Tag: humor

Not too long ago, I worked at a suburban branch of a major weight loss chain. As day jobs go, it wasn’t too bad. We wore our own clothes with understated name tags—no absurd lab coats or ill-fitting logo’ed shirts. The job consisted of light filing and listening to lite rock. As weight loss consultants (Not “nutritionists”! Not “dietitians”! Liability! Danger! Danger!), we got to feel a vicarious thrill from time to time when a client would lose a couple of pounds over the course of a week—not to mention the ecstasy of monitoring our own body weight free of charge.

Most of our clients were busy professional women looking to lose those last ten pounds’ worth of desk-job/veal-pen pudge. An FBI profiler would categorize them as white, affluent, pleasingly plump. Some were serial snackers, others spree eaters. Our job was to lure them into our strip-mall HQ and make them eat our pre-portioned vegetables.

The bulk of business for this international company came from women who lost and gained those same ten pounds over and over and over again. It worked like this: Once a client hit her goal, she would graduate to what was known as the “maintenance” phase of the program. The maintenance phase transitioned the client from weekly check-in meetings to a monthly check-in. Over the course of a month, believe me, that number on the scale can sure creep back up. But no matter, you can always go back to your weekly meetings, any time you want. We’re here for you, to support you. Eternally.

Life at our little strip-mall diet club couldn’t be all smiles and sugar-free chocolate-flavored calcium-fortified chew treats. There were unpleasant tasks, too. One was something referred to as “Reminder Calling.” Between client meetings, we consultants had to call folks who’d missed their weight loss check-in. Welcome to the Hotel Minnesota. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

The list of call-back numbers was very long. In my weeks of experience as a weight loss consultant, I can tell you one thing for sure. People like to talk about losing weight, they like to buy things to help them lose weight, but they don’t really like to lose weight. They like to nap and eat cheesy gorditas. Since I was, on average, at least fifteen pounds heavier than any of my clients, I was a very popular consultant. I made people feel better about themselves. I was the Good Cop. People who would usually have been nervous to step on the scale after a week of binging felt safe to do it in front of me. They knew I wouldn’t pistol-whip them with frozen entrées. Consequently, I had a very low drop-out rate. I rarely had to make the dreaded Reminder Calls.

Sometimes, though, a manager would take us out of the loop and get all of the consultants to work on the list at once—a blitz of concentrated effort intended to whittle the list down as much as possible. One manager had the she-balls to call this drudgery a “Phone Party!” She’d spring it on us, bombshell-style. She’d practically skip through the beige-carpeted labyrinth of cubicles, singing, “Phone Party! Everyone meet in the conference room for a Phone Party!” The conference room table would be set up with a long line of phones, like a Jerry Lewis telethon. We’d each take a section of the dropout list and call as many people as we could in an hour. That was the “phone” part. The “party” part was a small bag of unsalted soy kernels. You had to bring your own Diet Coke.

Our manager even tried to muster up a little friendly competition. A consultant would receive a tiny gold star sticker for each client she could get to book a make-up appointment. For a while, this got the phone lines burning. You see, we thought there might be a larger prize at the end of the hour for those with the most gold stickers. A coffee cup bearing a nondenominational inspirational message, or perhaps a sweetly scented votive candle. But no. No one quite knew what to do with these stickers, so each of us found our own way to use them. One memorable co-worker used hers to make glittery pastie-type circles on her sweater. I wore mine like jailhouse tears. The Ace Frehley of calorie coaches. Though I enjoyed my stint in dietary law enforcement, I went back to waiting tables because I’m better at encouraging people to live outside the food pyramid. You don’t get gold stars for bringing an extra bread basket to the table, but you get a more satisfying reward: tips.

Sometimes I read my horoscope and wonder if my fellow Geminis in the Sunni Triangle are “dressing for success today” and “playing it coy around that special Scorpio.” When you think about it, dressing for success might just as well mean body armor as a pair of Lucky jeans. And “coy” could be a euphemism for “remain indoors after curfew.”

Once, back in Hazel Park Junior High, my study buddy Judy, who was convinced that our fates would be forever intertwined, passed me her dog-eared copy of Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs under the desk in science class. It was a paperback as thick as a three-egg omelette, with the binding broken in the “Libra/Capricorn” chapter. That chapter foretold the marvelous life Judy could expect to start living once she began going out with the most popular boy in school. To be fair, the binding of this well-thumbed tome was also creased at the “Gemini/Aquarius” chapter, which highlighted what I could expect when I began going out with the friend of the most popular boy in school. Judy would also pass me long, speculative, dreamy notes. What the four of us would wear to prom, to our double wedding ceremony, and how we would live in houses next door to one another. BFFs forever. Yes, Sun Signs had it all worked out.

Judy and I were roly-poly girls. We wore thick eyeglasses with plastic frames and ill-fitting clothes a season or two this side of stylish. Judy wrote out all of her class papers in dense, tiny, box-like characters that made every assignment she handed in look eerie and disturbed, like a furious ransom note. I was the type of girl who told disgusting jokes about bodily functions and laughed like a horse. I won’t try to kid you, I haven’t changed all that much. I didn’t need Ms. Linda Goodman to tell me our romantic futures. At slumber party séances, when I asked the Ouija board if I would get a date for the Snow Daze Dance, the plastic cursor would glide smoothly to no. Coincidence, or a warning from Captain Howdy?

But even then, I understood the appeal of a horoscope. My tightly wound pal just wanted something, somewhere in the world, to make sense. Horoscopes offered a strange sort of hope. Because if every single personality trait, kink, and circumstance is written in the stars, then the notion of chance is snuffed out. If all people boil down to the sum of a mathematical equation, it erases the fear that humankind is just a random cell circus, tossed about in the big ol’ bingo hopper of life. Despite Ms. Goodman’s astonishing powers of prediction, I lost track of Judy once she made the college prep courses in ninth grade. Different crowds. (Have you ever gone to a Chess Club kegger?) Now I only check the horoscope once in a while, when I wonder what Judy’s up to.

These days, a Sagittarian friend reads me her horoscope when many changes in her life are afoot. This woman always reads her newspaper fortunes to me with a quiet tone of finality, as if the die is cast and certain things can’t be helped. Because hey, if Mars moves into Capricorn and it stirs up the eighth house of transformation on casual Fridays, what exactly is there to be done about it? This same friend sleeps with her head at the foot of her bed whenever there is a full moon. I forget what mystical, Stevie Nicksian purpose this ritual serves, but I know she feels compelled to do it. Also, when she wants to sever contact with an annoying acquaintance, she writes the name down on a slip of paper and throws it into her crackling fireplace. Works every time. Well, it probably helps that she also stops returning their phone calls. This friend also lives in a South Minneapolis Tudor cottage constructed entirely of peppermint candy and sleeps with five cats. Just kidding. Except about the cats.

I don’t mean to be a doubting Thomasina, but if the world’s events could really be charted and manipulated simply by being aware of one’s birth order and the lunar calendar, then I’m pretty sure the Renaissance Festival would operate year round, if you get my drift.

The astrological wheel is confusing enough without bringing Chinese restaurant placemat soul animals into the mix. What am I, again? A monkey or twins? Twin monkeys? Well, that explains everything. Now give us a banana before we smear feces all over our cage and call you dirty names in sign language.

As a longtime student of human behaviors (i.e. waitress), I’ve got to tell you, I’m more inclined these days to believe in a simple triumvirate to assign personality roles. I think people basically come in three types. Rock, paper, or scissors. Which are you?

Hello, everyone. My name is Colleen and I am a women’s magazine addict. I am addicted not to Harper’s Bazaar, not to Vogue, but to the kind of women’s magazines that are displayed at the checkout lanes of your mid-range grocery store chains. It’s embarrassing, but it’s true. Whether I’m on the Stairmaster at the gym, or idling in the dentist’s waiting room, I hypnotically reach for the periodicals whose headlines promise to teach me how to “Organize My Life Once and for All!” and lose pounds fast on the grapefruit diet. You know—the types of magazines that feature Kelly Ripa on their covers. I’ve never seen the show she hosts, never heard her speak. But I know who she is. Because of women’s magazines, I know that Kelly Ripa has two high-profile jobs, a hunky Hispanic soap-star husband, and lots of children. And perfect skin.

Never mind that I don’t really need to know any of this trivia; I read it anyway. And then I can’t find the delete button for it in my brain. Useful information, like basic math skills and cursive writing, seems to vanish, perhaps obliterated by the onslaught of Kelly Ripa Fun Facts. Until someone over at the Mayo Clinic invents a neurological defragmenter, I will stockpile celebrity minutiae in my brain, and I fear that on my deathbed, instead of remembering my own children’s names, I will recall only the names of famous peoples’ offspring. Gwyneth begat Apple.

I now feel compelled to bring home at least one monthly cover image of Kelly Ripa with a turbo-fan flying mane of hair and a full-on, open-mouthed, manic rictus. (By the way, this type of smile, which celebrities have perfected, also happens to be a sign of aggression in chimpanzees. Keyword: Julia Roberts.) Never mind that I need this image like I need another hole in my head, or like I need its inevitable accompanying article, “Kelly Ripa’s Energy Makeover!” I know from direct personal experience in the glamorous world of show business that numerous celebrities derive their get-up-and-go from a glass pipe. Despite all of this, I feel powerless to stop reading, drop, and roll the hell out of the store without purchasing two or even three of these dirty little lifestyle rags. Yes, I do buy newsstand copies, furtively. If I subscribed to these magazines and the letter carrier knew my secret shame, I would expire of complications stemming from acute embarrassment.

I wish I could figure it out. It’s not like the magazines help or comfort me in any way. Despite repeated warnings from Good Housekeeping to “Get Started Now!” I remain a terrible procrastinator. The most cynical of all is Family Circle, which employs the double-whammy approach when putting together those hard-to-resist covers. Family Circle covers always have a mouthwatering picture of seasonal baked goods tumbling in artful abundance off dessert trays. A recent one features rich cream filling oozing out of a petit four that has been split in half—right next to a coverline, “Walk Ten Pounds Off In Ten Days!” But what really frosts my tips are the self-help articles. Talk about poisoning the well. Back in December, I read “Dr. Phil’s Family Sanity Guide for the Holidays.” I came home from Christmas dinner convinced that my family is but a Whitman’s Sampler of psychological afflictions. I used to think we were just colorful.

Flipping through them at the newsstand, I suspect that these magazines are actually mocking me and the other women who buy them. I think they’re edited by loveless, style-obsessed spinsters in New York City who don’t have families because they couldn’t fit them into their studio apartments. Instead they smoke and watch reruns of Sex and the City. I imagine them sucking down lychee martinis while brainstorming folksy, homespun articles designed to humiliate me. “Make Monogamy Sizzle!” Ha, ha, ha. Then they throw up lunch and go buy shoes.

I wonder if Kelly Ripa knows that her day in the media’s hot sun will end. Because these things are cyclical. Really, I wish Kelly Ripa no ill, for I feel I have come to know her. I wish her safe passage to the land of former women’s magazine cover girls. Marilu Henner, Lynda Carter, Marie Osmond. Pricilla Barnes, Vicki Lawrence, Dinah Shore. One day soon Kelly Ripa will join the ranks of these bygone celebrity Everywomen, who were recognizable and pretty, but not too sexy. Until then, may her beautiful countenance smile upon us from the magazine rack, a beatific, if disposable, Madonna extolling the virtues of low-impact aerobics, slow-cooker meals, and “Goof-Proof Eyes, Lips, and Hair!”

My son Isaac and I were playing Scrabble at our dining room table one recent evening when the phone rang. As always, Isaac ran to answer it. He heard his sixteen-year-old sister’s voice on the other end of the line. She was calling from her father’s house in St. Paul. When he heard that she wanted to talk to me, like any thirteen-year-old little brother, he made her wait.

“What do you want to talk to mom for?”

“Give her the phone, Isaac! I have to talk to her now!”

I was sitting across the table, silent yet hearing everything, watching this scene go down. As always, I was conflicted. How far do I let them take the battle before I step in and pull rank? And how much longer will I be able to? It’s a nasty fact of parenting teenagers that as each day passes, your Dr. Spock death grip loosens. Edicts become suggestions, proclamations become proposals.

I came out of my misty reverie to realize that a couple of minutes had passed and Isaac was still holding the receiver tight to his ear. He had launched into tactical taunting, repeating everything his sister said in a creepy, quiet, old-lady voice.

The louder she got, the quieter his whispering became.

“ISAAC! Give mom the phone NOW!”

“Isaac, give mom the phone now … hehehe.”

“ISAAC!”

“Eye-zz … ack … hehehe.”

I let this foolishness go on another minute until my daughter had resorted to yelling and my son had begun barking in response to her, like a dog who’d mistakenly knocked the receiver off the hook. This brings new meaning to family game night, yes?

I wrested the phone from the boy, who dissolved into giggles, then dug his hand into the letter sack for more tiles. My daughter was frantic. Her dad is a cabinetmaker with a home workshop and something had gone very wrong.

One of the most horrible aspects of horrible accidents is that you never know just when they are about to be rained down upon you, or someone you love. The overwhelming sense of bewilderment mixes with fear and pain, and the surprise factor shakes it all up like a fizzy panic cocktail.
“Honey—what’s going on?”

“Mom there’s been an accident and Dad cut his hand bad in the table saw and we’re at the emergency room and I don’t know but I think he lost a finger or two and he drove to the hospital with his hurt hand wrapped in a towel and I’m worried about him and they’ve got him back there now but I saw a lot of blood!”

She calmed down long enough to answer the where, what, and how questions accurately. After we devised a plan of action, I debriefed Isaac, who was mortified at his phone antics in light of this new information. I assured him that with his heartfelt apology, his sister would forgive him.

Then I used his remorse as a teaching moment to stress the importance of telephone etiquette.

Then I used his remorse to get him to take out the garbage.

With nothing to do but wait for the next phone call from the emergency room, we sat at the table and continued our game in thoughtful quiet. Isaac, no doubt reflecting on the disturbing events of the evening. Me, contemplating the absurd notion of control.

In a sober tone, Isaac broke the silence. “Hey mom, you don’t think Steve lost his thumb, do you?”

“Gosh, hon, I don’t know. I hope not. That would be awful.”

Isaac’s brow furrowed as he looked at me across the game board and said, in all seriousness, “Yeah. Because you know, that’s the only thing that separates us from the animals.”

Maybe it was suppressed hysteria breaking through, but I howled with laughter. Still, it did get me thinking later that night, on my way to the hospital, about what does separate us from the animals.

I’d like to say that it’s passion, but anyone who’s seen a dog dig after a bone knows better. And it can’t be art, because if you’ve ever witnessed the lace of a spider web in the morning sunlight, you know there’s way too much incidental beauty on this Earth for us to take special credit for what we create. It can’t be politics, because lions have prides, and hives have monarchies.

And so it must be power tools.

One of my favorite ways to pass the time while standing in line at the grocery store is to analyze the contents of the carts of the people around me. I like the incongruity of it. Gazing up and down the lines, it’s not unusual to see a cart containing a sack of generic Froot Loops the size of a duvet cover, plus a few shiny, well-chosen apples. I imagine sharing meals with these people, dining on fare concocted solely from what they’ve got in their carts. The social activity would have to complement the menu. I think: “Lady, I’m coming to your house for breakfast! I love generic Froot Loops! Let’s you and me eat ’em dry by crumbly handfuls in front of the tube while we take in The View! Is Star Jones married yet, or what? (Munch-munch-munch.) Do you think she’ll wear Payless shoes to the wedding?”

Yes, it is possible to dream up an entire relationship with someone in the span of time it takes to get through the checkout. But part of the game is never, ever talking to the people behind the cart. It’s important to tell the story of the cart all by yourself. I don’t want to hear that this worn-looking woman has five kids who eat through that massive bag of cereal bowlful by bowlful, like dog food. In my mind, she’s an eccentric who lives entirely on snack chips and apples. She can’t deal with utensils, not since she was involved in a walk-by stabbing at the Old Country Buffet salad bar. She did her time all right, paid her debt to society. But she can’t trust herself with cutlery in a world where certain folks think it’s all right to take the last of the low-cal French.

Still, I had to break my long-standing rule of silence the other day when a cart rolled up behind me that contained the following: forty-eight cans of refrigerated biscuit dough, three economy-size jars of tomato basil Prego spaghetti sauce, a pillow sham of grated cheddar, one can of Diet Coke, and a pack of Dentyne Ice.

I immediately came up with several options for a back story, but none rang true. Spaghetti sauce wrestler? That explained the Diet Coke and the breath-freshening gum, but not the cheese and biscuit dough. In my list of possible explanations, I had gotten all the way down to, “Well, maybe she’s having a party.” But what kind of party do you have with forty-eight cans of dough? I had to ask.

The woman laughed nervously and drew her hand through her smooth blonde hair. “Oh! I teach a junior-high life skills class, and today we’re cooking a dinner. I’m going to teach them how to make ‘Bubble Pizza.’ ”

Instantly, I had a snapshot of Bubble Pizza. The separated biscuit rounds smashed onto an ungreased cookie sheet, smothered in Prego, caked with cheese curls, and baked at 350 degrees for ten minutes. I could see this pretty teacher standing in front of her class, holding aloft a can of dough to show how to press the back of a spoon along the seam of the can to pop it open. I could see our nation’s youth, diligently taking notes.

Life Skills. In 1985 we called it “home ec,” and it was widely considered an easy A. With the advances in convenience foods since then, anybody who can press the popcorn button on a microwave oven must be guaranteed top marks.

I remember cooking at age sixteen, stewing a whole chicken and making from scratch leaden baking-powder biscuits that not even my dog would sniff. These early adventures did not transform me into a good cook, but did help me to take culinary missteps in stride. Two Thanksgivings ago, in the course of using a “foolproof” Reynolds roasting bag, I neglected to remove the bird’s plastic wrapper and laminated a twenty-pound turkey. The year before I tried the traditional roasting method, and terrifying flames leapt out of the oven when my snoopy sister looked in to see “what that smell was.” Someone recently gave me a recipe for “Beer Can Turkey,” which calls for stuffing a twelve-ounce can of Schlitz into the bird’s cavity. I am afraid to attempt this until the terror alert goes down. I don’t know if you can call the bomb squad to defuse poultry.

The point is, it’s a part of life to take chances. The kitchen is one of the few places in life where even if you don’t succeed, folks are more than willing to give you a chance to try, try again. Pre-grated cheese is to cooking what Legos are to architecture. Read a recipe, screw it up. Decide what you’ll do next time and eat the mistakes.

I was sorting through an old box of videotapes the other night and came across an unmarked VHS cassette with no case. I popped it in the VCR, hit play, and for the next half hour, marveled at the human animal’s capacity for selective memory.

1993. I was a barista in an espresso bar downtown. At night, I’d perform standup comedy at the local clubs. I had wild showbiz hopes. The kind of hopes that are exhilarating but doomed, because they have no planning behind them, only unfocused energy. Because my monkey-with-a-typewriter approach is a fairly commonplace phenomenon in the performing arts world, it came as no surprise when I was offered a guest spot on a national television show. I would fly to New York and do five minutes of my choice, then an interview with the host.

My bosses at the coffee shop were delighted to have a burgeoning star in their midst, and they insisted on taking me shopping for a dress and makeup. This was my Cinderella moment. Every girl has one, you know. Sometimes it’s prom, or a wedding. Mine was walking through Dayton’s with someone else’s credit card.

I flew to JFK and was greeted by a limousine driver who had my name on a sign. As a minimum wage worker, I had budgeted carefully for my trip. The limo driver’s tip cost a whole day’s food allowance, but it was worth it.

The hotel was a luxurious midtown tower. During my two-day stay, every time I passed through the lobby, I grabbed an apple from the continuously replenished bowl on the coffee table. I rounded out my diet with hoarded peanuts from the flight. That way, I was able to tip the driver on the way back to the airport.

The producer of the show knew that this was my first television appearance, and he promised me that as soon as a “rough cut” of footage was assembled, he’d FedEx me a copy. Two weeks later, an envelope arrived at the coffee shop. I pulled the zip-strip and out popped an unmarked, untitled VHS tape with no case.

I immediately invited my bosses over to my apartment for dinner and a viewing. I made spaghetti, they brought the wine. They also heaped my plate with compliments, which I ate like a prize pig.

After dinner, we settled in front of the TV. I put the tape in and pushed play. When I walked onscreen, I didn’t recognize myself. (Such is the transformative power of a good dress.) My set was solid, and the audience laughed. The TV Me thanked them and strolled confidently to the host’s couch for an interview.

The camera focused on the host asking a question, and then shot to me, answering. Then it pulled out to include both of us in the frame.

When I wasn’t speaking, I was listening to the host, which is appropriate. However, I was listening with my mouth agape, just hanging wide open, as if for catching flies. This tends to make one look like Barney Fife. My guests laughed nervously at first but, as the tape rolled on, it dawned on all of us that my mouth wasn’t going to close. And it didn’t, for the entirety of a twenty-five minute interview.
Halfway through the tape, my dinner guests began offering solace, saying things like, “Oh, that show is on very late, probably no one will see it.” And, “Maybe people will think you made that face on purpose.”

As the interview drew to an end, the camera pulled out for a long shot. My legs were visible, since the hemline of the dress was fairly high. I am a sturdy person, so I tend to sit with knees apart, which is fine if you’re wearing jeans, but not so good if you’re flashing an entire national television audience, Sharon Stone style. What saved me from giving the money shot? Thigh fat.

Andy Warhol famously said that everyone would one day have fifteen minutes of fame. I achieved thirty minutes of shame my first time at bat. Too bad the “upskirt” video market wasn’t invented yet. I might have attained a kind of enduring Bettie Page niche appeal.

Despite the poor archival quality of VHS, I will not have the tape transferred to DVD. That would ruin its sentimental value. I put it back in the box of old tapes, where I will forget about it again. It will sit there, not so much a time capsule as a ticking time bomb. Why don’t I throw it away? What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. What embarrasses the hell out of me will only make future embarrassments less embarrassing. And if past experience is any guide, there will be many.

We’ve hit an interesting point in the arc of TV storytelling. It’s almost completely self-referential. Like monks from those earlier Dark Ages, copying illuminated manuscripts over and over again, today’s Hollywood hacks are feeding internally until there is no discernable output or input of ideas. Only yeasty, subdividing molecules of “Cop,” “Hot Chick”/“Dopey Chick”/“Brainy Chick,” “Cute Kid,” “Uptight Mom,” and “Bumbling Dad.”

Which got me to thinking. Wouldn’t TV be a lot better if rip-off shows substituted Great Minds of Western Civilization for their original characters? The only rules: A surrogate character must have roughly the same attitude as the original. Extra credit for sound-alike names. Like, for example…

All in the Family, with Edith and Nietzsche Bunker.

Gloria: “Daddy, when are you gonna start treating Ma like an equal?”

Nietzsche: “As yet woman is not capable of friendship: Women are still cats and birds; or at best, cows.”

Mike: “The way you make Edith wait on you hand and foot is a crime!”

Nietzsche: “Listen, Meathead. Once upon a time ‘good’ meant ‘godlike,’ and actions were considered good when they were done by the powerful. The chief virtue was power. ‘Bad’ meant common or poor and described those who were not powerful. Nowadays youse Commie pinkos are pushin’ a morality that’s all about loooove and compassion, and it comes from the resentment that the base and sheeplike feel toward the powerful. What was good now is called evil and what was bad came to be called good.”

Mike: “Sheesh!”

Edith: (scurries in from the kitchen) “Dinner’s almost ready!”

Nietzsche: “Get me a beer, Dingbat!”

Edith: “Sure thing, Neech! Right away!”

The idea works with game shows, too. How about the great 1920s know-it-all fronting her own quiz program: Win Gertrude Stein’s Money. She and Ben Stein have exactly the same haircut, you know.

Gertrude: “Hello. I’m Gertrude Stein. And today, I’m putting up $5,000 from my trust fund that says I know more than you. Money is always there but the pockets change; it is not in the same pockets after a change, and that is all there is to say about money.”

Jimmy Kimmel: “Gertrude, our first contestant today is a football coach at a males-only military academy. Welcome, Jack.”

Jack: “Thanks, Jimmy. Hi, Gertrude.”

Jimmy: “Please step into the isolation booths. The categories are the Island of Lesbos, ethnic jewelry, Provincetown, Legends of the LPGA, and David Crosby.”

Even Nick at Nite classics could benefit from creative recasting. Imagine that unforgettable uptempo chacha music and the big Valentine heart as animated letters spell out “I Love Luther.”

Desi enters the apartment, carrying an armload of papal indulgences, a rosary dangling from his coat pocket.

Desi: “Luther, I’m hoooome. Hey, wha’s this note you nailed to the door? You got some ’splainin’ to do!”

Luther: “I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen.”

Desi: “Luuuuuuther!”

Luther: “Waaaaaah.”

Memo to CBS: Want to shake Ray Romano’s long-running sitcom out of its creative doldrums? Turn him from a likable sports columnist into a depressive alcoholic turning out masterful stories of blue-collar despair. Presto: Everybody Loves Raymond Carver.

Robert sits snacking at Ray’s kitchen table, compulsively touching his glass or spoon to his chin before eating or drinking.

Ray: (takes an anguished slug of gin straight from the bottle) “Will you please stop with the chin thing. Please?” (Tilts head back and takes continuous Adam’s-apple-bobbing gulps.)

Robert: “You should really stick to Canada Dry ginger ale. Whadda you got to drink for, anyway? You’re a writer, you got a perfect life. I’m underappreciated, unloved, and always getting slighted by our parents. I’m freakin’ six foot eight!” (Weeps.) “I should be the drunk, but I can’t be, because they’d say I was copyin’ you.” (Pulls out his service revolver, taps it on his chin, and cocks it at his temple.)

Ray: (puts down bottle, brightens) “Wait a minute.” (Pulls a notebook and pencil out of his pocket, prepares to record Robert’s pain in terse, resonant, hard-edged sentences.) “Go on. My life is going to change—I feel it.”

There’s an arbor in my neighborhood that I drive past every day. Sturdy pre-fab construction, what looks to be bare, untreated wood. It catches my eye not because it’s beautiful, but because it is goofy. It’s the placement of the thing that gets me. It’s plopped a third of the way into the front yard of the house.

It is not arching gracefully over a walkway or path. Nor does it draw the eye through to focus on a lush planting. Furthermore, it’s not an accidental placement of the thing. It’s been sitting on that front-yard grass, bare as a bone for its second summer now, and it looks as though it’s going to stay there. It looks as though someone had a Jack Daniels break on chore day, went to Bachman’s, dumped two hundred dollars on a three-sided pine box, hauled it home, stood it up in the yard, passed out, and then woke up the next day and decided to leave it where it stands as a physical reminder to remain sober while landscaping.

I’m not saying that as a judgment, merely as an observation.

I live a couple of blocks away from the house that boasts this oddity, and I don’t know the people who live there. The rest of the house seems well-kept and ordered, at least from the outside, which only makes the Doorway to Nowhere that much more puzzling.

So, I’m out having coffee with my groovy artist pal, an old friend I haven’t seen in a while. He travels around a lot, and because I pretty much stay in the same place, I know we’ll always catch up sooner or later. He knows where to find me. It’s been more than a year since we’ve spoken, and when he asks me how I’ve been lately, the floodgates release. “My dad is sick! My kids are growing up fast! We have no kitchen countertops! The family dog had to be put to sleep!” Life is hardly falling in around my feet, but suffice it to say, there’s been a fair amount of nuttiness in the last twelve months. The next thing I know, I’ve been talking his ear off for thirty minutes straight and for the last ten I’ve been ranting about the arbitrary arbor. Of all things.

My old pal, he laughed in all the right places and didn’t question my hopscotching brain patterns. I finally ran out of gas, and he took a pull off his hand-rolled cigarette, and a slurpy sip from his sugary coffee treat. And when he spoke, it wasn’t, “Aw, hell, baby, I’m so sorry about your dad.” Or even “The dog too, huh? Well that’s the pits, man.” Nope. It was “Colleen, how do you know that the archway doesn’t lead anywhere?”

I stifled a wild urge to sink my teeth into his gentle hippie windpipe. Instead, I calmly said, “Well, that’s because I can see through it. That, and the last time I checked, I wasn’t living inside a Doctor Who episode. Just in case you’re wondering, I’m certain it’s not haunted either. No unexplained deaths in the neighborhood, no smell of sulfur.”

“Sure seems to be haunting you.” He laughed.

“Say that again but next time, cue the sitar music.”

“Seriously, think about all the things in life that you feel you know are real, but you can’t see. Your idea of God and the hereafter. Divine reprisal for unrepentant souls. Maybe you don’t see anything on the other side of that arbor, and what bugs you is that you feel you’re supposed to. By all the rules of gardening, an archway is supposed to lead somewhere. To your eye, this one doesn’t, and that sticks in your craw so much that you’ve become obsessed by it.”

“Obsessed is a pretty strong word.”

“Is it? I don’t see you for a year and a half, all this stuff is going on in your life, and you ramble on about a stupid garden feature that’s not even in your own yard?”

My morning commute takes me past the arbor and every day I still look up at it. I’ve become accustomed to the weird, bare wood arch standing stark on a plain green patch of grass. Now I’ve begun thinking of it as a pass-through that leads to everywhere, instead of a doorway that connects to only one room. A conceptual thoroughfare leading past illness, strife, and financial crunches, with wayside rests for joy and contentment and ridiculous old friends who smoke fragrant curls of tobacco and untangle thought snarls.

It’s like a little South Minneapolis Stonehenge. A primitive calendar that reminds me each day that passes is an occasion to believe.

I like to drive through the neighborhoods I used to live in and check in with my history. Most recently, Uptown. The corner of 25th and Bryant, a stately duplex on a tree-lined block.

The Uptown house rarely calls me. But something was in my head this day, something small, furry and insistent. Chewing through the toilet-paper tube of my consciousness, suckling at the suspended drip-bottle of recollection, running endlessly on the exercise wheel of my mind.

Rewind fourteen years. I was living in Stevens Court. Money was tight. My little Amanda was two years old and just beginning to realize the concept of “things.”

“Can I have that?” she’d say, pointing at the bike a child was riding through the park. “No,” I’d say. “But you can ride on my shoulders!”

“You don’t have anything I can pedal.” Amanda was nobody’s dummy. It went on that way for a time. At the dollar store, “No.” At the grocery store, “No.” It was a world of “No.” She and I were sick of it.

There was a pet store nearby. Browsing there was Amanda’s favorite treat. One day after a million no’s, in the pet store, she held up the funniest little animal I ever saw. A Siberian hamster. It looked just like a Siberian husky dog, only it was four inches long. They were expensive. Fifty bucks apiece. Amanda held a squirming fuzzball to her lips. It kissed her. She laughed delightedly, and was powerless to resist.

“Can I have this little guy?” God help me. I had my rent money in cash in my pocket. Her eyes held such wild hope.
“Yes.” The look on her face. The sun itself has never shone brighter.

When I screw up, I like to screw up big. I dropped two hundred dollars on two hamsters and the James J. Hill House of hamster tanks. I’d figure out what to tell the landlord later.

Fast-forward six months. Our fortunes improved. We were moving to our stately duplex in Uptown. I had a handsome live-in boyfriend named Ken, comedy work, and a sense that maybe things would work out.

On moving day, as boxes and furniture were hauled in a steady stream into the house, a friend lugged in the hamster tank. “Where should I put these guys?” I wanted them out of my daughter’s reach until we got settled. The duplex boasted a formal dining room with a very wide plate rail ringing the room near the ceiling. I pointed to a corner of the plate rail. “Put them up there.” I didn’t think they would fall. In fact, once they were up there, I didn’t think about them at all.

Fast forward two weeks. Ken, Amanda, and I were enjoying breakfast in the dining room. Amanda asked, “Mommy? Where are my hamsters?” Ken and I choked, goggled at each other over our coffee mugs, but said nothing. She asked again, and I did the only thing I could think to do. I lied.

“Honey, remember when we moved in here? Your hamsters told me that they didn’t want to move to a new place. They said they wanted to go back to the store to live with their aunts and uncles and cousins. So I took them back.”
It took awhile for her to speak. When she did, she looked me in the eye and her voice quavered. “I guess I wish you would have told me.”

“I’m sorry, honey. I should have.”

She let out a hot gasp and looked away. But not before I saw another look I’ll never forget. She knew I was lying. My lie painted a Disney world of talking hamsters and watchful mothers that she was already too wise to believe in. Like I said, she’s nobody’s dummy. I hustled her to the neighbors’ and paced the floor with my boyfriend.

“You do it,” I said, “I can’t look.” He dragged a chair over to the plate rail. His eyes widened in horror. He jumped down, covering his mouth in a gag. They weren’t both dead.

I shrieked, “Kill it!” I was in a state; I mean what was I going to do? Allow my baby to harbor a cannibal hamster? Ken’s eyes rolled in revulsion. “Kill it? The thing is mad as hell. I don’t want to touch it!” My mind was racing. “Put the oven mitt on, grab it, and throw it against the wall!”

Ken looked at me, thunderstruck. Our relationship lasted for years after that moment. To this day, I’m not sure why. At that moment, he knew the black depths of my heart.

Shielding our hands with oven mitts, we took the tank off the rail. The rodent was indeed furious, charging the walls in a palsied hamster slam dance. We carried the tank to the alley, tipped it over, and sprang back as fast as we could. It shot out down the alley, ravenous for flesh.

Free, in Uptown.

So, I’m sitting at this casino bar outside of Carlton, Minnesota, last month, and this rather handsome gent rolls up alongside me and says, “Nice mustache-ride joke. Can I buy you a drink?” I’d just closed out the bill at the Black Bear Casino’s “Free Comedy Night Thursdays.” Now, I don’t mean to brag, but that’s headlining, baby. Top o’ the hog pile.

When I say the guy rolled up, I mean that literally. My beer benefactor was in a wheelchair. Marine Corps, Vietnam, but that came out after the second round of beers. He told me he lost the leg in a poker game.

As it turns out, the guy wanted to talk shop. He’s just started making the rounds with his own stand-up act at open mikes in Minneapolis. That’s a long drive for someone who lives in Hinckley, but when you love performing, a couple of hours’ drive time can weirdly sweeten the deal. Whets the appetite for a crowd.

I took the Lady Slipper Lounge gig for the money. No mistaking that. But also for love. I’m called a comic, but I’m more of a B.S. artist. Anybody who has the audacity to take a microphone in hand and stand on a stage alone in front of strangers in a strange place with the intent to bring them together in a symphony of delight is both an artist, and full of it. I mean, talk about the impossible.

In truth, it had been years since I headlined a room of any size as a stand-up. You can leave the stage, but you never get over the laughs. I wanted to see if my old love would have me back.

The stage was a set of steps that led into the bar and a mike on a stand. No lighting, pre-show music cued in from a Discman. The crowd numbered fifty. The house emcee wore matching “Ziamond” pinky rings on each of his hands and did a pretty convincing Burgess Meredith impersonation. Kind of a mid-eighties vintage if you ask me, but the crowd lapped it up. Every grunt was underscored by the ringing slots.

In the middle of the first comic’s act, a drunken heckler roared to life. She was the prototypical Birthday Girl. Slumped in her seat, melon breasts spilling out of a shiny party blouse. Toy tiara from Wal-Mart perched on her head, queen for her day. She emitted giant eruptions of slurred sass, angrily ensuring that all eyes remained on her. Because they were tanked, she and her friends could only understand so much of what was being said to them from the stage.

The opening comic handled her like a brilliant neurosurgeon that is suddenly forced mid-operation to work with butter knives. He had a pattern. Mollify, compliment, insult. Apology, flattery, personal attack. Dig, dig, push. Tamp down the dirt. Bye-bye birthday girl. Twenty minutes later, she and her friends were stunned into shamed silence, the rest of the audience laughing at them. The comic killed her. He killed them. He killed.

I followed, and my set went fine. What I like to call “wildly OK.” My beer buddy was right; the best joke of my set was the mustache joke. It was a toss-off, part of a crowd riff. A fella in the front row sported a humongous Tom Selleck tickler, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it so I said: “Hey Tiger, how much are they charging for a mustache ride these days? Used to be twenty-five cents, and you’d see those T-shirts everywhere. What happened? Do you think there might have been a big mustache-ride accident? What do you think it was—whiplash? Or a dislocated jaw? That’s a damn shame. Bunch of litigation-happy people gotta screw it up for the rest of us!”

It was hilarious—really, it was, but I guess you had to be there.