I have a clock radio from 1978. It has two volumes, “Way Up” or “Silent.” The alarm is stuck between KQRS and buzzer, and after the Exxon Valdez coffee/hairspray spill of 1989, the on/off button is gunked up and doesn’t work. So I either plug it in, or I don’t. But it still does the job. It’s more like a time bomb I set for myself every night, so I can be assured of dragging my can out of bed when it’s absolutely necessary.
But this is a story about a morning when I didn’t have to get up. A day off. I got up anyway. Because I forgot to unplug my alarm. One moment, I’m dead to the world. The next, the alarm goes off. I was shocked into Bachman-Turner Overdrive. With so much adrenaline coursing through my body, I had no choice but to stay awake. Because it was my day off, I was at loose ends. I decided to call my mother, who is the only person I know personally who is up early in the morning every day for no other reason than that “it’s the best part of the day.”
My mother is old. And I’ll let you in on a little secret about old people. They don’t sleep. They put on their pajamas like you or me, but it’s all for show. If you called my mother at 2 a.m., she’d answer on the first ring and conduct a lucid discussion on the subject of the Marie Osmond doll collection versus the Precious Moments figurines. (Just an aside here: I don’t like how, at a certain age, dolls become socially acceptable collectibles again. My grandmother has an entire roomful of two-foot tall Victorian villagers. Not one of them has kung fu grip, or can wet their knickers. Inaction figures. If this weren’t bad enough, she also has a “shame baby.” This is a doll who is perpetually in a “time out” position, standing in a corner, hands shielding its eyes in eternal disgrace. I couldn’t understand why anybody would want to immortalize this particular childhood rite of passage, and then I figured out that maybe my grandmother is nostalgic for yelling at children. At any rate, the last time I was there, when Nana wasn’t looking, I carefully posed a steak knife in the dolls’ little foam hand, so it could at least look like she had done something worth being yelled at for.)
Back to the story. I looked at the clock. It was around 5 a.m. I dialed the number, and to my horror, my father answered. My father is the original strong silent type. He distrusts the telephone. When the telephone rings, it’s either trouble, or somebody who wants to talk. And either way, that’s trouble. Small talk is out of the question, because it implies a weakness of intent in life that my dad finds unsettling. Quickly, I decided to talk to him about something that I had recently purchased, because the one thing that is sure to engage Dad is the threat of expenditure.
Right down to lunchbox apples, no purchase is too mundane for my dad to wrestle over. He’s got a system, and it’s served him well. The Four W’s. If you want to buy something, ask yourself, why, why, why, and why. If you find that you can answer all four questions clearly, wait three weeks and see if you’ve forgotten what you wanted in the first place. And if you must spend, before you crack open your wallet, think “double duty.” Two years ago, my dad bought each of his kids a case of Jimmie Dean Lambrusco, an amber vintage the color of iodine, with a sausage-y afterthought. He proudly read from the back of the box: “Says right here this wine goes with beef, chicken, and fish!” My Mom interjected, “I’m pretty sure it would go with franks and beans, too, Hon.” Still high from his splurge, my father replied, “You know, it doesn’t say anything about pork, but let’s try that tonight!”
Anyway, as soon as Dad answered, I launched into a filibuster about my broken clock radio, hoping to either trick him into conversation, or trick him into handing the telephone to my mother. In record time, he handed the phone to my mother, who, hearing my voice, breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, I thought it was your grandmother.”
“Why? Is there anything wrong?”
“I think she’s going batty. She called us up at 3 a.m. last week because one of her dolls pulled a knife on her.”
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