HUMAN WRECKAGE

Friday Night Blights

“‘Baby Jesus is everywhere,’ Mary said kindly.” 

“Mother of God, woman,” I whispered, unkindly, “insert a comma.”

Ann and I are sort of in a clearing house mode. Should we be fortunate enough to age and die in place here in the Crooked 9, our survivors will still have a lot packing to do. But we’re attempting to reduce the number of boxes required. Should we downsize, there won’t be a whole bunch of space for a whole bunch stuff. Our bane is books; we love them all. If you were to point to a book on one of our shelves, there’s a good chance I can tell you when, where and how it was acquired even if I’ve lost the plot.

The opportunity cost of a book, no matter how pleasurable its content, is time. There are enough unread books in the Crooked 9 to see us out. However, their subjects don’t always appeal when one of us is seeking something else to read. New stuff keeps arriving. Ann and I confer when we cull our collection. Will you ever read this book? Will you ever reread this book? And then there’s the mystery of curation. Will our survivors grasp that particular authors and certain works were of great importance to both or either of us while others were simply overlooked during a cleansing binge? Will they even care? Does any of this evidence of enlightenment at leisure really matter?

Our community league hosted a book exchange at the hall by the playground and the hockey rink Friday night. I managed to assemble a two-foot stack of spines, an array ranging from decent stuff to good stuff with a smattering of good old stuff, still unwilling to surrender great or meaningful stuff. Ann and I anticipated the social aspect of the event; we thought we might catch up with some neighbours we’d not seen over the course of another winter. The evening’s alternative diversion was blasting my new Who live album (Shea Stadium, 1982, second show). Curiously, Ann wasn’t as excited about my latest purchase as I was – it bludgeons like Lizzy Borden using the blunt end of her ax and pairs nicely with the Clash’s live set from the same night(s).

When Ann and I arrived, we realized immediately that our neighbourhood had transitioned while we were otherwise occupied. We were the only seniors there; the only grandparents. The young people running the league and who occupy the infills and new builds were strangers to us. There were children motoring around, screechy, full-tilt fun. While I seeded the lone and barren “adult books” table, Ann browsed the quartet of “children’s books” tables. She caught my eye, as she always can and does, to summon me with an arched eyebrow and a borderline subliminal nod. Ann handed me one of those glossy, indestructible toddler books called Where Is Baby Jesus? Ann moved on to another table, our grandchildren’s latent reading skills on her mind. Mine too because God knows “Elmo” and “Paw Patrol” on an iPhone just won’t do. “God, there’s got to be another way.” But who are we?

Myth tells us there was no room at the inn for Mary and Joseph, that Christ was born in a barn. They were travelling to be enumerated for Herod’s census. Chances are you’re familiar with the origin story of a Christmas creche diorama. In a different genre, they’d find space at Frankenfurter’s place – I digress. So, where is Baby Jesus? “Is He snuggling with the cows?” “Is He snuggling with the pigs?” Suckling, maybe? A quick read, a real page-turner.

Sometimes you enter a place, maybe a particularly shabby café or barroom whose atmosphere suggests danger rather than slum dive amusement, and you glean in a nanosecond that the wise thing to do is to proceed no further. My silent facial signals to Ann are less discreet than hers. “Let’s get out of here.” She read me. She rubbed an itch on her nose, a finger extended. “One sec.”

I thought, “Oh, c’mon, please, God, Costco’s more interesting. Is Baby Jesus snuggling with Kirkland Signature brand’s soft and absorbent bath tissue?” Ann told me shortly afterward she’d been listening in on a group discussion. The gathered parents were earnestly speculating about the Tooth Fairy’s gender. “Non-binary?” was Ann’s silent guess. Trans? Hermaphrodite and Michael Jackson may’ve fallen out of fashion.

As we made our sweeping exit, exchanging no off-stage lines until we were well out of earshot, a kid darted between us dragging a fuzzy rope: thirty feet of toy snake, boa constrictor, anaconda – I don’t know. When he disappeared around a corner, through a doorway, I stepped on its tail. I watched it stretch. I watched it grow taut. I watched it climb the doorframe to about knob level. When I judged the tension to be just about right, I stepped off it. Snuggle with the Christian reptiles and vipers, my child.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is awake and alive. Watch and listen to some of the songs I co-wrote with The Muster Point Project or buy 5 KG, the complete EP. Of course, you can still purchase my latest book Of Course You Did in your preferred format from your preferred e-retailer.