type of surprise we enjoy as much as our old fridge seems to think we should. Playfulness is a beloved quality in dogs. In appliances, it's a trait we could do without. So, no planting day, no flowers, just an afternoon of post-refrigeration-scrutinization improvisation--all of which was entertaning, highly amusing, totally spontaneous, but without a stand-up comic (or pitchfork) in sight.
Maisie needed some outdoor time, some family time. We all did. Neither the wooden deck nor the stone patio have been readied for use yet. Cushions remain packed away. Everything needs cleaning too before our outdoor living space becomes livable once more. And none of that will happen any earlier than the first or second week of June. Until the end of tree-pollen season, there really isn't any point; every day brings another powdery green coating to the deck, the walls, doors, and windows, and every last outdoor furnishing. Should we ever stand still long enough, it would envelop us too. If the fractionally fictitious account of my Pennsylvania life* taught me anything, it's that Kermit was right: it's not easy being green. But a lack of cushions, layers of pollen, that's hardly enough to keep us indoors on an almost summery spring day.
Petite puffs of clouds swiftly swept across deep blue skies. Birds sang and dogs barked as bees and butterflies zipped and fluttered from yard to yard. Dennie set up temporary chairs in the lawn. Afternoon snacks were savored. And when a forgotten tote full of old dog toys found its way to our sides via my radioactively induced powers of telekinesis--powers that successfully willed Dennie's arms to pick the tote up in the shop and carry it to the yard (mind-bogglingly awesome, right?)--Maisie thought she'd hit the jackpot. (Because the 7,000 toys, give or take, currently scattered across our floors are not nearly adequate.) Some of the stored toys had been Sadie's, passed down to Georgiana; some had been Georgie's alone. But as soon as that lid opened, Maisie made her choice, seizing the giggling chicken plush and taking off across the lawn with her latest treasure. She didn't mind that his eyes were missing, that he only had one wing. This was the toy for her, and she danced and ran, wiggled and giggled with delight to have him. Whether Giggles McClucken shared her enthusiasm is difficult to acertain, even as he chuckled with each hearty shake. His last best friend, after all, found few pursuits so diverting as that of plush-limb amputations. But at least he wasn't in a box anymore. That had to count for something.
Most of the contents of that tote went back into storage, save for one super-squeaky purple bone, a gift for Georgie from Grandma on our pup's first Christmas. None of the squeakers in any of our dogs' other toys come close to the volume of this one. Maisie's attention was immediately captured. She's not a retriever, like Georgie was. Fetch has never been her obsession or even an activity she deemed worthy of her impressive German shepherd intellect. But when that bone squeaked, the other dominant part of her pedigree and personality came shining through as vividly as the sun through the stratus clouds above. Our beagle's inner puppy dashed over the lawn before the toy had even been tossed, limbs flying out wildly, body leaning deeply into every rapid turn. She raced forward and back again, tongue lolling out of her mouth, never returning the object of her pursuit the full distance to either mom, but pouncing on it, then Giggles, then the bone again, alternately impersonating an energetic toddler, a cheetah, a bucking bronco, a twirling, spinning, hopping kangaroo with its tail on fire. Dennie and I played with her, encouraged her, applauded her. We laughed until our cheeks hurt, and, judging from our girl's broad smile and animated body language, Maisie was laughing too. Spontaneity had ruled almost every moment of our backyard bash, and it was as exhilirating as any hike, as special as any holiday could hope to be. It was also, indisputably, a thousand times funnier than any afternoon--or bungled open-mic night--at The Improv.
*For those who hadn't already deduced as much, one of my noted 1998 occupations is emphatically false; everything else is 100% true. I have never been employed or experimented upon at Three Mile Island, though, when I first moved to Pennsylvania, before I'd bought my own home in another county, I rented a place just a few steps over the imaginary line that separated the populace into two groups--those facing certain, horrific death from radiation poisoning in the event of another meltdown and those who would allegedly survive. Somehow, those few steps didn't make me feel any better protected. That also had something to do with being advised to keep a "go-bag" packed and ready by the front door at all times. (No joke.) Also, while I was told local residents were expected to take in fleeing refugees in the event of a nuclear power plant crisis (how I was meant to do that while speeding toward New Jersey or Delaware with my standby go-bag, I'm certain I don't know), it would've been especially helpful if the realtor or the property owner or the nonexistent welcome wagon had warned me that the nuclear reactor alarm would blare across the county early in the morning on every Pearl Harbor Day...and not because we were in the midst of an actual meltdown. I did often wonder if anyone had really thought through that tradition. The suspected annual surge of reported heart attacks aside, prior to the plant's closing in 2019, what if an actual cataclysmic event had occurred on December the 7th? Who would have heeded the deafeaning warning then? Only the employees, I imagine...the ones spontaneously sprouting extra limbs and flaunting that very special green glow.
On a more serious note, I'd like to say the anomalous appearance of extra appendages is purely embellishment, a lighthearted jest, but, in actuality, it does happen. During my years in the Mid-Atlantic region, five-legged frogs were discovered near the nuclear power plant in New York. Sadly, they aren't the only living things to be adversely affected, their DNA irreversibly mutated; cases have been reported throughout the U.S. and in every other industrialized nation. On a planet continually corrupted by humankind, it really isn't easy being green. Love your mother. Be kind to the Earth...and all her inhabitants.