Sleep In Heavenly Peas

Tangled Web

I love to lie. And I'm good at it.

It started in childhood.

In Second Grade I drew a pair of scary eyes on a stall in the girls' bathroom at Cobb Cook Elementary. It freaked everyone out. Screams were heard, hair stood on end, fingernails were ravaged. Miss Serrano marched all the girls into the hallway and asked that the culprit step forward. No one did. It was a standoff. For punishment, she made us write "The Pledge of Allegiance" five times. No small feat for a Second Grader. We became suspicious and began looking askance at one another, none more so than I. Eventually the rumor circulated that one of the older girls from the floor above had snuck down during a firedrill and done the deed, which seemed to satisfy everyone, none more so than I. I'd started the rumor.

Then there was Vallen Kineski.

Vallen Kineski was the class fuck-up. He was so disruptive, the Principal was regularly summoned. This was the Fifties, when Principals kept wooden paddles hanging behind their office doors and their shirt sleeves rolled up. I began bringing home Vallen Kineski stories as entertainment around the supper table. "Today Vallen Kineski put tacks on all the girls' chairs!" "Today Vallen Kineski spit at the teacher!" "Today Vallen Kineski said 'Hell! Hell! Hell!' in the lunchroom!" At the PTA Open House my mother listened attentively as Miss Serrano sang my praises ("Your daughter's marks are excellent!" "Your daughter's manners are inspiring!" "Your daughter's imagination is remarkable!"). My mother thanked her, then lowered her voice and commiserated over the problem student.

"Who?" said Miss Serrano.

"Vallen...Kineski," whispered my mother.

"But, you must be mistaken," said Miss Serrano, "there's no student by that name in my class."

My mother didn't tell me this story until years later, when I was well into adulthood. And the spin she gave it was to marvel at what a remarkable imagination I had, even then.

I'm not sure why I invented Vallen. I was indeed the student Miss Serrano described...attentive, focused, eager. I didn't get into trouble, didn't make waves, didn't step out of line. I was your basic (choose one) ass-kisser/goody-goody/teacher's pet. But...I was smart. Even cunning. I was able to adjust my demeanor so that no one suspected my duplicity. And I loved the physical thrill of lying. That tickling sensation in my feet. That pins-and-needles high. Young Little Lambikins though I may have been, there was a nascent sexual component to my deceiving ways.

But my lying days are behind me. For the most part. I've been 97% lie-free for twenty-three-and-a-half years. Some of you may recognize that as the length of time I've known my husband. This is a good thing. I've obviously been getting my rocks off in a more socially-acceptable manner. Not that being socially-acceptable has ever been of any concern to moi. But these days, it takes a major social/emotional/intellectual conundrum to get me to fall off the Truth Wagon.

Which is how I ended up in the road, on my ass, relapsed.

Here's the story:

One of my seventeen sisters-in-law (okay, there are only three, but it feels like alot more) has had the audacity to arrive at a particularly sobering milestone birthday. I'm not naming names, or numbers. Suffice it to say I myself rounded this particular bend awhile back, and it's been downhill ever since. So of course there was no choice but to organize A Party, of your basic Knockdown-Dragout variety, one which my husband and I sorely wanted to attend. The problem being, this Blowout would take place down in The City, and we live Up North, and Never the Twain.

Enter Plan A.

In order to enable us to take part in this Social Event of the AARP Season, we needed a house/kid/dogsitter, fast. Seeing as how all our available friends/relatives/ex-lovers live in or around The City, and would no doubt be attending The Bash themselves, we arranged for a local woman, a friend-of-a-friend etc., to guard the kingdom for twenty-four hours. Local Woman asks if it's okay to bring along her seven-year-old. No problemo. We set it up for Local Woman and Young Daughter to stop by the house, check out the lay of the land, meet the pack.

So far so good.

Then, Sunday afternoon arrives. The door knocks. I open it. And in walks Local Woman and The Kid From Hell. LW smiles in greeting as TKFH kicks off her Nikes, lunges into the room and hollers that she's in Second Grade at Northern Lights Elementary and spent Friday afternoon sitting out in the hallway.

"BUT IT WASN'T MY FAULT!!" hollers TKFH. It doesn't take long to realize TKFH's voice is locked on full volume.

I introduce my daughter to LW, and while they're exchanging Hellos, TKFH lunges across the room and grips my daughter in a hammerlock.

"TRY TO GET AWAY!!" hollers TKFH. My daughter, a level seven optional gymnast with arm muscles the density of tire irons, tries. And fails. TKFH screams with accomplishment.

TKFH unlocks my daughter and lunges to the far end of the room with her arm raised.

"LET'S SEE IF I CAN SCARE IT!!" hollers TKFH, and slams her fist against the side of our 50-gallon aquarium. A small tsunami sends the plecostomus dashing for cover, and TKFH shrieks with satisfaction.

"TAKE THAT!!" hollers TKFH.

When the dog sidles up to investigate, TKFH makes monster claws and roars at her. When the cat tries to slither behind the sofa, TKFH grabs her around the neck and pins her to the floor.

"GOTCHA!!" hollers TKFH.

The cat swipes at the offending hand, and TKFH starts to wail. LW smiles and rolls her eyes as if to say, "Kids will be kids!" I'm thinking "It's not good parenting etiquette to choke someone else's child in front of them!" as we tour the house and the nightmare continues.

By the time we've arrived back at the door, I'm wondering whether I'm simply having palpitations or is this the precursor to a major cardiac event. LW pulls on her boots. My daughter breathes shallowly beside me, TKFH belted around her like a strait jacket. The dog and the cat are nowhere to be seen.

"BETCHA I CAN PICK YA UP!!" hollers TKFH into my daughter's ear, and does. My daughter's eyes are windows into a dark and pleading soul.

At the eleventh hour, LW addresses her daughter.

"Use your words, not your hands," she instructs, but it's too late. Seven years too late. A lifetime too late. Maybe many.

LW opens the door, and TKFH hurls herself out onto the back deck, slamming the door behind her. My 97-year-old house shudders to its very foundation. LW smiles and rolls her eyes and tries to open the door. It won't budge. TKFH is leaning against it from the other side.

And that's when I feel it, from the other side of a long long life, I feel it. A familiar tickle in my feet. A certain pins-and-needles high. Now I know I'm not having a heart attack. Now I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to fall off the wagon. Embrace my long-lost gift. Save the kingdom.

Which is what I did. Several days later. I simply picked up the phone, and lied. No problemo. It was beautiful. Perfect. Orgasmic. I haven't felt like that since the last time...well, since the last time. And she bought it. That poor, clueless, head-up-her-vagina LW bought it. The details of The Lie, or the subsequent Plan Two, aren't important. What matters is that disaster was averted, feelings were spared, lives were saved. AND WE WERE GOING TO A PAR-TEE!! All's well that ends well.

Except, ever since that unexpected rush of my relapse, something's been bothering me. Okay, haunting me. Something having to do with the notion that what goes around, comes around. Something having to do with the similarity between The Kid From Hell and...Vallen Kineski. There, I've said it. Am I insane? It's just that the resemblance is unsettling. Too close for comfort. Too...Stephen King-y. But I'm probably getting carried away, as usual. I mean, who believes in this sort of thing. Though I wish my mother were still around to give it a good spin.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
- Albert Einstein

Toiling and Spinning

Last night I offered to make dinner for my long-suffering husband. He sat at the table nursing a beer while I chattered like a chickadee and started a grease fire. Well, a Canola Oil fire. And there weren't really any flames, just smoke. Alot of smoke. Not as much as a ChimneyFire!, but enough. We decided to leave the windows closed on account of it was ten-below-zero, and the veggie burgers were burnt to hockey pucks, so we popped another smoky brewski and called Domino's.

Then this morning I turn on one of those GOOD MORNING! shows while I'm waiting for the coffee to brew, and some natty psychologist with a hard-on is telling some skinny bitch with a microphone and $300 hair that it's normal to experience stress during the holidays, but the most important thing is to remember to spend time with the ones we love. They could be doing live coverage of another in-country terrorist attack, such is the level of earnest concern.

I start talking to the TV. Not a good sign. I assure it that I could not imagine how I might have been able to stagger through another day without such invaluable information. I thank it for allowing me to be the recipient of this sanity-saving message-in-a-bottle. I share with it my humble awe at the willingness of experts to step down from the ivory heights and communciate with less comprehending souls. I inform the hard-on and the hairdo that while they conversate quite convincingly on national television, I'm fully aware that behind the facade they're actually envisioning oral sex with one another in a freight elevator, and I click them into oblivion and pour myself a cup of faintly-smoky French roast.

And then there's this: The director of the preschool where I teach is starting to put the pressure on. This is a person who's seen difficult times. Well, so have we all, by this stage of the game, some more difficult than others. But life is not a contest. It may be a test, but let's leave the con out of it. To continue, this person has found her answer in Jesus. Well, fine. Whatever. Any port in a storm. Though I'd prefer a glass of the Fonseca 1955 vintage to any other port, but that's beside the point. The point being, this aforementioned Jesus freak is starting to freak me out. She's starting to put the pressure on me. The resident zen pantheist. Can you imagine?

Now, in any other situation this putting-on-of-religious-pressure would be moot. Let me amend that. In any other rational situation. After all, there's laws in This-Land-Is-Your-Land that allow us to believe whatever we want to believe. In theory at least. The problem being, this is not a rational situation. This is a church, birthplace of the irrational. Let me explain.

The happy little preschool where I've been happily teaching lo these past months is annexed to a church. It gets worse. A Lutheran church. Only nobody seems to know what it means to be "annexed" to anything, let alone some church packed to the folding tables with Lutherans. A slight oversight which has enabled yours truly, a.k.a. your friendly neighborhood godless pagan, to sneak in the back door, as they say in hockey parlance. Somehow, after I'd been subbing at this school for awhile, the Christ-crazed director decided she liked me. (Hey, Mikey! She likes me!) She liked my MO. She liked my rap sheet. She liked my auto harp. She offered me a job. I accepted. Then she saw my tattoo. But it was too late. The back door grazed my ass as it clicked shut, and I was in.

Except I didn't know what I was in for. Like a sentence. And not of the grammatical variety. Apparently I'd somehow gotten on the wrong side of the Universe, and as a consequence, the Universe had seen fit to throw me into the lion's den. Just call me Danielle. Only this den is filled to capacity, not with the King of Beasts and all his cousins from Jersey, but with...Lutherans. Let me repeat: I Have Been Thrown Into A Den Of Lutherans! I cannot conceive of a more macabre and ironic punishment for such as myself. Apparently the Universe has a sense of humor.

So while I go about trying to housebreak a squirmy litter of three-year-olds, who don't know a herald angel from a hole in the ground, in fact, they prefer a hole in the ground, into which they can put their faith, their hope and their stinky little tootsies...anyway, while I go about my teacher's business, the director goes about leaving stacks of biblical flotsam on my desk, including Bible storybooks featuring Bible stories, Bible movies featuring Bible movie stars, Bible posters featuring Bible posturing, you get the picture. Jesus H. Christ, it's driving me to drink.

I don't know how any of this fits together. But that's life. And this is my life. It's not an essay. It's not a contest. Although, come to think of it, I did win an essay contest back when I was a teenager. Sponsored by US Steel Corporation, can you imagine? My winnings were two shares of US Steel stock, which I eventually traded for a portable Olivetti Underwood that saw me through four years of college and a starter marriage. The subject of that original steel-belted essay was "Charge It!" I rambled on about procrastinating things like kindness and duty and truth, and at one point, good little Lutheran that I was, I quoted the Bible, something about the "Lilies of the field."

And it's true. I was raised Lutheran. Confirmation, Luther League, lutefisk, the whole ball of lefse. A ball I was destined to lose during four years of higher (and higher) education, along with my virginity, my bra, and my belief in a giant all-knowing head in the sky who ran the Universe and considered incidentals like napalm and Agent Orange a part of the divine plan. These days a perfect underwire is my idea of a divine plan. And as far as the Universe is concerned, it seems to be running itself. And doing a yeoman's job of it. Expanding and contracting and evolving and reforming and occasionally doing stand-up on the weekend.