by David Thorne
“I’m making toast.”
Someone once told me that if you are watching someone weld and you smell toast, it’s the back of your eyeballs cooking. If you are making toast while watching someone weld, this information would, of course, be useless.
When I was young, complaining about what you were given for dinner would result in an immediate suspension of television privileges for that night. Which might not seem too harsh but my father’s version included a chair next to the television that you had to sit in and watch the rest of the family watching television from. If you tilted forward and turned your head towards the television, he’d aim the remote control towards you and yell, “Pause.” Three ‘pauses’ and you were ‘off’ which meant sitting in the chair with a teatowel over your head.
“Wow, you’re certainly missing an exciting episode tonight, David. It isn’t a holiday resort planet after all, it’s a trap set by the Cylons. Starbuck and Apollo are walking straight into it. Perhaps you’ll think about that the next time you decide to comment on how lumpy the Gravox® is.”
For those not familiar with Gravox®, it’s a waterproof brown gravy-flavoured powder to which you add water and stir. When you poke at the resulting lumps, they burst and produce clouds of dust like the slow-motion videos you see of mushrooms shooting spores. My mother cut her thumb quite badly on the inside edge of a tin of Gravox® one day and required several stitches. She wrote a lengthy letter to the company informing them of the mishap and a few weeks later, a truck delivered two pallets containing thousands of tins of the horrible stuff. To my father, it was like winning the lottery and practically every evening meal for the next few years was smothered in it. I missed a lot of television during that time.
“Did you watch Knight Rider last night?”
“Um... yes.”
“Best episode ever. What was your favorite part?”
“The bit where the car talked.”
“Kitt talks in every episode.”
“I know, right? How awesome would it be to have a talking car?”
“My favorite part was when the bridge was out but Michael pushed the turbo button at the last minute and Kitt flew over it.”
“Yeah, that was pretty good. The car should be able to press its own turbo button though.”
“What?”
“If the car can talk and do all sorts of other things, it should be able to press its own turbo button when it needs to.”
“Then you wouldn’t need Michael.”
“Apart from pressing the turbo button, the car can drive itself so it doesn’t really need Michael anyway. I don’t know why Michael doesn’t just stretch out in the passenger seat. Or lie down in the back.”
“It’s his car, he can sit where he wants. Besides, if he was in the back he’d have to reach all the way over to press the turbo button. Did you watch Diff'rent Strokes?”
“Um... yes.”
“If I was Willis, I’d fuck Kimberley. She’s not his real sister. Do you sometimes wish you could jump into a girl’s body, like take over her mind, and then go to your house and knock on the door and when you answer say, ‘It’s me, I’m in this girl’s body. Quick, lets have sex?’”
“Um... no.”
“No, I don’t either. I was just asking if you do.”
Interestingly, Dana Plato, the girl who played Kimberly, didn’t have much of an acting career after Diff’rent Strokes. She posed for Playboy and worked at a dry-cleaners before trying her hand at armed robbery. On February 28, 1991, she entered a video store, produced a gun, and demanded money from the register. The clerk called 911 saying, "I've just been robbed by the girl who played Kimberly on Diff'rent Strokes." I’m not making this up. She died of a drug overdose a few years later in a Winnebago. The guy who played Willis defeated Vanilla Ice on an episode of Celebrity Boxing a few years back so he’s doing pretty well for himself. The little black kid and the dad are dead.
Americans are used to the antics of squirrels. They grow up watching them play, chase and feed and I suppose, like most things, familiarity wears wonder into indifference at best. Whenever I point out a squirrel to my partner Holly, she makes a ‘hm’ noise with her nose. When I point them out to my friend JM, he also makes the “hm” noise but follows it up with, “That’s a fat one. It’d make a good stew.” I assume he’s joking, as he knows I like squirrels, but apparently it’s not as funny when you say the same thing about one of his kids.
Some Americans actually hate squirrels. My neighbour Carl, a sad old flappy nippled short man, sits on his back deck with a .22 rifle for hours each day protecting his veggie patch from potential squirrel assaults. It’s a tiny veggie patch with only a couple of tomato plants and several aluminum picnic plates hanging from string, but in Carl’s mind, he’s defending his farm. Each time he manages to kill one of the potential marauders, he raises a fist into the air and makes a loud “Wayhey!” shout of victory. Sometimes he will call his round curly-haired wife outside to impress her with tales of his magnificent marksmanship. Afterwards, Carl strips off, smears the blood of his hunt over his naked body, and masturbates. Okay, that last part isn’t true but as I doubt Carl will ever read this, I can write what I want about him. Once, I saw him sucking off a small boy behind his garden shed.
Carl’s in his seventies and apparently has a heart condition so hopefully he will be dead soon. If I knew for certain it would cause a heart attack, I’d buy a squirrel costume and an assault rifle, break into his house before sunrise, and stand at the foot of his bed waiting for him to wake up.
It’s a shame I don’t know people who know people that kill people for money. The people I know only know people who can get kitchen taps at cost or have a used chiminea to sell and it’s too late for me to start hanging out with the wrong crowd now. I’ve seen people in their forties wearing leather jackets and it’s just sad. Besides, if I did know people who know people that kill people for money, I’d probably get carried away and people would be dropping like flies.
“David, the client doesn’t like the layout. Can you get a revised proof to him by Wednesday?”
“No need.”
Several months ago, Carl’s war on squirrels didn’t bother me as much. I understand that old people require hobbies to fill the hours between eating Fig Newtons and watching Jeopardy so I simply countered his small-scale slaughter, as best I could, by scattering fifty-pound bags of pumpkin seeds on our side of the property line every few days to entice the local fauna to stay out of Carl’s range.
Then I found Squirrel.
I was mowing the lawn at the time. If he hadn’t moved, I might have run right over him. When I was about eight, my father ran over my pet tortoise Henry with a mower. Henry wasn’t killed but lost a fair amount of his shell. My father patched it with duct tape, which was a bit of a piss-poor effort, but Henry seemed happy enough until he was backed over by a car in the driveway a few weeks later. Perhaps if the shell hadn’t been damaged he might have withstood the weight but blame was placed solely on me for “leaving the fucking thing outside all the time.” I held a small service for Henry and buried him in an empty Gravox® tin. My father wasn’t present at the service because the cricket was on television but he did come outside later to provide constructive criticism on using his hibachi grill plate as a tombstone.
Squirrel was very small with only a thin covering of grey fur. He was far too young to be out of the nest. Assuming he had fallen from a large nearby oak and his mother would be searching for him, I gently picked him up, carried him to a nook between roots at the base of the tree, and covered him with leaves as way of protection from the mid-Spring wind and predators. He was still there when I checked a few hours later.
“Is he dead?” Holly asked.
“I think so,” I replied, cradling the tiny still body in my palm, “He’s not moving and... no, actually, I can feel his heart beating.”
“Maybe he’s just cold.”
“Maybe,” I covered Squirrel with my other hand
and blew hot breath between my fingers, “I don’t think he’s going to live though. Google what you are meant to do when you find a baby squirrel.”
“What should we name him?” Holly asked, tapping squirrel queries into her phone.
“Nothing. If we give him a name, it will be sadder when he dies. You know how attached you get to things.”
If Holly had her way, we’d have about four-hundred pets. We have two dogs and as far as I’m concerned that’s two too many. If they were good dogs, dogs that didn’t chew your favorite sunglasses and shit on the rug, I’d be fine with them but that’s not the case. One is insane and the other is fat. So fat, that I refuse to be seen in public with it because people point and shake their heads and I can tell they’re thinking I’m a bad dog owner and probably force-feeding the poor thing. Laika looks like a barrel with thin sticks sticking out the bottom and the size of her body makes her head look tiny. I’ll try drawing her so you can get a better idea...
You may be thinking, ‘Oh David, don’t be silly, obviously you’ve exaggerated the size of Laika’s body for comedic purposes’, but it’s actually an incredibly accurate likeness and I’m considering entering it in this year’s Archibold Prize. Once, while chasing a thrown stick, she tripped and rolled down a hill. It was like the scene in that movie where Han Solo finds a gold monkey in a cave. If she was human, her name would be Louise and her hobbies would include blocking exits, cake, and writing formal complaints. Our other dog, a Dalmatian named Banksy, thinks he’s an interior decorator and highly objects to decorative pillows being placed on anything in the house. At one point, I was picking decorative pillows off the floor and placing them back on sofas twenty or more times per day, now we just leave them where they are and walk around them. Also, if you look at Banksy, he becomes extremely upset so eye contact is avoided at all times. Looking at him while he’s rearranging the living room creates a meltdown and your only option at that point is to curl into a ball and protect your head. If he was human, his name would be Kyle or Hunter and he’d be on ADD medication. We’d receive regular letters from his teacher regarding behavioral issues and later, he’d join the army.
If we hadn’t given the dogs names, it would be a lot easier on Holly should I ever decide to drive them out into the woods and leave them there. They’d be fine. Banksy would probably join a wolf pack and Laika could live on her fat reserves for at least six months.
We had a third dog, because we’re idiots, but that one died earlier this year. It was on about $800 worth of medicine a week but despite this, or possibly because of, when it finally said, “fuck this” and keeled over, Holly implied a few things and declared that she was getting an autopsy done, which was pretty rude.
A coworker recently accused me of being a sociopath because I “lack the emotional inner worlds that most people have and am therefore incapable of understanding the emotional worlds of other people.” Which isn’t true. It’s possible to understand, without caring, that someone may be upset when they thought their cat was getting better but then found it dead on the kitchen floor when they got home that night. I mean, if it had been their child I’d have no problem with them taking three days compassion leave and really, there is very little difference between the terms, “Be strong and carry on,” and “Walk it off, Princess.” Sobbing behind a locked door won’t bring the cat back and other people need to use the photocopier. I took one of those ‘Are you a sociopath?’ quizzes online later and it said I wasn’t. It wasn’t hard to work out where each question was heading though.
I’ve recreated the test here, just in case you’d like to take it yourself:
Are You a Sociopath?
Answer these 6 questions to find out!
1. You've just hurt someone’s feelings. How do you feel?
A. Guilty B. Good C. I don’t care
2. An old lady leaves a bag full of money on a bench.
What do you do?
A. Tell the old lady B. Take the money C. Ignore it
3. You’re having a conversation. What do you do?
A. Nod and smile B. Hold eye contact without blinking C. Ignore them
4. An obese person sits next to you during a flight.
What do you do?
A. Smile and say hello B. Ask them to move C. Move
5. You’re having an argument with someone who presents a fact that proves you wrong. What do you do?
A. Concede your error B. Become Angry C. Change the topic
6. You’ve witnessed a terrible car accident involving a death.
How does that make you feel?
A. Upset B. Entertained C. Bored
Answers:
Mostly A: You’re not a sociopath.
Mostly B and/or C: You may be a sociopath.
This is probably the test that professional psychiatrists and psychologists use and seems legit. In question 3 though, answering A wouldn’t work if the conversation is about finding a dead cat on the kitchen floor and question 4 is a bit dodgy regardless of the answer. I fully support discrimination against fat people but if one sat next to me on a plane I wouldn’t move, ask them to move, or talk to them. I’d just be quietly annoyed the whole flight and try to breath through my mouth.
Squirrel made it through the night. As per online instructions, we’d placed him in a box with a fluffy towel and hot water bottle. After an hour or so, he opened his eyes and was alert enough to be fed whipping cream through an improvised syringe constructed from a Bic® pen. In the morning, we found him on top of the television making baby pig noises. I carried Squirrel outside and placed him on a branch of the large oak. He climbed a few feet, seemed to think about it, then ran back down and jumped onto my shoulder. I went inside and ordered about three-hundred dollars worth of baby squirrel formula, syringes, and toys from Amazon.
Over the next few weeks, I became an expert on squirrel requirements and behavior. When he wasn’t feeding or playing, Squirrel lived on my shoulder and slept in my hoodie pockets.
When I was young, I read a story about a fox and a prince. I don’t recall how it went exactly but basically a prince ventures out into the forest and sees a fox. He asks the fox if he can pat him and the fox declines. The prince demands the fox let him pat him because he’s the prince and the fox explains that’s not how it works; in order to trust the prince, the prince must come back each day and sit in the same spot. Oh, I forgot to mention the fox can talk and the prince is lonely because his dad, the king, doesn’t spend any time with him. Also, I think the fox was wary because the king hunted foxes.The prince does what the fox says and each day, the fox takes a step closer to him. Either the fox took really small steps or the initial distance between the two was fairly large because this went on for a while. Summer passed, leaves fell, and it began to snow. One day the prince didn’t come home so the king went searching for him and found him sitting in a clearing in the forest, frozen to death, with the fox curled in his arms.
I get that it’s an analogy of some kind but the story annoyed me at the time, as it was never clear on whether the fox was also frozen or fine. If he was also frozen, the time the prince spent sitting might have been better spent collecting firewood or building a small shelter and if the fox was fine, it was all a bit of a dick move. Also, did the king declare, “I will never hunt foxes again,” or was he pissed and decide to step up the whole hunting foxes thing a notch? Perhaps Carl found his son frozen holding a squirrel. Then fingered him.
There was no sitting, fairy-steps, or freezing to death required to develop trust between Squirrel and I, it was immediate and easy. He showered with me, worked on the laptop with me, and watched television with me. His favorite shows were Tosh.O, The Walking Dead, and everything on Velocity except Wheeler Dealers. You’re not Punky Brewster, Edd. Buy a jacket. I learned Squirrel’s grunts, squeals and pucker noises and we had lengthy conversations about pumpkin seeds and girl squirrels. We built a squirrel house together using online plans of Frank Loyd Wright’s Falling Water and when he had
outside playtime on the lawn or in the large oak, I watched for hawks.
“What are you doing?”
“Giving Squirrel a bath.”
“Where did you get the little bathtub?”
“Online. It was only $49.99”
“How much was it really?”
“$49.99”
“You’re flicking your tongue out so I can tell you’re lying.”
“Fine, it was $84.99”
“Why do you lie when I ask you how much you paid for things?”
“I don’t know, to protect myself I suppose.”
“From what?”
“Admonishment. For spending $84.99 on a little bathtub.
It looked a lot better in the photos. It was meant to come with a little rack for soaps and sponges that goes across but it wasn’t in the box.”
“Can I wash him?”
“Really?”
“Yes, why? Don’t you think I’m capable?
“I’m sure you are, it’s just that he likes to be washed a certain way.”
“Are you joking”
No, he doesn’t like it when you wash his feet so I just let him wade and you have to squeeze out his sponge a bit before wiping his face otherwise he carries on about it and when you wash his tail you can’t...”
“Oh my god, just let me wash him.”
“Fine...”
“...What?”
“I didn’t say anything, Holly.”
‘“Standing there watching me is the same thing. I can feel you thinking I’m doing something wrong.”
