7/21/96

         I have spent 39 of the last 48 months in one college dormitory or another. In that time, my housekeeping skills fluctuated from “acceptable” to “biohazard.” I have gone months without vacuuming; I have gone weeks without taking out the trash; I have dropped pieces of food on the floor and, unable to find them in two seconds, left them to rot wherever they might be. I have lived among people whose rooms should have been condemned due to all the festering garbage that was strewn throughout them. Yet, in all this time, I never saw a single bug. Not one.

         Maybe it was because we lived on the top floor, and the bugs didn’t want to climb all those stairs. Maybe the dorms’ complete lack of ventilation made it hard for them to travel through the building. Maybe the roaches realized that SLU’s dorms are ill-maintained deathtraps, just a strong gust away from crumbling to the ground. No matter; other than the occasional gnat who would enter through the window and buzz over to my computer monitor, my college experience was bug-free.

         My “home”, on the other hand, is apparently some kind of arachnid retreat house. Since the moment I got back here in May, I have been killing an average of one bug every fourteen seconds. Some of them have been carpenter ants; one or two have been these weird little creeps that look like beetles with hormone problems. The rest of the assault force, unfortunately, has been spiders.

         While my problem with spiders isn’t huge, it’s much bigger than my problem with the nerd beetles. The problem is that I know a lot about spiders, but I don’t remember any of it very well. I know most aren’t poisonous; I can’t remember which ones are. I know some of the poisonous ones live around here; I can’t remember where, exactly, or what they’re supposed to look like. (Not that such information’s worth anything, really; by the time you’re close enough to say, “Hmmm... those are the distinctive markings, all right,” your leggy visitor has a mouth fulla Jim and you’re next in line for a toe tag.) The only thing I do know for sure is that

1) whenever you tear down forests or other natural habitats, crap like killer bees and Ebola starts comin’ out of the woods; and
2) my parents just built a house in the Forest Primeval.

         The combination does not bode well.

         So, as if living with my family for the first time in two years hasn’t made me edgy enough, I now have to deal with living in the web of doom. I’ve been coping pretty well, though, enacting a non-aggression policy. If I walk into a room and see a spider, I walk back out of the room and give it a few minutes to go back to wherever it was before I saw it. If it cops an attitude and stands its ground, the last thing it sees is a Kleenex the size of its entire family smashing its face in. I think I handle things pretty fairly.

         Still, the whole thing has me paranoid. Occasionally, I’ll notice a slight bump on my neck or something and think, “Surely, spiders aren’t biting me while I sleep... are they? No, that’s nuts. Isn’t it?...”

         Things recently got a lot worse when I reached down to scratch my foot and noticed that the reason it itched was that a spider was crawling across my foot. Apparently, it was just on its way to work and, seeing a slight traffic obstacle, just decided to go right on over it.

         (This is why humans top the food chain. If you were going to the store and found Godzilla standing in the intersection, you would do many things, but climbing across his foot would not be one of those things.)

         At that moment, my non-aggression pact with the spiders was definitely off. I shook my foot like I was its abusive father, eventually shaking it at full force right into my dresser. Once I stopped cursing, I inspected the area like it was a crime scene. No bug. I was unnerved, but not terribly; spiders were always getting away from me when I lived in the basement of our old house. I’d smack ‘em with a shoe or something, and when I’d lift the shoe, they’d be nowhere in sight. So, after the adrenaline from my brush with death had subsided, I collected myself and went about my business.

         It was about twenty minutes before I located the spider. To be more precise, it was about twenty minutes before the spider crawled out of my shirt sleeve and said, “Hi, neighbor! I’m building a web in your belly button!”

         I did not take this news well. I have never flipped out so badly over another living thing. I saw that spider come out of my sleeve and started to convulse like I’d overdosed on PCP. It didn’t escape my sight that time, no sir. I hit it with a book. I stamped the book with my shoe. I squished it with a Kleenex. I took it outside and ran it over with my car. At that moment, I gained a whole new understanding for death penalty supporters. The spider had to pay.

         Of course, I knew smashing the little creep wasn’t an effective deterrent to the other spiders, and that made my night’s sleep more than a little jumpy. Actually, every time the ceiling fan moved a hair on my arm, I’d shriek like a newborn and wave my limbs frantically for half an hour. I’m still scared to get under the covers.

         Where did my courage go, anyway? maybe I left it at college with my brains. But more on that later....

7/23/96

         So far, my post-graduation life in the “real world” has taught me one valuable lesson: I hate sitcoms. A lot. There’s nothing more frustrating than knowing that, no matter how good you think your writing is, no one will ever read a word of it because they’re too busy watching “Home Improvement” reruns.

         (Ye gods, could that show be more formulaic? I think the Tool Man must be using a homemade script-writing machine, the Script-o-Tron 2000. It’s unnerving... smartass kids insult parents... “Tool Time”... Tool Man has a problem...Tool Man talks to neighbor, who solves problem using Bartlett’s Quotations... bumbling Tool Man follows neighborly advice... Tool Man relates “Tool Time” show to his problem in some way... audience commits ritual suicide.)

         This evening, however, I was rescued from a night of televised drudgery by a timely phone call from my friend Nicole. Nicole is one of the few people I know who still calls me for no apparent reason; she just wants to talk to me. Since I have no life, and people who want to talk to me are a rare thing indeed, I was delighted to hear from her. So delighted, in fact, that we talked for almost an hour. Considering how irritated I am by the phone, it was nothing short of remarkable.

         After my chat, of course, I went back to letting Drew Carey numb my brain, blissfully unaware that Nicole and I had inadvertently sailed right into the eye of Hurricane Sister.

         Dear ol’ Sis, you see, has perfected a method of psychological warfare I like to call Stealth Fury. A Stealth Fury master tricks her enemies into thinking that nothing is wrong by behaving like a rational person, only to explode like a pissy volcano god moments later and generally scare the hell out of everybody. Sis has honed this technique even further; instead of tricking people into thinking nothing is wrong, she simply attacks when nothing is actually wrong. (It’s very effective.) Today, her unwitting, innocent, blameless, martyred victim was to be me.

         Of course, I’m exaggerating. I was far from blameless. In fact, I had committed the worst crime of all: I had used the phone. Just used it! Just like that! Someone had called me on the phone, and I had talked to that person, as if I had a right to talk into a telephone! Clearly, I had some nerve. Clearly, as my level-headed sis had deduced, I needed to be taken down. Clearly, this was a job for a Stealth Fury master.

         Without warning, the battle began. Out of innocent curiosity, Mom turned to Sis and asked, “Do you have any plans for the evening?”

         “OF COURSE NOT!” she screamed abruptly. “To have plans, I would have had to TALK TO SOMEBODY!!! And GOD knows, you can’t USE the phone in THIS house!!! God forbid anyone would get off the phone for FIVE MINUTES!!!”

         I almost laughed out loud. As I think I’ve stated in an earlier entry, I get about a phone call per month. I don’t even go online until late at night (although that’s mainly so I don’t miss any job offers HA HA). The outburst was so ludicrous, I knew I had to go against conventional wisdom.

         Here in the path of Hurricane Sis, conventional wisdom dictates that you nail some boards over your windows, nail your door shut, and huddle in the corner waiting for the storm to pass. It’s considered the only way to handle things around here, especially considering that Stealth Fury usually leaves you too off-guard to respond properly. But this time was different. This time, I was caught so off-guard that I spilled soda all over my face and shirt collar; this, as you can imagine, rubbed me the wrong way. In retaliation, I decided to rob my sister of the most valuable possession in the house: tonight, I would have The Last Word.

         “Look, jackass,” I began cleverly, “you’ve gotten four hundred phone calls today. Four hundred.”

         “But I didn’t call all those people back yet!!!” she retorted.

         Her logic is irrefutable, I thought. I’ll have to try something else.

         “Why is it you have the balls to yell at me for being on the phone, but not the brains to ask me to get off when you needed it?”

         My mother, scandalized by my use of the word “balls,” left the room muttering, determined not to take any sides in the epic battle for The Last Word.

         “Oh, I guess I’m just not as smart as you, huh? Big smart genius brother?” shrieked the winds of Hurricane Sister, using the same well-worn tactic that had been in her arsenal since she was seven years old. “You know,” she blustered on, “I consider myself a pretty good person...”

         Oh, dear God, batten down the hatches! I have no idea where the hell she’s goin’ with this.

         Her arms waved with grand, operatic gestures. “...and yet I try to live--I just try to live--and my self-esteem shrinks to the size of a Munchkin!!!”

         ???

         “I wish your voice would shrink to the size of a f%#@in’ Munchkin.”

         “Squawk!” she said (at least, that’s what I heard). Off she stormed. SLAM went the door. The SLAM made it official. “Squawk” was not a complete thought; I had The Last Word. And all I had to do was argue like a third grader.

         I basked in the glow of victory for the rest of the evening. In the end, however, my prize lost its luster. Quiet reflection (also known as “sitting through bad sitcoms all night”) brought me to a realization: grown, intelligent people do not bicker, not even when the banter contains cerebral words like “Munchkin.” (Unless, of course, they’re characters on “Home Improvement.”) Clearly, I’m going to have to behave less immaturely. I think I’ll start by not talking to my sister anymore.

7/27/96

Today began a lot earlier than I’m used to, and I’ve spent much of the last 48 hours feeling like Nytol’s running through my veins. I got in late Saturday night; a mere day later, I have absolutely no memory of what I did. I’m sure it was wild and crazy.

When I got “home ,” dear ol’ Sis was in my room talking on the phone. This behavior was never explained. I chose not to pursue it, lest I wake up the whole house with her histrionics. Since the night I took The Last Word, she has acted like we are best friends, like nothing ever happened. She must be planning something.

I fiddled around on my PC computer for a while, waiting for her to get off the phone in the hopes of checking my e-mail. At about 3:15, I gave up, said good night to Donkey Kong, and tried to go to sleep. I had little success; I know this primarily because I heard the 4 o’clock “chimes.”

My mom’s favorite possession in the entire world is a clock that hangs out in our living room. It’s like a small grandfather clock, except it hangs on the wall. This damnable, damnable clock chimes like Big Ben every hour on the hour, at all hours of the day. Or rather, it chimes as Big Ben would if Big Ben was, say, a microwave timer or digital watch. So, typically, I doze in 45-minute spurts every night, only to be awakened hourly by “BEEP BEEEEE BEEE BEEEE.... BEEP BEEEEP BEEEEEEEEE BEEEE.” I am almost certain this same method was used to break POWs’ spirits in Soviet gulags. But I don’t have to know that anymore, so I can’t be sure. Maybe I dreamed it... no, to dream you have to sleep. I must have read it.

This weekend, Little Annoying Ben got me about four hours of sleep. Mom woke me up at 8:00; since I hadn’t gone to church with my parents Saturday night, I had to go with my sister before she went to work. Sis drove, playing her favorite driving game, “Welcome to England.” The road looks very different when driving on its left side. It looks pretty freakin’ scary.

As I have remarked in the past, Jesus invented Catholic mass to show His followers what hell is like. That’s why He said, “Let the little children come unto me”: kids are a vital part of making sure that no one is able to get anything out of the ceremony. It is their job to scream, wail, ask inappropriate questions at the top of their lungs, practice the alphabet, stand on the seats, and run up and down the aisles. It is their parents’ job to ignore them at all costs, pretending if necessary that they are not with the children, asserting if necessary that the children were strangers who drove to church by themselves and sat down next to them. This team effort, code-named Operation: Neglect, is vital to parish operations because it keeps the parishioners too distracted to think up any difficult questions about church teachings.

They did their jobs well today. From the moment I sat down until the moment I left early, I swear the church sounded like a barnyard.
“Aaah! Aaah! Aaah!...ba ba ba ba baa ba baa ba... Aaaawk! Aaaawk!”

Worst of all, one such child started doing some kind of nightclub act. See, there was a guy sitting in front of me wearing a shirt that read, “You’ve gotta have balls to play... and boy, have I got ‘em!” Really pious guy. Anyway, Ballguy and his sister, Ballgirl, were sitting in front of me. In front of them was this little girl, about four years old, who thought it would be entertaining to stand on the pew and spin around in circles, all the while stomping her feet on the wood to enhance everyone’s scriptural experience. Mid-spin, she noticed that Ballgirl was laughing at her zany antics... and a star was born. I ceased to be at mass; I was now in the audience of the Amazing Brat Show. Encouraged by Ballgirl’s smiling face, the adorable li’l charmer began a positively unending stream of funny faces, rude noises, improvisational dances, and truly inspired contortions. Ballgirl kept laughing. The Amazing Brat Show kept getting renewed for another season. I began to wonder whether there were any religions that banned children, only to decide that Catholicism's teachings on sex probably came closer than anything else.

My frustration with the adorable moppet was briefly interrupted by my frustration with the priest, who apparently decided that the gospel was so self-explanatory that he would simply devote his entire sermon to asking for money. The gospel had been about a miracle. You know what would be a miracle? If I went into that church and he didn’t ask me for money, that would be a miracle. There was no miracle this week, so I left early with a headache.

As tired as college was, the mass was a lot more fulfilling there.

Later on, I went out with my old friend Brian, who just got back from Central America. It’s not every day your old friend Brian comes back from Central America, so I stayed out a little late. We drank milkshakes; we got job applications from a bookstore; we talked about God and the priesthood; it was a crazy, wild night. Maybe that’s why I feel hungover. (I’d really, really like that bookstore job. Or just about any job, for that matter.)