Very Bad Things

Crisco, and how I came to hate it

I've had a nearly lifelong disdain for Crisco, and I can pinpoint for you the exact moment it started. Like most weird little kids, I had my own weird little obsessions. Chief among them, for a few years at least, was butter. I couldn't get enough of the stuff; I'd sneak bites of it when my mom was cooking, I'd eat butter flavored Crisco by the spoonful. It was a problem. A problem that became a full blown domestic and intestinal disaster when I was a little less than two-years-old.
My dad has always been a bit of a handyman, (this will be relevant, just wait) and back when Mike and I shared a room he decided to craft us a set of bunkbeds. Brother and I would spend hours in the garage fetching tools for him and trying to decipher the magics of carpentry. I had a pretty intense case of toddler narcolepsy back then, and I tended to run around like a maniac for a few hours and then BAM pass out wherever I'd wandered to. So it was no wonder that Dad assumed I was unconscious on the dog bed when the garage became eerily quiet. It was, after all, one of my favorite slumber stations.
But I wasn't asleep. I was plotting. And stacking. And climbing. Mom had just been to the grocery store a few days earlier and had bought a brand new tub of butter-flavored Crisco in preparation for a baking frenzy. She'd intentionally put it on a high shelf in the pantry because she knew me for the butter fiend I was. Unfortunately for her (and me, and Dad, and the carpet) I knew right. where. it was. And damned if I hadn't inherited enough engineering genes to figure out how to get to it. Oh, and get to it I did. Using a cunning technique of stacking cereal boxes and jars of peanut butter I managed to ascend the 6 or so feet between myself and the Holy Grail. A completely untainted tub of Crisco, and it was all mine.
The exact thought processes leading up to "The Crisco Incident," as Walker family history will forever know it, still remain a bit fuzzy in my memory, but goddamn did I exploit those precious few unsupervised minutes for all they were worth. By the time Dad realized I wasn't peacefully asleep in the garage and Mike had admitted he was too interested in a socket wrench to keep an eye on me, the damage was done. When they found me I had not only covered my entire self in Crisco, but I'd also managed to pack an impressive amount into my diaper and grind even more into every bit of carpet my tiny arms could reach. After some serious calculations, estimations, and tracking my intestinal misery for the next few days, it was determined that I'd also eaten between 1 and 1 1/2 cups of the stuff.
It took less than 10 minutes, but I swear to you the implications of those 10 minutes still haunt me.

This is literally all she wrote.

“So dying was weird. Good thing we only have to do it once, am I right...? Too soon? Too soon for postmortem humor?”
Blank, quizzical stares. Man, this hearings committee really does not find one damn thing I say amusing. It’s my 6th time sitting in front of them, and not once have I seen a single one of them crack a smile.
“Mr. Rawlings, how can you expect us to take your application seriously when you continually make a mockery of the process? This isn’t a job interview at McDonald’s. This is your afterlife we’re talking about, and the sooner you can move onto it the better off we’ll all be.”
That’s Lester. Mr. Gypsum, if you don’t mind. I’ve become something of a conundrum for him lately;

Dear Eddie

Dear Eddie,
I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. Not for any particular reason, other than that life’s decided to kick me in the ass a little bit lately. It sucks, because you were always the one who always had a profound knack for throwing me out of these funks, but you’re dead now and that’s one of the major factors contributing to this particular funk. That’s a paradox that I’m sure you’re just loving in your own twisted way.
Remember how I had it right after you died? I’m sure you do, you were there with me every step I took for those first few months; you tricked everything I saw and did into reminding me of you. Ass. Before you moved I was one of the cool kids because I was friends with you. Everyone was clamoring to get close to you and that goddamn infectious, maniacal smile. I was one of the lucky ones, the chosen few, who had you as a friend by default; with the childhood you and I had together there was no way we couldn’t be friends. But then you moved, and I realized that you had been my entire social circle. No one looked my way anymore because you were no longer there by my side, scheming our next escapade.
Then you died. Suddenly everyone wanted to be my friend again. To be your friend again. I bet you had a good laugh at seeing how many “friends” you had when you were dead. I was instantly cool again because I was “friends with the dead kid.” Not only that, but I was super special - I was friends with the kid who offed himself. It was sweet, I’d never had so much attention thrust my way before. Everyone scrambling to ask me “Why?” and “How’d he do it?” and “Were you in love with him?” I know you saw that, because I could hear your answers: “None of your damn business.” and “Leave her alone, you ass.” and “Yeah, were you?”
Isn’t it funny how death works? You know more about the specifics than I do, but I fancy myself a bit of an expert on the aftermath these days. You’re like a big ol’ yacht that’s cruised out of port trailing a massive wake in your path. Those of us who were part of your inner sanctum were close enough to get caught up in the turbulence churned up by your immediate departure. But as the social ties got looser and more distant people only felt your wake as a wee ripple, none too jarring to float over and easily forgettable as they were caught up in their own turbulence.
Sorry to get all metaphorical with you. I know you always hated it when I did that, when I played writer and tried to be fancy with my words. But you know what? You’re dead. You HAVE to listen to me now. You brought this on yourself, so my ranting and metaphor-weaving is something you’re going to have to put up with until I’m good and ready to let you rest in peace. I’ll let you know when that moment comes, but for the time being I still need you too much so I’m going to keep you around for a while.

Yours Always,
Andie

Cockroaches are worse than Mike McCloskey

I thought that my days in pest control were over. I really did. But then I drove to Houston, where it seems freakouts aren't that out of the question.
I was lying on my brother's bed after a night of drinking when I saw something large and dark moving between his ceiling and the trim, which is oddly placed about an inch below. At first, most likely due to intoxication, it didn't seem all that odd to see a mouse-sized creature scurrying across the ceiling.
Then I realized it was a cockroach.
Then I freaked out.
Then I screamed for Michael to "Kill it kill it! Make it stop make it die! Make it better!"
He DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH COCKROACHES.
So... For a few drunken moments we were amused by watching the DEVIL crawl across the ceiling as the cat meowed at it. Then. Then it started preening itself and making itself at home on the ceiling. And the cat wasn't doing ANYTHING. Stupid cat. At this point we decided that it was time to take some action. This fucker needed to be flushed down the toilet. Right. Now.
Michael had grabbed a chair and a tupperware container and started to "pretend" like he was going to capture the thing, when I asked if I should step in and he agreed.
I thought I could handle it.
I couldn't.
I started hyperventilating and continued to do so until... now, I suppose.
I stood on the chair and maniacally thrust the tupperware at the ceiling, luckily capturing the "diabolical invertebrate" for a few moments. Mike handed me an REI catalog to put between the opening and the ceiling, thus trapping it indefinitely.
At this point we decided to rush it to the toilet to get the final killing taken care of.
That's when it got out. When there WASN'T A GAP FOR IT TO GET OUT. The devil cockraoch had magicked itself through a gap that didn't exist and started crawling on the OUTSIDE of the tupperware. Towards my hands.
I made a desperation/panic throw for the toilet, but obviously missed. The cockroach disappeared, and I slipped further into my nervous breakdown. My voice raised about 18 octaves, which my brother obviously enjoyed endlessly.
At this point I started yelling almost unintelligibly for Michael to get SOMETHING to fix things. He gave me a rubber broom, with which I whacked nonsensically around the bathroom with for about 2 minutes until Evil scurried out of the trash can behind the toilet. At this point I had no choice but to communicate in an alto voice, yelling for Mike to give me back the tupperware. As soon as it was in my hand I shoved it at the wall, effectively pinning the insect at about mid-torso.
Fun fact: cockroaches neither die nor slow down when their torsos are crushed. That's why Mike smashed it's head with the mop handle as it was trying desperately to escape through a grout line it had conveniently wormed it's way to. We cut its head off for good measure, with what God only knows.
We were finally able to flush the (still flailing) torso and leggy bits down the toilet as the head stayed plastered to the wall. Mike made me clean the head off of the wall and the guts off of the broom handle with rubbing alcohol, but I think that's just because he's an asshole.

I think my dad is Superman.

It's a scary moment when you realize that a parent isn't invincible. Growing up, (assuming you have kick-ass parents like I did) it's easy to come to believe that your parents will be around forever, that they'll always be there to put a bandaid on a scraped knee and tell you it's ridiculous to put one on a bruise. At some point, though, you get old enough and reality kicks you in the face, and you realize that's all just a childhood fantasy.

My family was camping on Lake Okanagan in Canada when I figured this out. Dad and I were taking a walk and we decided to stop at some swings that were in the campground. We started having a pretty serious conversation about life and death and what it meant to him to be my dad. My reality face-kick came in the form of Dad telling me what he wanted his legacy to be; how he wanted me to remember him when he was gone. He was telling me that he was afraid of the legacy he was leaving behind because he was afraid of the kind of father that he was to my brother and I.

I'd never even considered the idea that he might be gone one day. Until that conversation I'd always taken for granted that he'd be there indefinitely.

I've always thought that I have one of the best dads in the world. He doesn't know it and would refuse to believe it if someone told him, but he's pretty badass.

April says...

She doesn't dance unless her inhibitions are null.
He knows that.

She doesn't give in to his persistence unless her inhibitions are lowered.
He knows that.

She wouldn't have said yes without the tequila.
He KNEW that.

She wouldn't resent him if it weren't for the tequila.
He's clueless.
Heartless.
Worthless.

Knowledge is scary

I had an interesting conversation with my brother while waiting for a delayed flight in the Minneapolis airport. I was on my way home from my parents' house after Christmas break and I called Mike to help pass the time during an extended layover.

We were talking about various aspects of Blu-ray players (cables, adapters, etc.) when I casually mentioned that he should add something to the list of things he doesn't know. In true Walker sibling fashion, we somehow (it took us 30 minutes to figure out how) segued that into a conversation about human knowledge and and the quest thereof (not sure that's the right way to end that sentence).

We started out talking about whether the number of things possible to know is constantly in flux, or is a finite number. Taking into account names of individuals on the planet and those of newly developed species, we decided that the number is most likely increasing, albeit slowly. Considering that there are people dying and species going extinct every day, the steady population growth is somewhat off-set. I'll spare you the tedious details of how we came to this conclusion, but I assure you that it took us about 45 minutes of philosophical out-loud pondering to get to this point.

Somewhere along the line we discussed whether the information stored in our own heads is growing or decreasing in relation to the knowledge of humanity as a whole. It didn't take us long to decide that compared to the knowledge of the 6 billion+ people on the planet and all of our/their ancestors, the knowledge of one person is minuscule. There in an exceedingly small number of people in the history of people who have made significant enough contributions to the human know-how to earn a place in history. We don't know anything that someone before us hasn't figured out already; we're just intellectual leaches.

As we were getting closer and closer to our final thesis, I started noticing that people in the gate-area had started to take notice of my conversation. Some were rolling their eyes and moving away in an attempt to get away from my side of the conversation, and others were attempting to inconspicuously move closer and listen in. After all, it's not too often that one gets to overhear a 20-something who looks barely of the legal driving age having such an intense and intellectually charged conversation.