Category Archives: vignettes

Nov7

Vignette 7: Catastrophe

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Vignette 7: Catastrophe

When I was a junior in high school, I got a job working as a receptionist for a retirement community in Cedar Rapids. I loved it. I’d work from 4-8 in the evenings, and when the Members would come downstairs for dinner, they’d stop by my desk and harass me, or ask me how many boyfriends I had. (Don’t worry, I never had more than one at a time. I’m not that kind of girl.)

It made a perfect summer job, too, because I gave me the mornings to do slave work around the house for my parents. Usually it was just mowing, but every now and then Pops would want me to do something else because I was the only child that had a driver’s license.

One morning, he asked me to drive up to the John Deere dealership in Waterloo and pick up a part for one of his old-timey tractors. I said sure, fine, no problem because no matter how you slice it, driving to Waterloo is a sight better than spending another morning mowing the lawn.

At 1:00, I was dressed in my favorite outfit. (It’s sad that I even remember what I was wearing.) In true 1999 fashion, I had on a white button down shirt under a brown sleeveless sweater, a khaki colored skirt, brown stockings, and light brown chunky suede shoes.

Y’all. I was looking good.

And that outfit may seem kind of ridiculous for the middle of the summer, but let’s bear in mind that I worked at a retirement community. Almost everyone inside was complaining how hot it was outside, so the air conditioner was blasting. If I didn’t layer up I’d freeze to death.

Because I had to drive so far, Mom let me take her van instead of my truck, which was affectionately named the J2K. Why was it named that, you ask? WELL. Considering that it was 1999, everyone was all freaking out about Y2K, and I’d paid about $2k for my truck. Also, my name starts with J. Hence, the J2K.

Wow, that was a useless tangent.

The trip up to Waterloo was pretty uneventful. On the way back, I realized I had plenty of time to spare before getting to work because it was only 2:00 by this time. I still had about two hours, and my best friend’s house was just a few miles off where I currently was on the freeway.

I decided to stop by, so I pulled off 380 at the Urbana exit.

And that’s where everything went wrong.

When I got to my friend’s farm, I was disappointed to find no one at home. But the house was unlocked and as I glanced around at the barns and outbuildings, I could tell that the boys were probably in the fields. It didn’t make any sense to come all this way and not leave a note saying I’d stopped by, so I hopped back in the van and dug up some paper and a pen.

DK (short for Donkey Kong), who my friend’s favorite cat, was climbing around my ankles, purring and shedding his fur all over my brown stockings. As I wrote, he jumped up on the hood of the van and started batting at the antenna. It didn’t take me long to finish the note, and when I was done I jumped out of the car and slammed the door.

The sound that came from DK’s feline mouth was not unlike what you would hear if you trapped five screaming banshees in a room with Ernest Hemmingway for an hour. Horrific. The stuff of terror movies.

I was halfway to the house when I realized this strange and horrible sound was not stopping, neither was it moving anywhere. I turned around, looked at my mom’s van, and screamed.

DK had somehow gotten his right paw stuck in the van door, in the small joint between the radio antenna and the sideview mirror, and he was howling in pain. I tripped my way down the stairs, down the sidewalk, around the retaining wall, and threw myself into opening the van door.

But it was locked.

And there sat my keys, in the middle of the driver’s seat.

DK howled.

“OH MY GOSH!” I screamed. DK was sliding off the hood of the car as he struggled to free his paw. I hesitantly tried to push him back on so he wouldn’t be hanging from his trapped paw, but it didn’t work. He slid all the way off and was now hanging from the door.

Howling, howling, howling.

The other cats, five or six of them, came sniffing around to see what the problem was. A few of them took pot shots at DK, swiping at him with their paws.

“THIS IS NOT HAPPENING!” I screamed again, to the empty yard, empty house, empty barns.

Oh, and this was before I had a cell phone, too. So I just stood there, whipping my head around frantically, trying to decide What To Do. I was clearly not thinking straight, because I thought the best idea would be to run down to the nearest neighbors’ house, probably ¼ of a mile down a gravel road. In suede heels, stockings, and a skirt, mind you.

And off I ran.

I soon learned that it is ill advised to run in suede heels, stockings, and a skirt. But DK was hanging from my van door, darn it, and it was my fault.

Well, I got to the neighbors’ house and realized why we never came this way when we rode horse. The neighbors had two very wicked, ferocious dogs that growled and bared their teeth at me as though they wanted to eat and/or kill me for disturbing their peace. And since I wouldn’t be able to save poor DK if I was dead, I turned around and ran back up the gravel road the way I’d come.

My brown stockings were a bit on the gray side now, from all the gravel dust, and I was panting hard. It was a hot day and I was wearing a lot of clothes to be running around like an idiot.

I checked the outbuildings once more when I got back to the farm. I yelled and yelled, hoping someone had run out of gas and was back to fill up, or needed to refill their spray tanks. Really I didn’t care what brought them back to the house, I just wanted SOMEONE.

Nobody. Anywhere.

I remembered the house was unlocked and perhaps I could get ahold of someone on the phone, so I barreled inside and yelled, once more, “IS ANYONE HOME?”

No answer.

I called Mom. No answer.

I called Dad. He was at work. He answered his phone. And, after a very long pause, he said, “Wait a second, you did WHAT?”

And I was all, I know, I know, I know. I’m not even sure how it happened, but DK is hanging from the side of the van right now, there are claw scratches all over the paint finish, and the keys are locked in there, and no one is home here.

Poor Dad.

He told me he was on his way with some keys.

By this time, I had started crying like a girl. DK was still dangling, the other cats were still batting at him with their claws, and I was going to be SO late for work.

Just then, my friend’s brother drove up the lane with his tractor. I burst out of the house like my skirt was on fire and started screaming and waving. He looked extremely shocked to see me, stopped his tractor, and jumped out. As I explained to him what I had done, his eyes got larger, larger, larger and larger until I finally thought they might explode out of his head.

He held in a snicker or two. Then we went over to examine the cat. “Wow,” he said. “That is…well, what I mean to say is…I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“I think I’ve killed him,” I wailed. DK had stopped flailing and was just hanging there, a foot from the ground.

“No, no, you haven’t killed him. Let’s see if we can take one of these windows off,” he said.

Fortunately, I had cracked the back windows for some reason, and they were open an inch. It was just about enough room to reach the screws and remove them, and the plan was once they were taken off, I’d get shoved through the window and unlock the door.

Not a fun plan, but if anyone deserved to get shoved through a window right then, it was probably me.

The window was nearly off when I saw dust kicking up on the gravel road. It was my dad, come to save me and hopefully the cat as well.

“Quick, put the window back together,” I told my friend’s brother. “I don’t want my poor dad to have come out here for nothing.”

My friend’s brother looked at me like I fully insane, but he obliged and screwed the few pieces he had managed to remove back on.

Dad drove up and jumped out of his truck. He walked over to inspect my destruction and all he could say was, “Wow. How did you do this again?”

I sighed. I felt like a terrible person, and I pretty much was.

Dad unlocked the van and we opened the driver’s side door. Poor DK fell to the ground, and then took off running across the yard as far away from me as he could get, despite his smashed paw.

“At least he’s still alive,” I said.

My friend’s brother laughed. My dad shook his head at me. Poor guy, he had just driven 30 minutes one way to unlock a van and release a trapped and now-damaged cat.

“I’m late for work,” I moaned.

“I told them you were on your way,” Dad said.

I jumped in the van, dusted off my brown stockings and suede shoes, and carefully drove out of the driveway, so as not to accidentally run over one of the other cats or something equally catastrophic.

HA. Catastrophic. GET IT?

Somehow, DK managed to live many more years after I smashed him. His paw swelled to the size of a golf ball that evening and the next day, but soon the swelling went down and he went about his life just as though nothing ever happened.

He never seemed to have much time for me anymore, though.

Sep30

vignette 6: chocolate chipmunk cookies

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vignette 6: chocolate chipmunk cookies

Growing up, we had two favorite babysitters: Karen and Jenny.  They were so much cooler than the average babysitter, because we had specific games we played with each one.  Of course, I can’t remember what they were anymore, but rest assured that they were way cooler than whatever games YOUR babysitter played with you, Internet.

Because of our cool babysitters, we were always way more excited than we should have been whenever Mom and Dad left us for the evening.  We would spend the entire day in anticipation, then Mom and Dad would FINALLY leave (bye already!) and we could start having babysitter fun; the kind of fun that is somehow impossible to achieve any other way.

One particular Fall evening when we lived in The Green House, Jenny was babysitting.  I was about 10, which would mean Brother was 8, Sister was 6 and The Kid was 4, and we all had boundless energy.  We were out riding bikes in the driveway and zooming up and down the street while she watched us.  We could do this because we lived on a sleepy sealcoat road that barely anybody drove on except the people who lived on it.  (Now that we live in The Red House, which is down the street and around the corner from The Green House, there’s a bit more traffic…but not much.)

The best part about sealcoat roads, is that they seem to attract Wooly Bear caterpillars like crazy.  I saw one and skidded my bike to a stop, throwing it in the ditch so it wouldn’t get hit by any cars.  “I found a Wooly Bear!” I yelled.

Wooly Bear hunting was always a highlight of Fall, we’d collect as many as we could find and put them in Mom’s old Mason jars with a stick and a bunch of leaves, then we’d poke holes in the top and watch them build cocoons.  Nine times out of ten they died before turning into moths, but every so often we’d get lucky and one would hatch.

Once I mentioned that I found Wooly Bears, Sister threw her bike in the ditch also and the hunt was on.  We collected three or four very good specimens and put them into two of the Mason jars we kept in the garage.  The boys were still careening up and down the street and yelling “check this out” and “I bet you can’t do this” and whatever else it is that boys say to each other.  Sister and I gathered up our Mason jars and carried them into the house.  That’s when I saw it.

“Woah, is that a chipmunk?  Is it dead?” I asked.  Right in front of us, by the Maple tree in the middle of the driveway (yes, we had a Maple tree in the middle of our driveway) was a chipmunk.  Just laying there.

“I THINK IT IS,” Sister gasped.

We set down our Mason jars and knelt down on the ground, gravel pieces digging into our bare knees.  I carefully examined the chipmunk for signs of life.  No little breaths coming from his tummy, no little movements from his tiny feet, and definitely no eye twitches.

“Maybe it is sick?” Sister suggested.

I had just read the Louis Pasteur book from the church library, so I knew all about rabies.  I checked his mouth and there was definitely no foam.  “He doesn’t have rabies,” I said with conviction.  “I think it might be dead.”

The boys noticed that we were crowding something, and they rode their bikes over in a hurry.

“WHAT is THAT?” Yelled The Kid.  When he was younger, he had two volumes: loud and louder.  Actually, not much has changed.

“It’s a chipmunk,” I declared.  I was the oldest and obviously knew everything about it and, being kind of Type A, I was totally in charge of this situation.  “It’s either dead or very sick, and we need to help it.”

I began giving out orders.

“Sister, go find some cotton from the sewing table, and also some material, to make a bed for him.  The Kid, go get a shoebox.  Brother, go find some of Dad’s work gloves.”

Within two minutes, everyone had raced to get what they were responsible for and had returned to the Maple tree, slightly out of breath.

The chipmunk had not moved.

Sister puffed out the cotton in the shoebox and made a very nice, soft bed for the chipmunk.  We laid the material scrap on top of the cotton and set the box on the ground next to the chipmunk.

“What are we going to do with him?” asked Brother.

“Oh, take him inside.  Dad will probably want to take him to the vet,” I decided.

“Hold on,” said Jenny.  “You’re taking it inside?”

“Yes,” I insisted.  “It’s very sick so it’s not like it will go anywhere.  And if it’s dead, Dad will help us bury it.”

“I’m not sure your parents will want you to bring it in the house,” Jenny repeated.

“They won’t care,” I said, confidently.  I slipped on the gloves, gingerly picked up the limp chipmunk and placed him on the soft bed Sister and The Kid had constructed.

“Oh, we forgot water!” I exclaimed.  The Kid scrambled inside to find one of Mom’s smallest Tupperware, which he filled with water and carefully carried back to the driveway where we were still assembled.

Jenny was still unsure if she should be party to us bringing the chipmunk inside, but I had used my oldest child ways on her and had somehow convinced her that it was:

a.) a good idea

b.) not going to get us or her in any kind of trouble

The sun was starting to set by this point, so once we had the water in with the chipmunk, we put the lid on the box and poked a bunch of holes so it could breathe.  Then, Brother picked up the box and carefully carried it inside while we all followed.  We decided to put it in the guest room, so he carried it there and set it on the floor in the corner.  He removed the lid and we noticed that Mr. Chipmunk was kind of in a different place than we had left him.  But then, we HAD just carried him from the driveway, so we didn’t think twice about it.  Brother replaced the lid and we left the guest room, shutting the door behind us.

Two hours later, Mom and Dad returned from whatever par-tay they had been attending, and we kids were not yet in bed.

“MOM, DAD!” we yelled when we saw them, “We found a dying chipmunk and we rescued it!”

The response we got from our parents was really not quite what we had been expecting.

“You did what?” They asked in unison.

“Well, we found a chipmunk on the driveway, and it looked dead. But we thought it was sick, so we brought it inside.”

Mom’s eyes grew about three times their normal size, and Dad’s jaw dropped.  “Inside?” He repeated.

“Yeah, it’s in the guest room,” I told him.

Mom and Dad barreled down the stairs and burst into the guest room, flipping on the light as they did so.  The box we had so carefully left in the corner was still there, however…the lid was off. And it was empty.

We kids looked at each other and our stomachs dropped.  Mom and Dad looked at us with a strange combination of frustration bordering on anger, and incredulity that none of us had seen before, or have seen since I might add.  What had seemed like a really good idea about two and a half hours earlier was now looking pretty bad.  Pretty bad indeed.

“Alright,” Dad said.  “Alright.”  (Sometimes he repeats himself when he’s really had enough of us.)

Mom just looked at the empty box, and then looked harder at it, like that would somehow make the chipmunk reappear.  Then she looked at all us kids with that same look, and all of us kids wanted to disappear.  The Kid was the smallest and most mobile, and he snuck out of the guest room and into the playroom undetected.  The older three of us?  We were stuck.  And we were in trouble.

“What if that thing had rabies?” Mom shuddered.

“It didn’t,” I said.  “I checked.”  Because I had just read that Louis Pasteur book, of course.

Mom did not seem convinced.

Dad was still looking like he could blow his top at us.  And then, suddenly, the look on his face changed; it became clear that Dad had an idea.  He was going to fix this mess, and he was going to fix it good.

“Alright,” he said again.  “Never bring a wild animal in the house again.”

We three children nodded vigorously.  (I did break this rule one time, though, the next year when I found a wounded sparrow.  But Mom was home that time.)

“Never,” he repeated.

We nodded even more vigorously.

“It’s dangerous.”

We nodded until we got headaches.

“I am going to go get Bunny,” Dad said.

Bunny was our cat, so named because she was born on Easter morning.  I’m not sure why we named her Bunny, because we didn’t do the Easter Bunny at our house, but I guess that’s better than naming her Tombstone or Up From The Grave He Arose or Resurrection, although those would have been more theological.  Maybe next time.

Dad hated Bunny.  He always hates cats, but he especially didn’t like this one…probably because we were always sneaking her in the house when we noticed that we unsupervised.  We were not supposed to bring cats in the house, ever, ever, ever.  (That was The Rule.)

I couldn’t figure out why Dad thought Bunny would solve this problem, or why he would even suggest such a preposterous thing, but I did notice that this seemed to make Mom feel better.  Dad marched out to the garage to get Bunny, and Mom shooed us all out of the guest room, shutting the door tightly behind us.  I think she was envisioning the chipmunk’s fangs getting larger every second, primed to pounce on us all and give us RABIES!

While Dad was getting Bunny, Mom explained to us how unsafe wild animals are, and how dangerous it was to touch them.

“But I used gloves,” I said; I had read all about handling wild animals in the Louis Pasteur book.

Mom didn’t seem to be impressed by this.

She also informed us that we were never, ever to use her Tupperware, or any other kitchen item, to feed wildlife.  Anything that we ate off we did not feed animals out of.  (I wish we could say that we always obeyed this, but I know for a fact that that we did not.)

Dad returned shortly, carrying Bunny like a feed sack on his hip.  He opened the guest room door and dumped Bunny inside, then shut the door again.

“You didn’t turn the light on for her,” Sister said.

“Bunny can see in the dark,” Dad said.

“Why did you put her in there?” Brother asked.

“She’s going to hunt down the chipmunk and kill it,” Dad said.

Six brown eyes grew very, very wide, and three jaws dropped.

“Bunny eats chipmunks?” I gasped.

“She’d better,” Dad replied.

None of us kids slept well that night.  Every time I closed my eyes, I could just imagine Bunny pouncing on the poor chipmunk and eating him.  RIGHT IN MY OWN BASEMENT!  We hadn’t really considered the fact that our precious cat Bunny would kill things, especially cute little chipmunks, and it was quite upsetting.

Mom and Dad probably tossed all night worrying that Bunny wouldn’t find the chipmunk, and then where would we be?

Morning came early.

We kids ran down to the basement in our pajamas and arrived just in time to see Dad, with his work gloves on, carrying out a very tiny chipmunk skeleton.

“Ew,” I said.

“Can I see?” asked The Kid.

Brother rushed in to see if he could find any blood on the carpet.

We never brought another chipmunk in the house again.

Feb24

Vignette 5: Magic Nuts

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Vignette 5: Magic Nuts

When I was eight, Brother was six, Sister was four and The Kid was 2, we all lived in a two-story green house on Stamy Road. Our half-acre back yard had two apple trees, two cherry trees, two pear trees, two peach trees and one crab apple tree, a thick bed of strawberries, and more raspberry bushes than you could imagine. There was a large, white natural gas tank next to those raspberry bushes; it had handles on either side of it and sometimes we’d pretend it was our horse. Dad built us a sandbox and playhouse near the strawberry patch, and most afternoons Spring – Fall, you could find the four of us out there, playing some imaginary game very intensely.

(I will also admit that we did more than our fair share of picking on The Kid while living in the green house. We have all since apologized to that Kid, and I think he is over it.)

The green house used to have an attached garage, but the former owners built an unattached garage next to the house and finished off the old one. The former owners had garish taste in interior decorating, the entire upstairs was carpeted in Harvest Gold carpet, the bedrooms were done in varying primary color shades of shag carpet, the kitchen and downstairs were orange patterned Berber…and in the former garage, they put bright red and black diamond-patterned carpet with fuzzy red wallpaper, interspersed with mirrored columns on the walls.

It was atrocious.

I realized that even at the tender age of eight years old.

We affectionately called the red room The Red Room, and it became our enormous playroom. Mom could shut the door on it, too, if we were really annoying her and do her work at her desk in peace (which she never did).

One such afternoon, when Mom was working in her office downstairs, Pops was working at the hospital, and Sister and The Kid were taking their naps because they were still babies, The Brother and I climbed up on the kitchen counters to see if we could find any snacks. It was hard for us since, being little Lairds, we were both undersized and underweight so we had to go get kitchen table chairs in order to make it all the way to the counter.

“Mom has good stuff in here,” I said to The Brother, as he struggled to finally pull himself up over the edge. He sat down and dusted his little hands off.

We opened the cupboard doors and, to our great disappointment, didn’t find anything good. Only boring Pyrex baking dishes, flour, baking soda, spices, casserole containers, potholders, Tupperware, cookbooks…nothing interesting at all.

Not even chocolate chips.

In the back of the spices cabinet, though, I noticed a tallish, rectangular blue tin with pink and white flowers on it. I reached my little arm back into the cupboard as far as it could go and and pulled out the tin.

“I think this is it,” I told The Brother. His big brown eyes got even bigger as he waited in anticipation for me to pull the lid off the tin.

Inside were…

Walnuts.

An entire bag full of walnuts.

The Brother wilted; he had been expecting something delicious. I decided I’d better spin this situation as quickly as possible, so I said, “Um, these are Magic Nuts.”

That got The Brother’s attention. He looked at me, then at the bag of walnuts, and then back again.

“Yep. If you eat them, they’ll make you fly.” I said, cautiously opening up the bag of walnuts. I couldn’t spill them because Mom hadn’t given us permission to be getting snacks, and I certainly didn’t want to get in trouble.

The Brother, like Pops, had always been fascinated with trains, planes and things that go (isn’t that a children’s book?), so the minute I said “they’ll make you fly”, I knew I had him, hook line and sinker.

“But I don’t like those things,” he said, pointing to the walnuts.

“Oh just try one,” I said. “Maybe you’ll like it.” (Even at eight years old I was a little negotiator.)

I popped two in my mouth, jumped off the counter and zoomed around the upstairs with my arms out like a plane. “I’m flying, I’m flying!” I yelled.

The Brother grabbed a handful of walnuts and stuffed them into his mouth, cheeks bulging. He chewed and swallowed and shot off the counter and followed me around the house. We “flew” through the living room, dining room, family room, kitchen, down the hallway towards the bedrooms, then back again and out the sliding glass door and onto the deck.

We flew around the back yard for awhile until we finally tired ourselves out and went back inside, where I immediately put the canister of Magic Nuts away and put the kitchen chairs back around the table. Then The Brother and I went downstairs to play in the Red Room while we waited for the other two kids to wake up from their naps.

Over the course of the next few years, The Brother and I often snuck snitches of Magic Nuts when Mom wasn’t looking. Eventually, The Brother told Sister that Magic Nuts would make you fly, and the two of them would fly around the house together once I got too old to play that game with them. (I’m not sure if The Kid ever got to fly or not. If not, I’ll have to remedy that when he comes on Friday.)

One afternoon they made cardboard wings for themselves and taped them to their tiny little arms and ran down a runway they’d built for themselves (out of our school desks, of course) in an attempt to get a little bit more lift on the takeoff. They were unsuccessful, of course.

Magic Nuts can do just about anything, I guess.

Last week I was munching on some walnuts in the afternoon, and all my Magic Nuts memories came back. I asked Mom what she remembered about them, and I was kind of surprised when she had no idea what I was talking about. I am shocked she didn’t hear us running around upstairs all those afternoons ago, sounding like a herd of 30 & 40 lb elephants…but I guess she didn’t.

I’m also kind of impressed that I put the Magic Nuts away well enough each time that she never noticed that little thieves were getting into them and snitching. I bet she wouldn’t have minded if she knew, though. Mom & Dad were always real into fostering our imaginations (and some argue that’s whycomes the four of us turned out the way we did) and if we needed Magic Nuts to fly, I bet they’d have bought us our own bag to keep in the Red Room.

Being a little kid sure was simple and fun. If I didn’t like wearing high-heels and driving a car so much, I might just wish I could go back.

Feb18

Vignette 4: Dumpster Diving

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Vignette 4: Dumpster Diving

In 2003 at EIBC, the Tuesday evening activity was always Counselor Hunt.  For those of you un-initiated, in Counselor Hunt, the counselors hide while the kids watch Home Run for Rusty in the chapel.  I always loved the 45 minute break we got while we searched for places to hide and the kids watched the movie. It was one of the only times all week where there were no virtually problems.  No wondering about if Kelly was sneaking out  of the cabin again tonight to go make out with Jake in the back 40 (she did, and she subsequently got sent home), no worrying about the next time I’d have to send Talia back to the cabin to change out of the Daisy Dukes she insisted on trying to get away with wearing, and one time that I could stop stressing about if Lyddie was going to make sexual harassment charges against the same boy she did the year before…and continued to disappear with randomly this year.

I tell you what, being a camp counselor is not as easy as it sounds.

Back to Counselor Hunt.

At EIBC the summer of 2003, there were definite “boys are better than girls” vibes rippling under the surface of staff unity between the counselors.  There was pretty much one guy counselor that was worse than all the rest combined, and he happened to be the boy I was dating; just for fun we’ll call him Harold.  Harold took many opportunities in competition to point out that “we girls couldn’t do that” and “girls have never succeeded here” or “that’s something only guys have ever tried”.

Kelsie and I got sick of it during Fifth Grade Camp.

Harold had mentioned, every single week so far that summer, that no girls had ever hidden in the Dumpster during Counselor Hunt.  He was certain that no girls ever would, either.  And this Tuesday morning was no exception.

“Kels,” I whispered after morning chapel as she and I made the rounds judging cabins to award Cabin Clean Up points.  “I’m so sick of this, let’s hide in the Dumpster tonight.”

“Serious?”  She squeaked.

“Yeah, did you bring old clothes this week?”  I asked, marking Cabin John off five points for a pair of underwear hanging out of one of the camper’s suitcases.  But then I noticed the candy bribe they had left us (Starbursts always worked with me) and I gave them back four points.

“Yep, and I think if we wrap ourselves in trash bags we won’t actually have to touch anything, and we’ll blend in better.”

“That’s a fantastic idea,” I said, nodding vigorously.

“I’ll grab the bags from the shed later when no one’s looking,” she said, and we caught up with Harold and Micah who were also judging cabins with us.

“You’re on,” I grinned.

As dusk fell on the camp and the campers lounged on the benches in the chapel where they were presided over by the Program Director and Camp Director and his wife, all the counselors spirited off into their hiding places.  Some of the guys always climbed the big pines over by KidRun Valley, some of the counselors hid in the hedges out in the back 40, one girl squished herself underneath the bridge in the low spot in the valley, one or two guys got on the chapel roof, and on and on.  Everyone had pretty well established their weekly hiding spot by now, since we didn’t have to worry about repeat kids from week to week figuring us out.

No one had claimed the Dumpster this week, though.  Kelsie and I had done some reconnaissance work throughout the day and were quite certain we would have no competition for our spot.  She and I ran out towards our cabins with the rest of the girls, but instead of going to our usual spots we changed into our old jeans and tennis shoes. Careful not to be seen together, we rushed back to maintenance building where the Dumpster was located where Kelsie produced the large black trash bags she had snagged for us earlier in the day.

I flipped open the Dumpster lid and hopped on my tiptoes so I could see inside.

“We’re in luck,” I said.  “It’s mostly empty in the back, because all the trash is in the front.  It also looks like there’s a good couple spots for us here in the corner.”

Kelsie peered over and examined the Dumpster as well.  “This is perfect!” she exclaimed.

One thing I loved about Kelsie was that, no matter what, she was extremely cheerful and smiley.  Even about climbing in a Dumpster.

“I only see one problem,” I said as I noticed the Dumpster came up to my nose and there wasn’t a step or anything to make it easily accessible.  “How are we going to get me in there?”

Kelsie was about eight inches taller than me, so we discussed her lifting me up and kind of throwing me in (I didn’t like that idea), her giving me a leg up as though I were hopping on a horse, or going to find a ladder in the maintenance shed.  We eliminated the tossing and the ladder ideas, because both of those sounded potentially noisy.

Kelsie keeled down on the ground and made a cradle out of her hands.  I put my right foot in her hands and, “Are you ready?  1-2-3!” she counted, shooting me up in the air on three.  I managed to get high enough on the Dumpster that could hoist myself up a few more inches and then toss my leg over the side.  Then I realized I was going to lower myself into the Dumpster without the protection of the trash bags we had brought along.

“You’ll just have to wrap up in them once you’re inside,” Kelsie said, as I dangled from the side of the Dumpster.

“OK,” I grunted, and dropped myself over the edge.

“KELSIE.  Oh my GOSH it smells awful in here,” I wailed, in a whisper of course.

Kelsie giggled and tossed me three trash bags.  I scrambled to open one and stepped inside as quickly as possible, so as to avoid touching any more garbage than necessary.  I cinched it up around my waist and taped it in place then tore a hole in my second garbage bag and slide it over my head to cover my torso.

Kelsie supernaturally launched herself over the edge of the Dumpster and landed almost silently inside.  We giggled hysterically for a few seconds before she realized she was in a Dumpster and not wearing any garbage bags for protection.  She repeated my scramble to get inside a couple of them, and then we nestled ourselves down against the Dumpster wall amid the rancid bags of trash.

“You were not kidding, Jenna.  It does reek in here,” Kelsie said, once we were settled.

“I know, I feel like barfing. Do you think we’ll get used to it?”

“I hope so,” she said.

We had a third trash bag along with us and the plan was to throw it over our hair when campers came to check the Dumpster (IF they came, was more like it), so we held it loosely in our hands while we waited for Home Run for Rusty to finish.  We sat in the Dumpster, just talking about camp, school, life, boys, running, and whatever else crossed our minds.

Finally, the Dumpster stench started to wear off.  We were so releived.  It was just about that time that we heard Kyle over the PA system announcing that the campers were just leaving the chapel.  Kelsie and I dissolved into another fit of giggles and got our head covering trash bags ready.

Just in case.

Thirty minutes passed with nary a camper.  Then…we heard some coming.

I opened my third trash bag and put it over my head, careful to pinch it closed so that it would look like an inflated bag of trash.  The campers came close – we could hear them talking.

“Do you think anyone hides in a Dumpster?” One of them asked.

“I don’t know, it’s SO GROSS,” another said.

“I guess we should check,” a third said, and we heard the lid on the front flip back.

“It’s full of trash on this side,” the first kid yelled.

Suddenly, I felt something small and wiggly scurry along against my backside.  I stifled a scream just as it stopped, dead in its tracks, right in the middle of its travels across my hind end.

“KELSIE,” I whispered.  “SOMETHING….SOMETHING IS ON ME.”

The thing wiggled.

I clenched my eyes shut and imagined that whatever it was wasn’t really there.

The three campers slammed the lid shut on the front and traveled around to the back of the Dumpster.  They opened the lid and hoisted each other up so they could look inside.

“I don’t see anything,” they said.

They disappeared as soon as they had come, and Kelsie and I let out a huge sigh of relief once we realized we were safe.

Then the thing wiggled again.

“KELSIE, there is something behind me,” I wailed.

“Just….just don’t move,” she recommended.

“That’s very easy for you to say,” I said.  Then, thankfully, the creature squiggled away.

I wasn’t about to take the trash bag off my head, though.  What if something got in my hair if it wasn’t protected?   For twenty minutes, and through several rounds of campers checking out the Dumpster, I kept that trash bag on my head.  Then, suddenly…

“Kelsie….Kelsie I think something is wrong with me,” I mumbled.  “I think I’m going to throw up and I feel like I’m going to pass out — I can’t breathe.”

Kelsie turned on the flashlight she had brought with her and gasped, “JENNA, get that trash bag off your head like that – what is wrong with you?!”  She dove over and ripped it off; immediately I felt better as a rush of “fresh” Dumpster oxygen swept over me.

“I…I didn’t think about that I guess,” I wheezed.

I sat there, recovering, my head spinning from oxygen deprivation.  I felt the creature scuttle past my backside again, and then heard Kelsie squeak.  “Your creature just visited me,” she said.

After the near suffocation incident and the numerous animal attacks, Kelsie and I were so ready to get out of that Dumpster when Kyle announced that the game was over via the PA system.

We dragged ourselves back to the chapel, garbage bags in hand, where we were the only girls who had evaded capture by campers.

“Where were you?” Harold asked me, as Kelsie and I walked in.

“The Dumpster,” I replied, and breezed past him.  “Girls can do it too, now.” I said.

Kelsie and I stayed in chapel only long enough to prove that we had evaded capture.  We immediately went back to our cabins where we grabbed our shower caddies and took very, very, very hot showers in the bathhouse.

“What do you think that animal was,” Kelsie asked me as stood in our flip flops and t-shirts on the damp floor, towel drying our hair.

“I’m hoping it was a mouse,” I said.

“A mouse?!”  She squeaked.

“Would you rather it was a snake or a rat?” I asked.

“Oh.  Yeah, I hope it was a mouse too,” she said.

Oct3

vignette 3: humpty dumpty

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vignette 3: humpty dumpty

(As told from the perspective of my brother, Andrew (aka The Brother), because it’s my blog and because I feel like it.  I will actually use everyone’s real names in this vignette because the nicknames we actually go by hadn’t been invented yet.  So, try to keep up.)

My name’s Andrew . I’m only nine, but I’m old enough to know that every spring we go to Chicago.  Dad has some kind of hospital administration conference there, and we always stay in the same hotel, right on the river, and try to convince Mom to give us quarters to throw over the bridge so we can hit the boats going under.  She never gives us any.

I like going to Chicago because it means we can go to the Museum of Science and Industry (I like looking at the airplane and the submarine) and sometimes the Shedd Aquarium, but my favorite is the Planetarium. I think I’ll be an big fan of NASA when I grow up, and maybe even make a vacation to the place where the shuttle launches…if I’m lucky.

Anyways, I’m off track.  But I’m only nine, so cut me some slack. I get distracted easily.

This particular year, we were all loaded up in the maroon van with the fake wood trim along the side (don’t laugh, you probably had one too) and Dad had shoved the back seat forward to make room for all our luggage.  Jenna wanted to sit back there but she didn’t like how all her leg room was taken up , so she was whining.  Already. We’ve only been gone from the house for about ten minutes. And she’s only eleven, so it’s not like she’s very tall anyway.

Sisters are so annoying.

Ashley was sitting in the back with Jenna and looking through packages of Adventures in Odyssey tapes, trying to pick the one she wanted Dad to play when we got to Iowa City. (Ashley always made sure we packed at least two packages of Adventures in Odyssey tapes, no matter where we were going.  She didn’t want to run out.)

In order for us to leave town on a vacation of any kind, we had to make about five stops.  These five stops took a total of two hours, and we kids all got tired of vacation even before we got out of town.  Usually we had to clean apartments, stop at Dad’s office (at the hospital), check apartment’s pilot lights, and who knows what else.  It was almost too much for us kids to handle.

On this particular trip, we were almost free.  The last stop, Mom said, was the library.  I guess we had some library books due or something, because Mom said she’d run in and right back out.  I wanted to go sit on the giant baseball glove up on the 2nd floor and read Frog and Toad books, but not this time.

Dad pulled into the library parking lot and Mom jumped out carrying about twenty books.

“I will be back in 5 minutes,” she said.

Dad turned off the car, rolled the windows down and turned the radio on.  He was listening to that Rush Limbaugh guy…Grandpa listens to him too.  I can never figure out what he’s talking about, but he sure does get riled up.

Anyway, Alex opened the van door and looked out.  He was the youngest (five years old, UGH) and had no respect for the fact that we all wanted to get out of town as quickly as possible, he wanted to go play.

I knew exactly what he was going to do.  There was a retaining wall that held in the bushes and flowers and stuff and it ran along the outside of the library. Usually Mom would let us walk on the wall, but only if we were holding her hand, because none of us kids are very coordinated and we are more than likely to fall and hurt ourselves.

Alex glanced at Dad, who was really into Rush Limbaugh.  Then he sort of glanced at me, to see if I noticed what he was going to do.

I was wise to him.

Jenna and Ashley were in the backseat, looking through Ashley’s new book of Tom Tierney paper dolls that Grandma had sent for the trip, so they weren’t paying any attention to him.

“Don’t do it, Alex.” I warned.  “You’ll fall off and hurt yourself.”

He stuck his tongue out at me and ran over to the wall, still unnoticed by Dad because he was so short that you couldn’t see him over the hood of the van.  I watched Alex walk his youngest child self over to the wall and somehow manage to wiggle himself up on to the lowest ledge.  I acted like I wasn’t paying very close attention, just in case he looked at me.  (There’s nothing worse than telling your younger brother not to do something and then making it look like you want to do it too.)

Ashley got out of the car to see what Alex was doing.  “Dad, he’s walking on the wall,” she said, but her voice was so quiet that I don’t think Dad heard her.  She ran over and walked alongside Alex, but she wasn’t much taller than the wall.

“Get off there.  You’re going to fall and hurt yourself,” she whined.  “Get down.”

Alex ignored her.  He made it to the highest part of the ledge, by this time he was halfway along the wall. I glanced away, bored by Alex’s obvious rebellion.  Suddenly, Dad yelled something and jumped out of the car so fast I thought Rush must have said he was voting Democrat in the next election.

I stood up and looked out the window, there was Dad bent over Alex, who had managed to do a swan dive off the three foot high ledge and face plant right into the concrete.  Mom chose this moment to come out of the library, and there she saw her youngest (naughtiest) child bleeding profusely, two front teeth wiggling around in his mouth.

I felt a sort of righteous indignation — NOW WE WERE LATE FOR VACATION.

If that guy had listened to me, we’d be on the road by now.

We could almost be listening to Adventures in Odyssey.

Why doesn’t anyone ever listen to me anyways?

Dad picked up his fancy cell phone (yeah, he seriously had one…he was the only person I knew that did) and got on the phone with some bigwig doctor at his hospital.  I imagined that it was the top surgeon and that Dad went to lunch with him weekly.  Dads are important like that.

We drove at breakneck speed back up 380 to St. Luke’s, where we rushed into the ER, a bleeding, bawling Alex in tow.  Jenna, Ashley and I all sat there on the marginally comfy chairs, glaring at Alex.  We were sure he had ruined our vacation, and all because he was being disobedient.  We were especially dismayed when Dad told Mom to call his contacts in Chicago and tell them we wouldn’t be there until the next day, if at all.

Our mutiny level rose even higher then, but seeing as none of us were over the age of 12, we didn’t really count.

Dad finished checking Alex in with the nurses, and came back over to where we were waiting.  Alex was sitting on Mom’s lap, holding Ashley’s hand and crying “I….I’ll never disobey Andrew again!”  I felt really pleased that I had been right after all and that Alex was now getting it served to him for being so naughty.

Nobody ever respects the middle children, I tell you what.  I’m sure Ashley will agree.

A very short time later, Alex’s name was called.  I knew what the ER was like (from this other time when I sort of dropped a ladder on Alex’s head and, well…let’s just say it wasn’t pretty) and so I decided I would be better off staying in the lobby.  Mom and Dad made us all go back, though, and we all sat on some chairs that Dad rounded up outside the little cubicle.  We sat there talking, loudly, about how annoying Alex was, how he ruined our vacation and how we all hoped he got a lot of shots.

Thinking back on it, I’m surprised the three of us didn’t get spanked on the spot.  But Mom and Dad were probably distracted by Alex bleeding all over the place, so they didn’t notice us being nasty on the other side of the curtain.

After some extensive examination by the fancy doctor I still imagined Dad had called, it was determined that Alex was a wimp and not as bad off as everyone had thought he was.  He had two slightly wobbly teeth, but the doc said they would heal up just fine if we held ice on them for the rest of the day.

The doctor, who became my favorite guy ever, also said we should probably head down the road to Chicago and that everything would be just fine.  Jenna, Ashley and I cheered.  (Alex couldn’t cheer because he had a mouthful of ice and plus he was still kind of whimpering.)

We were all still feeling hostile towards Alex for the next several hours while we drove, until he decided he wanted to play Nutkin (a squirrel game I had invented and Jenna despised) which, naturally, made amends with me but probably made Jenna even madder at him.

The end.

Sep15

vignette 2: knock ‘em dead

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vignette 2: knock ‘em dead

Grandpa and Grandma took Brother and I to Boston on an educational vacation when I was 10 and he was 8.  Gramps had conferences in cool locations all over the country, and they often took me along because I was the oldest.

Boston was the first time Brother got to go, and he was so annoying.

Seriously, I’d be walking around Boston looking at stuff and all of a sudden Brother would veer in front of me and stop dead in his tracks.  I’d run smack dab into him because, of course, I was often looking at something cool like a pigeon or statue.

“STOP IT!” I’d yell at Brother, and give him a shove or kick him in the shins.

Then, of course, I’d get in trouble for pushing Brother…even though he was the one who started it. And then he’d give me a very proud look and cross his eyes at me behind Grandpa and Grandma’s backs.  I’d shoot him a dirty look right back, but by that time he was usually skipping on ahead like the little angel that he was not.

I can’t believe he turned out so well.

I also can’t believe that Grandpa and Grandma didn’t box us up and FedEx us back to our parents in Iowa.  But they didn’t.

Anyway, we were staying at the downtown Westin convention center on the 18th floor.  One afternoon when we were supposed to be resting (well, Grandma was resting), Brother and I got bored and went to the window to look out and amuse ourselves.

“Open it,” I said to Brother.

He tried but he was too small, so I had to help him.  We got it open just a crack, enough for us to stick our tiny little arms out and wave them around.

“Do you think we can catch any pigits?” I asked. Pigits are what we call pigeons…because we are weird like that.

“No,” said Brother.  He’s very logical.

“I wonder if we can throw stuff out!” I suggested.  “That would be fun!”

Brother liked this idea and we looked around the room for something we could throw out the window and yet not get in trouble for.  We spotted a pile of Grandpa’s change on the dresser and our eyes got very big.  We snuck over, careful not to disturb Grandma, and picked out all the pennies and nickels.  Then, we ran back over to the window and waited.

“Try to hit someone on the head when they’re walking by,” I said.

“OK,” said Brother.

We were whispering and giggling and throwing money out the window for a good long time. We are Lairds, though, so our aim is terrible and we were disappointed that by the time we ran out of money we still hadn’t hit any pedestrians.

I discovered some time later, on the same trip – probably because we fessed up to snitching Grandpa’s change – that you can actually kill someone if you drop a penny on their head from a high rise building.  I felt guilty for days.

Brother probably did too.

Sep5

Vignette 1: The Mole

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Vignette 1: The Mole

I’m getting a little sick of writing my love story (but not sick of the actual story itself, there is a difference) and I need a break.  So I’ve been writing little random stories from growing up in Iowa…some might interest you, some might not.

Vignette 1: The Mole

It was 6:30 and the golden hour was just beginning. I had taken my horse Beau out for a ride in the lower pasture and across the street in the forest earlier that afternoon. Beau was cross-tied in the barn and I was just finishing up his grooming. Habitually I glanced up at mom’s old kitchen clock hanging above the door before I remembered that the clock had (and has) been dead for years. No one seems to remember to change the battery but we keep forgetting to take it down, so there it stays.

Beau stomped his hoof at a fly and snuffled his head against my leg.

“I’m just about done, buddy,” I said, reaching for his fly spray. That seemed to satisfy him for the time being – Iowa flies are brutal – and I leaned into his leg and asked him to lift his hoof so I could pick it.

The sun splashed its golden rays through the barn door and I could sense, even without the barn clock working, that it had to be getting close to dinnertime. I finished Beau’s hooves, clipped the lead rope to his halter and walked him out to the pasture. Dumb Dog, our family’s disdained mutt, galloped along beside us, flailing with pleasure over a small gray object she was carrying.

“I think that dog’s going to have an aneurysm,” I muttered to Beau. He looked at me with his huge chocolate eyes and tossed his strawberry blonde mane in my face. “Thanks, I’m glad to see you agree,” I chuckled. I opened the gate, careful to not let the chain touch the live wire that I got shocked on about half the time, and patted Beau on the shoulder. He cantered off, rolling immediately in the dirt, destroying the perfect grooming I had just given him.

I sighed and shook my head. Horses.

Dumb Dog had followed Beau into the pasture and was chasing him as he rolled. Poor girl, she was half Black Lab and half Alaskan Malamute. She was big and gawky, having never quite adjusted to her body after her growth spurt. Dumb Dog had more energy than a firecracker on the Fourth of July, and I have a mother who is petrified of dogs – you do the math. I don’t know why we ever got a dog in the first place, pretty much the entire family was afraid of her once she grew out of puppy stage. Most of us secretly wished she’d run away.

Dumb Dog was still running circles in the pasture and, if I let her stay, she was liable to get shocked on the electric fence when she tried to get out later. Irritating as she could be, I just couldn’t have that.

“Dumb Dog, get over here,” I yelled.

She came running up, still carrying the gray object, and pranced past me.

I ignored her, she was always dragging in mice from hither and yon, and went to put Beau’s tack and grooming bucket back in the locker. Dumb Dog charged into the barn and wove her way between me and the stalls. The gray object in her mouth moved.

“What do you have there girl?” I asked her, grabbing her collar. She opened her mouth and looked up at me, dropping a slightly chewed, but still alive, mole onto my riding helmet.

“DUMB DOG!” I screamed. The mole lay helplessly on the concrete floor and paddled the air furtively with his spoon-like front claws. Having never seen a mole before up close, I chased off the dog and knelt on the ground next to the poor creature.

I spotted some of Dad’s leather work gloves sitting on the John Deere; I definitely knew better than to go touching unusual animals without gloves. I swiped them and picked up the little, furry gray creature.

“You’re a cute little thing,” I said to him. I held him up and looked him over, his gray shiny fur was wet in places from Dumb Dog’s mouth. His eyes were squinty and black, his nose was a long gray snout. His front legs had large, spoon-like claws and his back legs looked like stumps. I was quite fascinated. Then — “EVIL Dumb Dog!” I chastised the mutt who was still standing next to me, proudly panting. “No digging up moles. Dad will hog tie you when he finds out you were making holes.”

The sun’s angle was beginning to change, the shadows were getting longer and I was getting hungrier. I had to figure out what to do with this mole before Mom rang the dinner bell. (YES, we have a dinner bell back home. It’s much more effective than Mom trying to yell to get us to come in from the barn…poor Mom can’t yell. She’s just too quiet and cute.)

I stood there, looking at the shiny little gray mole in my hands and tried to decide how to handle this. We have a major mole problem back home, there are probably more moles in my parents’ front yard than there are in the rest of the state of Iowa. Pops hates moles. Due my knowledge of this predisposition, I knew I couldn’t just let the thing go – if Pops found out, he’d be liable to kill ME!

I needed something quick and painless.

Beau’s feed bucket was sitting next to the water spigot and it was empty. Just as a plan began to form in my mind, I heard that dinner bell clanging in the distance. Now I had to think fast; Mom didn’t abide tardiness to dinner.

Without really considering the ramifications of my plan, I kicked the feed bucket under the spigot and turned on the water, but I missed and it sprayed all over my black knee boots and breeches. Half soaked, I struggled to not drop the mole and get the feed bucket in line with the stream of water.

“Poor little baby,” I crooned to the mole. “This won’t take long.”

The bucket was just about full, so I took a deep breath and dropped the mole in. It splashed, floated to the top, and began to swim.

“OH NO!” I wailed. Swimming hadn’t been in my plan. I frantically searched around the barn for something to use to hold the little guy down. I located a small board and pushed the mole under water.

Mom rang the dinner bell again and my stomach growled. The stubborn mole refused to die.

For ten minutes I crouched there, hand in the icy bucket of water, trying to keep the mole under water. I considered alternate ways of ending the mole’s life, but I couldn’t bring myself to squish him or anything that required actual violence. I felt like a murderer enough as it was.

I waited another five minutes and raised the board to check on my progress, only to discover the resilient little guy halfheartedly swimming around in the bucket! I knew I would be in major trouble if I stalled any longer to go up to dinner, and I also knew the mole wouldn’t be able to climb out of the bucket. So, with some hesitation, I just left in there to drown on his own.

Dinner was very difficult to eat that evening. I had no appetite.

Right after I finished helping clean up the table I ran back down to the barn. I wanted to beat Dad so he wouldn’t find the bucket with a drowned mole in it before I got to it and cleaned up the evidence.

To my relief, the mole had finally expired.

With a sigh of relief I ran the bucket across the street and tossed the water, and the poor dead mole, into the ditch. Pops was just walking down to the barn as I jogged back up the driveway.

“What are you doing?” He asked.

“Umm…well…IhadtodrownamoleandIwasburyingitacrossthestreet,” I mumbled.

“Say what?” Pops was slightly incredulous, unsure if he’d heard me correctly.

“Dumb Dog caught a mole before dinner and I drowned it.” I sighed. I felt so guilty and horrible, like a menace to society. “I didn’t want it to get back in the yard…”

Pops just laughed.