The Usher's Consternation

It has been pointed out to me that the blog has taken a decidedly sophomoric turn, and for that, I am grateful and unapologetic. You see, my job is stressful. It's like a crock pot (or is it a pressure cooker?). During the work day, while meeting with my clients, I maintain a loud internal dialogue as the client rambles on and on like a busted car alarm down the street. While smiling empathetically and gently furrowing my brow and nodding my head like a bobblehead, I say to myself: "Holy cow. This guy's pathetic. How long can this go on? My blood sugar is plummeting. Doesn't this guy have chores to do?" So, as you can see, any escape from this tedium will provide welcome solace, like a healing balm on a really bad case of the shingles.

So I must publish pictures like this one:

Taken shortly before Christmas, 2009, this picture highlights the good works of some diligent neighborhood pranksters, likely the teenagers up the street who always walk by cursing and spitting. They are otherwise kind and gentle souls. I give them an "A" for indirectly teaching my kids the realities of animal husbandry and wifery by creatively rearranging the holiday deer on our front lawn.

We live in a very urban area, you see, and my kids are usually not exposed to such things. This is different than my brother John's family. John lives on a farm with his wife and 5 kids where there are lots of chickens running around (often without their heads, but then only for about 8 seconds) and continuous displays of animals doing animal things. It's like a never-ending movie version of chapter 14 in the 4H manual.

Every now and then, when the corn is mowed and the cows are lugubriously chewing their cud and plotting their world takeover, John heads into town for a movie. He once took his daughter, Brigid, to see a Harry Potter movie. Three year old Brigid finished her bucket of popcorn and her soda before the previews were completed, and then, before Harry got his first headache and bad flashback, she fell asleep on John's lap. Around the time when Hermione was starting to get really tiresome, Brigid peed. It was a nice long, warm, voluminous pee, and, as John describes it, it was not unlike someone pouring a potful of simmering chicken noodle soup into his lap.

John responded appropriately. He continued to calmly sit and watch Harry hamming it up with the Weasley brothers. For John, the pee was like He who could not be named: always present, always causing angst, but there was really nothing you could do about it. Like Harry enduring Voldemort, John could only sit there quietly as the movie played on. By the time the credits were rolling Brigid was stirring and ready to head home. John stood up and noted the pee, now cold, which had soaked through his Levis to his thighs. A stinging ammonia smell greeted him. He turned and noted a large, circular stain on a good 80% of his movie seat. "Oh, my!" John whispered. He quickly gazed this way and that, picked up Brigid and hightailed it out the exit and into the glaring Oregon sun. Once home he quickly changed into his bathing suit and jumped into his swimming pool.

I asked John, "Weren't you concerned about the next movie goer who would sit in that seat? Shouldn't you have told an usher?"

He responded thoughtfully, like a farmer with a piece of straw dangling from his mouth calculating how many bales of hay were in his field. "No," he said, "That never crossed my mind."

So, I remember the story of Brigid, and I think of this picture of Henry. Then I know that life is grand: