“Read My Lips, or I May Poop My Pants!”
I think both of my parents are losing their hearing. Dad is almost completely deaf in his left ear. He has been for as long as I've been on the planet. I think it's why he tears up while watching the scene in It's A Wonderful Life when George gets his ears boxed by the pharmacist, Mr. Gower. Jimmy Stewart's character George lost his hearing by saving his baby brother from drowning in freezing water. My dad allegedly punctured his own eardrum by sticking a hairpin in his ear as a young boy (according to my late Grandma Arthur). Regardless, the expression "Huh?" is a common response anytime I (or anyone) address(es) my father from the left side of his body.
Interestingly, my mother is following suit. While her hearing does not discriminate between the sides of her body, she doesn't hear a good portion of what I say and we've already spent a great deal of time this vacation in side-splitting laughter about many of the things she thinks she is interpreting from my lips. Don't even get me started trying to explain my attempts to talk with either of them from the backseat of the car. They together become an indistinguishable ensemble of "Huh?!" and "What, honey?" until I just grouse with a loud and resigned, "Never mind. Just drive."
Yesterday, while enjoying a delicious breakfast within a charming café, I'm suddenly hit with a paralyzing urge to poop. Seeing a woman enter the bathroom just as this feeling washes over me, I begin to experience distress. When Arthurs have to crap, our colons don't dilly dally. When my thoughts turn to seriously kicking in the door and kindly demanding the woman let me go first, I figure it's probably a good idea to begin strategizing alternate options. Men's room? Ewww. Porta-potties in the vicinity? Nope. Woods nearby? Nowhere in sight. Damnit.
Realizing I am going to have to sprint back to the resort, I turn to my father and request, with a great sense of urgency, the room key. I will liken the ensuing interaction to the scene in Christmas Vacation between Aunt Bethany and Uncle Lewis after Clark asks Aunt Bethany to say the dinner grace.
After my third attempt to retrieve the key from Dad, and all I was getting in response was "Huh?," and only seconds before I was going to frisk his pockets myself, I pull an Uncle Lewis, point to my mouth and exaggerate the annunciation of "I a-m g-o-i-n-g t-o s-h-i-t m-y p-a-n-t-s! G-i-v-e m-e y-o-u-r r-o-o-m k-e-y!"
Sympathizing, he scrambles and finally offers his key. I grab it and charge out the door to the resort (in my heeled sandals, of course) as Dad cheers me on with a booming "Go, Née, go!"
This sort of encouragement is like someone thinking they are helping by rubbing your back while you are vomiting. It doesn't help. It just makes me more focused on the fact that I am in a dead sprint, actively tightening my sphincter while gripping my toes with the same conviction so my sandals don't go flying off.
I make it to our room unscathed (for the record– I've never crapped my pants. And, no, you cannot count the time I had to gnaw off my panties in below zero temperatures. That was a marathoning catastrophe that did not entail an accident. For another time).
As I sit alone in a brief moment of reflection, I decide it might be time to broach the dreaded Miracle Ear conversation with Mom and Dad.
My sister Julie's good morning text was an inquiry about what we had planned for the day. She figured it was likely something super sexy and awesome like sailing or crabbing. Mom, however, had a very different agenda.
Mom has a goal to not only see but also tour 10 out of the 10 lighthouses gracing the shoreline of the county of Door. Dad and I are offered a choice of taking a 6-hour hosted trolley tour, or embarking on an excursion to navigate the coastline on our own in search of the 10 historic maritime guideposts.
For a host of reasons, we opt for the latter; as a result, Dad and I spend a lot of time posing for photos while Mom gets her fill of her all-time favorite landmarks. We are proving to be a family of win-wins. But let's hope that doesn't actually stick and we instead remain in true antagonistic form, or this tongue-in-cheek blog will fall by the wayside.
I'll circle back here again later. As you can imagine, the three of us have had a lot of time to reminisce about all of the crazy life occurrences that took place within a household of six human beings, as well as the bizarre things that have happened out in the world; like dad having a warrant out for his arrest due to my not having paid campus parking tickets in college, Mom and Dad's snorkeling adventure in St. Croix, where apparently Mom's multiple screams underwater were audible on land, and the time the man exposed himself to me in the Rocky mountains. Our conversations span the spectrum, and except for those incidents regarding which I've been issued a strict gag order, you are privy to as many as I can stomach writing.
Thanks for being here with me. our presence gives me the sense that I have virtual allies and allows me to feel confident to pull out verbal artillery like, "Dad, seriously! If you do that, I swear I'll put it in my blog."
Having you, my blog audience, here is like having a superpower over one's arch-nemesis. For this, I wholeheartedly thank you.