My life is completely hypocritical.
I pride myself on being a feminist. I can point out politically incorrect ad campaigns and dissect insulting behavior in a heartbeat. Yet in my every day actions, I am a helpless wittle flower, wilting at the sign of adversity or gender-opposite tasks.
This morning, I told you about how Esteban had arranged for Joel to come and mow the lawn yesterday. Well, today while I was at work, my Dad (Esteban Sr, actually, but he IS my Dad) brought over his lawnmower to take care of the lawn and found it (mostly) cut. He remowed parts of it, so it didn’t look like a victim of a pinking shears fight. Then he cut a hole in our bathroom wall (as he’s going to be putting in an in-wall cabinet in there). He called me at work and warned me about the hole in the wall and apologized for any mess that he had missed.
‘What about bats?’ I asked.
You see, when I was a six-year-old child, a bat got into our house (when we lived on the farm, which my mom was still married to my stepfather) and appeared in the bathroom while I was taking a bat. I screamed. I screamed a lot. I thought that it was possibly a baby Pterodactyl. The lady a half mile up the road met my stepfather outside (where he was disposing of the dead bat, because in the seventies, no one cared about the environment, they were too worried about the price of gasoline and Jimmy Carter’s lazy brother, Billy) because she had heard someone screaming all the way down by her house. My stepfather explained that it had been me screaming and had to show her the bat to prove it, as she didn’t really believe him and I suppose thought that he had killed my mother and possibly myself (which I wouldn’t have put past him, but that’s a whole other story). I wouldn’t take a bath by myself after that, but my mom left my stepfather shortly thereafter, so it wasn’t a big deal. In fact, for some reason, I felt safer in showers, I think because of the shower curtain. It was possibly bat-proof, I’m not certain.
Years later, we lived in an old Victorian house betwixt several large cathedrals downtown. My bedroom was the one at the end of the hall, the one which sat under the peak in the roof. A gable? I’m not sure what that architectural feature is called. Anyway, the roof formed a big triangle in that section of the house, but my room squared off toward the top, leaving a little attic in that triangle area between the ceiling of my room and the roof. Every night, I’d lie in bed and listen to the sounds of the bats in the attic (Belfry? Cornice? Hayloft?). They’d make these little weird sonar squeaks and I could watch them through my window, flying out at dusk. One night, my mother reported having a weird dream. She dreamt a large bat was flying around her room, back and forth, around her bed in circles. Now, my mother sleeps like the dead and likes to become extremely drunk besides, so we both just brushed it off, especially after she searched her room extensively and found not a single sign of winged rodentia. A few days later, I was sitting in our living room, facing the French doors which lead into the foyer/stairs. A bat the size of a California Condor flew down the stairs and began to swoop all over the room. I screamed. I screamed a lot. Our pekingnese Max was of no help. He did not rush to my safety. He cowered under the dining room table but then he was cross-eyed and perhaps thought that there was a swarm of bats. Or is it a gaggle of bats? A battalion of bats?
Anyway, I screamed and then I realized that there was no one to help me as I was alone. I crawled across the living room to the French doors and tried to close them, trapping the bat in the living room/kitchen area (and away from my bedroom!). Then I ran out the front door screaming ‘Bat!!!’ and started to run up the street to my 28-year-old boyfriend’s house (who was undoubtedly macking on my friend Will at the time and actually would not have been much use in a bat melee).
Fortunately for me, I was spared the sight of their love, as my mother happened to be driving down the street. I relayed the Bat Drama to her and she called her boyfriend (see’ there’s a pattern emerging here) and he came over with a tennis raquet. For what? A little mixed doubles? I’m not certain.
They found no bat.
They didn’t believe me.
Several months later, my mother had noticed a peculiar odor down on a lower shelf in the kitchen, near where she fed the cross-eyed Max. She thought it was his food and threw it all out (oy how that dog suffered for his cowardice in the Bat Drama! It’s karma, baby.). Then she scrubbed the floor. Still stinky. Then she noticed that the pitcher that she used to water the plants was there so she picked that up, thinking that maybe she had left egg shells inside it (remember, it was all about organic stuff).
At the bottom, she spied a bunch of dried up leaves.
Then she realized that the leaves had feet.
You see, there had been water in there and the bat must have drowned.
I can think of more evil deaths for something that undoubtedly was the reason I have begun to go gray at the tender age of 30.
Don’t get me wrong: I actually like the IDEA of bats’. I just don’t like the VICINITY of bats.
Thus, when Dad explained that he had left a big gaping Billions-Of-Bats-sized hole in our bathroom wall, my first thought was ‘Oh god, I hope that there aren’t any bats.’ But he assured me that there aren’t. And then I realized that Esteban was in Banff and if a bat DID get in the house, I would have no recourse: I would have to deal with it or perhaps live in my car, which is a sports car and while it does have reclining seats, the console is broken and it’s far too much for me to deal with all at once…. both having bats and a big gaping broken console. Thus, I would have to smuggle the cats into a hotel. Or call Dad to come and evict the bat, as the presence of a Y chromosome automatically is linked to Bat Wrangler genes. The Bat Wrangler gene is recessive in women. It’s like baldness.
And that’s when it hit me. For all of my feminist shoutings, I’m just a big wussy girl who shaves her legs and armpits and does stupid wussy girl things. Like screaming over winged creatures of death’ I mean, bats. And freaking out about stepping on a bug.
I agreed to take some photos of a daughter of a friend for her senior pictures. They are too broke to do the senior picture thing right, so they’re asking a favor and being a nice person who is unable to say ‘No’, I agreed. So we drove around tonight to various locations (with the air-conditioning on, because the mom was complaining that she was hot and wanted her feet rubbed and shit like that) and my fuel gauge was pointing on Empty, but I figured I had at least another twenty miles out of it. Because, you know, I like to play that game because it makes me feel like I’m somehow screwing with the world. Like a big hairy feminist, you know? So it begins to get dark and I want to quickly take them home and then get home and watch Big Brother since it’s Tuesday night and it feels like I should be watching something at 7:00 pm. And, believe me, I passed many many gas stations along the way. Then I’m driving home and my big piggy motor suddenly goes Cough Spit Grrrrrrrrr umph shhhhhhh. Yep.
Out. Of. Gas.
So I called Dad; he and Mom came out and brought a gas can. Then he made my car go again.
I hate reinforcing stereotypes. I’m a total hypocrite. I’m all ‘Don’t you dare suggest I can’t do something because I’m a woman, but OH MY GOD! GET THAT VERMIN BEFORE I GET THE VAPORS!!!! LAWDS SAKES ALIVE! My husband realizes this. My father-in-law realizes this. My mother-in-law is fine with this. Even Joel realizes this.
I’m such a complete tool.
Seen on a vanity plate:
Now THAT’S a vanity plate!
Have you read these?
Singing about Girl on Girl action!
So… you’re saying that watching a lot of Star Trek is bad?
Plus 2 hit points if you can lay some killer farts
