Dotty Parker

the nature of things, stuff, and other very impressive sounding phenomena

BellyRub moved to Cleveland, Ohio yesterday.

Our baby's all grown up!

It was a stressful day, yesterday was. Erotica lost her wallet. She and I went out to look for it at KMart where she assumed she'd left it. It wasn't there. We looked everywhere and couldn't find it. They left without it.

She and my Mom had switched cars a few weeks before all of this. Erotica had been driving PTAMom's car when she went to KMart. They switched back before they left for Cleveland. As PTAMom and Dr.Dad drove home, Dad driving behing Mom, it looked to Dr.Dad as if PTAMom had hit something and it had gone to the side of the road. Dr.Dad stopped the car and walked over to what "looked like a wallet".

There was Erotica's wallet. We presume it had been on top of the car the whole time. We even drove that car back to KMart to look for the wallet. None of us saw it. Six of us! None of us saw it. Good thing Dr.Dad was on the watch, though.

Erotica had tucked a diamond into the change purse of her wallet. Well, don't you have a diamond in your wallet? No? She'd been having trouble with her wedding rings and after months of arguing with the jeweler, they gave her satisfactory rings and a new diamond in the ring and, I guess, the old diamond back.

She remembered that the diamond was in her wallet as we were eating pizza for lunch on the floor. She all of a sudden said, "Oh! The diamond was in there, too!" BellyRub said, "In the future, when you remember those things, don't tell me. Okay? Just don't tell me."

those people aren't real

Her brother wasn't there yesterday as we loaded boxes into the truck, but I had seen him the night before. Erotica's going away party with people from her work was last night. She'd asked BrilliantEditor and me to come by, kind of to make sure someone would be there.

She didn't have to worry as most of her workplace showed up. Everybody was having a good time, including her brother. BrilliantEditor and I left about two hours after we'd gotten there. We were tired and stuff, so we said thank you and waved goodbye and shuffled on home.

I guess things were fine for a while. But then Erotica's brother began behaving badly. He got in an argument with one of her coworkers. His behavior got much worse. Erotica had to leave her party early because his behavior was embarassing to her and she didn't want him there anymore.

So normally, believe it or not, I wouldn't mention this. I think it's rude of me to mention it now, but I've got some questions. Lots of questions. Questions that make it hard to sleep.

Her brother has been badly behaved, and that's a euphemism, for quite some time. She continues to bring him places, however, and like a scientist doing behavioral studies, he is a pleasant companion just often enough to make a person think that maybe everything is different now.

Everything isn't different, though. It never is for very long, anyway. There are brief bits of politeness and gentlenss, the kind that draw me in to believing him, that somehow he is changed, a new man, he's beaten this thing that's been creating so much havoc all around him. He's mastered that whatever it is that makes bad things happen.

And then, in a way that feels like hitting my head against a wall, I learn that he hasn't changed at all.

What the hell am I babbling about here? I really feel like for the first time I know what it's like to completely not believe someone. No matter what he says, I'm looking for the translation. I'm looking to see what he's hiding or avoiding or if there even is a grain of truth. I don't believe anything about him.

And I wonder how many other people are out there who I shouldn't believe. I wonder if it matters, really. What percentage of the population that I deal with behave in this way?

If I were a prison guard I'd expect most people to be shifting any story in their direction, if not just lying. But I'm more like some suburban woman in a grocery store, minus the kids. I look like I could be one; people ask me quite often if I have children; they want me to have children; they think it would be fun if I had a minivan; they can see me with one of those cute, kid-friendly shopping carts with the plastic car for the kid to drive while I shop for organic applesauce and stoneground graham crackers sweetened with honey and fairly traded spices.

How many people do I deal with each day should I not trust? It's completely freaking me out that there really are people like that out there. I don't know what the hell I thought before, I guess that they had some shred of decency left in them that would give them a pang of forethought before they did their nasty things. Maybe they'd only behave badly when there was no one to see, when they couldn't be held accountable. They'd do bad things only when it was conveniently hidden from the world.

It's completely absurd, of course. That would be my version of breaking the law. I'd do bad things only when no one was looking and no one I knew was around. I'd make sure that no children were nearby to be emotionally scarred. I'd be a literacy volunteer to make up for my sins. I'd drive at the speed limit to make up for my transgressions.

I can't particularly think of any transgressions that appeal to me right now, but I'm sure I could think of something compelling. Perhaps I could stand behind a screen and hold onto some illegal substance and put it in my pocket and walk around in possession. Then I'd go back home and put it away to save for another day when I wanted to be bad.

The problem with that is that I'd be making a silent statement about the inherent non-threatening nature of a drug. I'd be saying that it's the fear, the enforcement, the concealment that leads to violence and huge amount of money and danger. Yeah, there'd still be crack addicts stealing stupid stuff, but maybe, whatever. It'd be a statement. In my book that makes it some kind of civil disobedience rather than just mischief for mischief's sake.

I'm not going to understand this. Maybe I shouldn't try. Maybe maybe maybe a whole bunch of things, but I think I'll stick to what I've been doing. I say with some twisted pride that I didn't trust her brother when I met him. It helped that he threatened to hit me, that did tip me off, but I wouldn't have trusted him anyway. Hooray for me! Able to spot the naughty people at only three yards.

Posted by dotty at August 4, 2003 02:12 AM