What Is Wrong With These People?

This is so embarassing.

Bagged

Our children are under seige. As if the plight of drugs and violence running rampant in our schools weren't enough, now we have a new threat insidiously working its way into our kids’ lives. And don't think this is just an inner city school problem or one that just affects the "bad" kids. An eighth grade honor student in New Haven, Connecticut, was stripped of his class vice presidency and suspended for a day for buying a bag. Yes, I'm talking about Skittles. The kid bought some of the round chewies from a classmate in violation of a policy preventing the sale of candy in the schools. Laugh all you want, but study after study has proven that Skittles are a gateway candy. It's short hop from Skittles to Nerds to Godiva and a lifetime of hell and rehab. The kid should have been flogged.

Thank God my daughter doesn't like sugar.

Sigh.

For a good "youth on skittles" story, demand Curry share his.

Purple Rain

The rain of terror has begun. The children have been hurried inside against their ignorant objections. The toys have been hidden under the eaves. We will have to wait it out, in hopes that this time it will be brief. Until then, all outside activity, at least in our parcel, will cease. The Spring has brought with it the annual Privet-shit fest.

There is, at the fence line of our home and our bordering neighbor behind, a Privet bush, that is now a tree. Untended and unpruned for many years, it has achieved its full potential size, or at least I hope it has. Every year it produces berries, enormous quantities of fruit that drag down its branches and beckon the swarms. Flocks of birds blacken the sky and land on the Privet to gorge themselves on its bounty. The birds move en masse - flying in and flying out of the tree. When they have had their fill, living up to the credo, don't shit where you eat, they move on. Their favorite resting spot apres meal is, unfortunately, the grand Mulberry tree that shades our patio. From there they twitter and primp, but most of all, they shit.

Like hail it hits upon our patio and roof, click, flick, ping. A great purple rain of privet seeds that bounce off the pavement, scattering this direction and that. It lands on the tables and chairs and the kids' toys and, well, everything. The patio resembles a Pollock painting of splatters and swirls. It is continuous and will go on for a week until they are sated or they just get bored with the taste.

There is little that can be done save hosing down the patio and covering your head. I have cut away particularly fruitful branches in the hopes of cutting off the supply but nature is too abundant and the birds never seem to be without. How those avian feeders can survive when they seem to pass so much is beyond me. It can't be terribly efficient. I have tried to frighten them out of my Mulberry with loud noises and thrown objects but that only serves to, scare the crap out of them. Then, of course, they're hungry again.

After five years of this I understand its cycle and no longer fret that it will never end, but the kids don't understand why, with the arrival of beautiful weather they must suddenly be shut inside. The Boy just keeps picking up the seeds and delivering them to me. I can't seem to make him understand that they are icky. He has become, however, a bit more wary since being hit in the head; "Ow! Daddy, it raining... hard."

It's only for a week - maybe less - we'll live. You see this coming, don't you? Yeah, this too shall pass.

Sweet Refusal

I'm in a quandry, curiously concerned about something that should please me normally. When our daughter celebrated her first birthday two weeks ago, my wife baked her a birthday cake. When it was served, decorated with lovely flowers of sweetness, the Boy dug in furiously. The Girl, however, was totally disinterested. There we were, camera poised for the face and frosting photos that accompany a first birthday and our daughter turned up her nose at the cake, refusing anything more than the initial taste. Despite all of the baker's pleas to indulge, she would not be moved.

Two days earlier, while enjoying lunch with the kids, I had opted for an orange scone. Its sweet, citrus icing looked tempting and I broke off a piece for the Girl. She took a taste and declined. She wanted nothing to do with it.

The Boy never really gets sweets. He hasn't been deprived but cookies are rare, candy non-existent. He's never tasted a soda and even juice is uncommon, with only the occasional splash into a cup of water. He doesn't seem any worse for the wear and rarely asks for sweets. Even when they are presented to him, he almost never finishes them. It's how he keeps that figure of his. Nonetheless, he does like sweets; he enjoys them. Even though its rare, we still get requests from him for something sweet. So what's the deal with the Girl?

This week we actually purchased some chocolate chip cookies. As we were finishing dinner one night, in an effort to buy his affection, I offered the Boy half a cookie. He enthusiastically took me up on my offer. I split it and broke up some of the remainder for the Girl. I put it on her tray. She looked down at it and then dismissed it with a sniff. When I tried to tease a little crumb into her mouth she turned away in full-on rejection. She would have none of it. We left the crumbs on her tray and she scattered them slowly amongst her fans: the dogs.

She loves fruit, pureed and mixed with oatmeal. Apples, pears, strawberries, peaches (not so much bananas) and will eat them happily, but when it comes to pure diabetes-inducing sweetness, she's a no go. From muffins, to cake, to cookies, we are becoming increasingly curious. We have taken to testing any sweet thing on her and so far, rejection, rejection, rejection. As my wife says, "How much sweet stuff will she refuse?"

Most parents would be delighted with this revelation and I'm not saying we aren't but, parents being what parents are, we are just a little - dare, I say it - concerned. I mean, what the hell is wrong with a kid that doesn't like sweets? With what are we supposed to bribe or withhold in order to achieve parental ends? She is thwarting us. And the Boy is always there, chocolatey smile on his face, asking, "She going to eat that?"

A Remembrance

I meant to post this last Sunday and then forgot.
Forgive me, Chuck.

One For the Shoeshine Man

the balance is preserved by the snails climbing the

Santa Monica cliffs;

the luck is in walking down Western Avenue

and having the girls in a massage

parlor holler at you. "Hello, Sweetie!"

the miracle is having 5 women in love

with you at the age of 55,

and the goodness is that you are only able

to love one of them.

the gift is having a daughter more gentle

than you are,whose laughter is finer

than yours.

the peace comes from driving a

blue 67 Volks through the streets like a

teenager, radio tuned to The Host Who Loves You

Most, feeling the sun, feeling the solid hum

of the rebuilt motor

as you needle through traffic.

the grace is being able to like rock music,

symphony music, jazz. . .

anything that contains the original energy of

joy.

and the probability that returns

is the deep blue low

yourself flat upon yourself

within the guillotine walls

angry at the sound of the phone

or anybody's footsteps passing;

but the other probability-

the lilting high that always follows-

makes the girl at the checkout stand in the

supermarket look like

Marilyn

like Jackie before they got her Harvard lover

like the girl in high school that we

all followed home.

there is that which helps you believe

in something else besides death;

somebody in a car approaching

on a street too narrow,

and he or she pulls aside to let you

by, or the old fighter Beau Jack

shining shoes

after blowing the entire bankroll

on parties

on women

on parasites,

humming, breathing on the leather,

working the rag

looking up and saying:

"what the hell, I had it for a

while. that beats the

other."

I am bitter sometimes

but the taste has often been

sweet. it's only that I've

feared to say it. it's like

when your woman says,

"tell me you love me," and

you can't.

if you see me grinning from

my blue Volks

running a yellow light

driving straight into the sun

I will be locked in the

arms of a

crazy life

thinking of trapese artists

of midgets with big cigars

of a Russian winter in the early 40's

of Chopin with his bag of Polish soil

of an old waitress bringing me an extra

cup of coffee and laughing as she does so.

the best of you

I like more than you think.

the others don't count

except that they have fingers and heads

and some of them eyes

and most of them legs

and all of them

good and bad dreams

and a way to go.

justice is everywhere and it's working

and the machine guns and the frogs

and the hedges will tell you

so.

from Love Is A Dog From Hell

Black Sparrow Press

copyright 1977, Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski

August 16, 1920 - March 9, 1994