Grotesque Scenes of Carnage and Brutality

There's a tool on my blog service provider that allows me to see who has visited my pages.  It's pretty amazing to me that I can see what country a visitor is from, and what path led them to my blog The Jugular Vein.  I can see who, how often, at what time, and where they are in the world when they searched for a specific name, location, word, title, or phrase that may have led them to any one of my thirty-six entries.  I'm quite sure that most of them have found it as a result of becoming distracted from what they were initially searching for, but it's neat for me to see that process.

What I find most curious about it is that the pages with the word "hurt" in the title (It Only Hurts When I Laugh and It Rhymes with Hurt) have far more visitors than any of the other entries, even one with the word "kind" in the title.  (Granted, some entries are older than others) So I'm keen to learn the number of visitors who visit this blog entry with its current title.  Dear reader, no matter how you got here, you are now part of an experiment.

But while you're here...

I am reminded of the philosophical question posed to me when I was very young:  Why do people stop and stare to watch two people fighting but turn away when catching two people being affectionate?

Which then calls to mind a fairly effective motto we adopted from our pal Paul Hoff.  He uses it when dealing with difficult, rude, or inconsiderate people, and it's one I have since used on more than one occasion. It's simple: Be Nice Twice.

When shopping at a well known discount home decorating store in New Jersey, I found an item that I'd wanted for quite a while but was only available at a well known high-end gourmet kitchen supply shop, with a price tag far too steep to justify buying it.  It is a hefty, chrome plated, well balanced pounder for making paillards of meat for a few specialty dishes I prepare.  A stout rolling pin does the same job, but this tool does it with class. Pleased with my find, I proceeded to the cash register where I was caught behind a woman unloading a full cart of a variety of wall decorations, imported ceramic vases, a large wall clock with a star-burst of metal appendages, and other pieces of mass-produced "art".

Unfortunately, my new toy didn't have a price tag, so I side-stepped the cash register and asked at customer service for a scan code.  The clerk was unable to find one, so the store manager was called and he promptly told me it was $150.00 -- delighted by his impromptu exaggeration, he waited for my reaction, so I replied, "WHAT?  At that price, I can't afford the meat that it's used for!!"

An aside:  To the average reader, this may seem an inconsequential detail of dialog in this blog entry -- unless you're familiar with the typical New Jersey customer service experience.  Ordinarily, there wouldn't have been anyone at the customer service counter.  When a clerk finally arrived, they'd be annoyed that there were any customers on the premises, and would have proceeded to make it well known what an imposition my request was.  After waiting at least 8 minutes for a manager to arrive, who would not have the key to a register, I'd be made well aware that he was just about to go "on break", and after vainly searching through countless ledgers, he'd find a scan code and ask me to return to the end of line while a ticket was prepared.

But none of that happened!  I had a pleasant exchange with a cheerful clerk and manager, who both shared my delight in this unusual purchase. We exchanged a few more pleasant remarks and he printed a scanning ticket out for $14.95.  A bargain at twice the price.  I was the proud owner of a three-pound, twelve-inch, solid, chrome-plated meat flattener.  It went into a bag and I carried it out, elated over the entire experience.

By now, the woman with all the decorative pieces had completed her transaction and headed out to the parking lot with her cumbersome load.  I went out shortly after her, and there we met.  Side by side.  Her nice shiny new vehicle parked next to my nine year old Dodge Neon with Canadian license plates, clouded headlights, and dull white paint revealing its age.

I could only see her bottom half as she wrangled with her new purchases trying to wedge them into the back seat of her car, maneuvering the cart that was blocking my way, while contending with the waving arms of her timepiece.  I watched for a moment, and patiently waited for another.

I asked her if she needed an extra hand.

She said, "No."

As I got closer between our two cars, I saw that her passenger door had been pushed open to its widest point and had stuck fast to the side of my Neon.

I loudly said, "UH OH!!" since I couldn't open my door, and feared a dent in it from hers.

She extracted herself from her vehicle and said, "WHAT?" with deliberate exasperation.

I pointed to her door and with cheerful concern said, "I can't get in, and I hope your door didn't leave a dent."

She tugged on her door.  It stayed fast, but a firm quick second pull freed it revealing a small dimple and a perceptible nick out of the paint.

I said, "Oh, that's a shame."

She impatiently replied, "Eh?"  So I pointed to the pock, and said, "You did leave a dent." She licked her finger, reached over, smeared her spit in a big wide circle around the tiny indentation, now revealing a more obvious sin: a clean spot.  She t'sked sharply, and with fully nasal Latina attitude and sass looked at me and said, "I din't dent nut-ting."

By now, I had employed and exhausted my ordinarily effective motto, finding that she was just going to be nasty.  So I nipped it in the bud.

I swung the bag containing my pride of purchase, and with a thick audible metallic CLUNK hit the side of her car and stated, with flair, "I din't dent nothing, either." and promptly opened my door, got in, started the engine and drove away.

After you've been nice twice, you see, you can make up your own rules.

Fifteen Minutes

We were famous for a few minutes.   Our family of six was seated and posed in our tiny Lincoln Nebraska living-room, including our dog Scout, while the newspaper photographer silently took numerous shots of us.  A few days later we were on the front page of the city newspaper in vivid color.  It was an odd feeling to immediately recognize our own faces looking back from behind the little acrylic window in the box at the gas station that held the daily paper.

I bought the morning paper, and a few extra, and shortly after I got home, the phone started ringing.  The first call was from the pet shelter who wanted to donate dog food for Scout.  Several more supportive calls came offering money, babysitting services for our four children, group meeting times and places, and groceries.  Lots and lots of groceries.  We were overwhelmed by strangers' generosity and compassion.

We only spent a year in Lincoln.  We rented an apartment just a few blocks away from Stephen's work.  His boss had strongly suggested that a move to Lincoln would be a real gesture of Stephen's commitment and loyalty to the company, and consequently possibility for better opportunity and a secure future with them.

Previously, we had been living in Omaha for several years -just an hour's drive from Lincoln. We owned a very old home and had dug in, probably far too ambitiously and well beyond our capabilities, making improvements and renovations ever since we'd settled in and where we planned to raise our family.  But life changed very quickly and it all started with a little girl's nosebleed.

After a series of dramatic events, we discovered that our youngest daughter, Olivia, had an unusual blood disease that required frequent hospitalizations, often in isolation, sometimes in critical care, and usually required several day's stay. It was a routine we were forced into like many families who have major medical issues.  Our situation was not unique, it was just unique to us and we were managing as best as we could; Stephen had a decent job with medical insurance, and other than the long daily commute to Lincoln in a fairly reliable vehicle, we muddled through.

But then, we had to move to Lincoln.

We knew we had no possibility of selling the house in Omaha in its condition, so we shut it down, and made the 'commitment to the company' by moving close to Stephen's work and taking a year-long lease for an apartment in Lincoln that would allow pets and larger families.  We traveled back and forth on weekends to continue working and making improvements on the house, either for a potential buyer, or for our future in Nebraska. 

Three months later, Stephen was fired.* 

Things got more difficult, but mostly just financially.  We had a mortgage to cover, monthly rent at the apartment, and suddenly astoundingly astronomical hospital, medical, and doctor bills.  Someone at the Lincoln newspaper got wind of our story and thought it was a good human interest piece reflecting the concerns of those with middle income and rising health insurance costs.  We were featured since we suddenly had no job and no health insurance with serious medical costs and so we became the headline story, above the fold, on a weekday, in a Midwestern city newspaper for a day. Our fleeting moment of fame.

It took several years of treatments, countless hospitalizations and procedures, and surgery before Olivia was finally in full remission and considered cured.  Those difficult years are ones I often look back on to measure how we've come along, and remember those who we encountered along the way --many leaving lasting impressions that in some ways have influenced who we are.

One elderly lady who had been living for several years in a senior citizen apartment complex called and invited us to her storage area in the basement of her building.  In there, she had her own grocery store.  She had rows of peanut butter jars, carefully arranged varieties of dried pasta and cans and jars of pasta sauces, boxed potatoes, neatly categorized row upon row of canned beans, vegetables, fruits and soups.  Her son had built floor-to-ceiling two-by-four shelving all around her 6 foot by 8 foot allotted space and in there she had been storing surplus foods that she'd been purchasing ever since she'd moved in.  For ten years.  She explained she often invited people who were in situations like ours to visit with her.  She was a child of the depression, and found that if there was a sale on something at the grocery store, she was compelled to bring extra home for someone who could use it.  We left, very gratefully, with several bags of premium groceries for four growing young children.

We were reminded of this generous woman and her orderly and methodical ways of charity many, many years later.  When we were doing some routine grocery shopping we noticed an elderly woman with several plastic shopping bags at the entrance to the store who appeared to be waiting in the cold for a ride.  After we'd finished our own shopping and headed out to our car, she was still there.

We asked if she was expecting a ride or needed one --it was cold!  She meekly suggested that she needed one, so Stephen immediately collected her bags, took her arm and we gave her a ride home which wasn't far from the store.  When we got to her senior citizen apartment housing complex, Stephen carried her many grocery sacks in one trip and escorted her to her very small apartment while I waited in the car.

There she'd stashed what Stephen described as at least ten years of grocery purchases.  However, these were all in bags, sacks, and indistinguishable piles of disarray and chaos.  She invited Stephen in to her apartment and he set the bags of her most recent purchases among countless others of identical non-identifiable shape and abandon. She expressed her gratitude for the transportation, offering a generous contribution for our gas and the effort. Stephen left empty-handed but wide eyed with the contrast of a memory from a fairly similar scenario from years past.  Two senior women, compelled to purchase more than they themselves could use or needed, but with entirely different intent.

A couple in Omaha offered us a day free from parenting and providing.  She called in the morning, offering to take the three kids to the park and a variety of activities for the day, and returned with them tired and ready for bed at then end of the day providing soup and home made bread for supper.  It offered us a chance to sit quietly, at home, taking several naps with a very ill child, worry-free from the needs of others and meals.  It was a short, unexpected, and very appreciated respite that I often recall.

When our car broke down, our teen babysitter's family offered us their second vehicle so we could get around Omaha in winter until ours was repaired.  An older friend offered us her credit card to pay for the repairs, knowing her bill would take a month to arrive, and we could take another to pay her.

A friend at church, a plumber by trade, helped in a most generous way with labour, advice, skill, and services when we moved back into our Omaha home from Lincoln after a year of shut off water and frozen pipes.

There were a lot of people who helped us along in a variety of ways during those short years, but we try not to dwell on the hardship; it's much more pleasant to remember the generosity of others, the details of laughter and friendship, the gestures of kindness.

I hope to always remember those who are kind and understand those who are not.




* Since another family in the company who had a terminally ill child was fired at about the same time, I'll always believe that the reason for the firings was because of the health insurance costs for the small company.  I also suspect that Stephen's boss felt that his strongly suggested move to Lincoln (for a family of six needing proximity to a children's medical facility.) would be rejected and Stephen would resign.  Oh--the wisdom of hindsight.

Behind closed doors.

Paul started it.

He told another story about his dad, Dwight, to illustrate his dad's subtle humor. There's no laugh-out-loud,  knee-slapping, guffawing, corn-ball humor with the Hoff family.  It's a quieter, laying-in-wait, tap you on your shoulder when your back is turned, get you when you least expect it sort of amusement.  Once you've fallen victim, you'll know, but you don't shout it to the world, and-- unlike our family-- they don't ridicule, point, and laugh once you've fallen prey.

Paul told us about the time Dwight filled his bathroom medicine cabinet with marbles.  This kind of humor takes patience for the reward of a laugh; an unknown victim would eventually be revealed.

I found this highly amusing, and couldn't wait to implement it.  We got to work; Stephen drilled a hole in the top of the middle section of our three paneled wall mounted medicine cabinet, and we poured about 30 marbles into the closed cabinet from the top.  Testing it, we had one of the kids open the cabinet door but to our disappointment nothing happened.  There weren't enough marbles filling the space to cause a cascade and the few marbles that were sitting on the shelf sat like beady little eyes watching the reaction of our failure.  Dejected, we knocked at a few of them and down they rained into the porcelain sink below.

The racket it created was loud, jarring and dangerous!  Several marbles broke sending slivers of glass shards all over the tiled counter-top.  This was not working, and clearly wouldn't have a fun outcome if the hail of marbles came down on someone's head, or worse, sent broken glass into someone's eye.

We re-evaluated the process, and considered other options:

ping-pong balls?  Too big.
Super Balls?  Too big, too bouncy.
Cotton Balls?  Too soft, no surprise element.
 
We decided that gumballs would be just as colorful as glass marbles, equally surprising, and far less dangerous.  Our intended victim was the nosy Parker house guest who secretly opens the medicine cabinet to see what family secrets are revealed from the pill bottle labels and unguents.  We've all had one or been one.

Off to the candy store.  We purchased three bags of 50 gumballs, installed them in the cabinet, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Over the months, with the cabinet prepared and full, we had several house guests and two Solstice parties with well over 20 guests and no one ever opened the cabinet.  How 'bout that?  We determined that this was actually a test of character of the company we keep.

A.  Do you open the cabinet?
B.  What do you do if you're caught opening the cabinet by unleashing a hail-storm of gumballs?

It wasn't until several years later when we learned how some people handle it.

After my mother died, our family started running the Bed and Breakfast my folks had been operating together for nearly 20 years.  Early in the B&B season we had friends of my folks stay with us who'd been visiting Cleveland Place and The Bay of Fundy for years.  We were pretty well acquainted, and thought that they would be good subjects for the Gumball Prank and set up the medicine cabinet in the guest bathroom with 300 hundred brightly colored balls.

This was no easy task.  Cleveland Place is nearly 100 years old, and the oak medicine cabinet is built into the lath and plaster bathroom wall making it impossible to drill any holes.  We had to form a sort of false cardboard door to funnel the gumballs in, close the real door, and then slide the cardboard out from underneath.  After several failed attempts, and chasing countless escaped balls, we eventually got them all in.  We welcomed our guests, Dan and Betsy, and invited them to make themselves comfortable in room #2 and enjoy their full private bath just a few steps down the hall.

For me, there's a bit of an ethical puzzle to this gag.  If I was a family-friend guest in a home that is run as a professional lodging establishment and I saw the little door in the wall with the wee brass plate above the latch that read private please, I probably wouldn't open the door, assuming it was for the supplies or operations of the facility.

However, if I was a paying lodger and unfamiliar with the hosts I'd be concerned with what might be behind the mirrored cabinet that faces directly in front of the bathtub.  After all, I've seen the 20/20 episodes on television that exposes creeps who use small video cameras watching the innocent  in their most private moments. So, I'd probably peek inside the door to confirm that it simply contains travel sized shampoos and cotton swabs.

To their credit, neither Dan or Betsy ever opened the cabinet door.  Over the years, we've become good friends and they've returned to Cleveland Place several times and have been our hosts at their home in Massachusetts.  We eventually revealed the test that they unknowingly passed and they have since fallen victim to the gag in their own home.  For a simpler version we used a cardboard Morton Salt container that was emptied of salt, the bottom cut out, filled with gumballs and secretly stashed in the kitchen cupboard when their backs were turned.  Eventually, when it was time to fill the salt shaker, the prank was exposed. 

As the busy B&B season came in full swing, we left the medicine cabinet as is, and actually forgot about its contents.  Unfortunately, we were reminded very late one night after checking in guests.  Kathryn and I were sitting in the den downstairs and heard the tell tale rattle of 300 hundred gumballs raining down on the wooden floor above our heads.  Alarmed and startled at first, then quickly realizing the scene above, Kathryn and I were forced to leave the house as we were convulsed with laughter imagining the dazed guest, fresh from her bath, standing wrapped in her white Cleveland Place terry-cloth bathrobe in a pool of bright, shiny, primary- colored confectioneries.

The next morning at breakfast, nothing was mentioned by the guests (or by us) about the incident.  When they'd left for the day, I went to the bathroom to refresh towels, swab the toilet, and assume the daily duties of running a B&B, and found several of the gumballs stashed about--a few in a basket, others in a soap dish, some that rolled to far corners.  Most remained in the cabinet (though I'm curious how she got them back in the cabinet since several were crushed flat apparently from her shutting the door on them).  The couple stayed 5 days.  No one ever said a word about it.  Was she embarrassed?  Annoyed?  Amused?  We'll never know.  I was tempted to use a few gumballs as garnish on their pancakes one morning to make mention, but chose to let it be.  I wonder if they kept a few as a souvenir.  So:

A. She opened posted private cabinet door.
B. She never said a word about it.

Odd?  I think so.  Curious, most definitely.  But more, I wonder if she's told on herself.

Over the years, Dwight's little prank has made quite a few rounds in Alma village-- Cleveland Place has even fallen reverse victim to it on several occasions--but our rule is, you can't gumball someone until you have been gumballed, and like Dwight, you never let on that it was you who you set up the prank.

Patience.  All it takes is patience.