GenePool Humor

Beating Up the Radio, Part Two

Wednesday, June 9

Semi-exhausted from the previous day, I still manage to finish off a humor column (not this one) and post it to my web site. Before doing so, I attempt to print a hard copy.

One of the few things I do right in regards to maintaining decent records of my writing career is, I eventually make a hard copy of everything in case my computer starts to hemorrhage internally. I've fallen off on this pace somewhat, recently, because I got a zip drive for Christmas, and even though I have not saved anything to the zip drive in months, I get such a warm feeling just having it in the room that I stopped worrying about keeping paper records. So this is not the primary reason I attempt to print a hard copy of my completed column, which makes me wonder why I even brought this up.

The reason I want to print it is for Debbie to read before I post it. I don't do this perhaps as often as I should, either. Deb's pretty much going on faith that I won't reveal something utterly embarrassing to all of you readers beyond all the embarrassing stuff I've already revealed. But she still likes to read them beforehand.

So, I dutifully send the column to the printer and wait for it to do what one expects from most printers, namely, spit ink in non-random patterns onto paper. Instead, a window opens on my screen asking me where I want to fax the document. Well, I didn't particularly want to fax it anywhere, and I tell my computer that, using very harsh language, and it completely ignores me.

Somehow, when sending my radio press release, I had managed to non-temporarily switch my print command to a fax command. Since I don't know how I did this, I can't switch it back. So I never do print the column.

And people think I'm kidding when I tell them I don't know a thing about computers.

Thursday, June 10

So I'm sitting in my study after a long day of work, dutifully attending to matters of great importance that involve gettiing a new high score on Tetris, when my son walks in to discuss the strange gooey substance on his hands after handling Salamore the Terrified Gerbil for the last hour. He finds the substance rather curious, but that's only because there's no light on in my study. Once I rectify this situation it's quite clear my son's hands are covered in gerbil blood.

Mind you, if this had been Becky making this discovery she would have probably freaked out. Tim, conversely, thinks it's sort of cool, and I actually have to order him into the bathroom to wash his hands.

We then rush over to the gerbil cage to examine Salamore. He (or possibly she; I've never been sure) doesn't look too great. there's a little blood by his right ear, and I announce with the sort of authority one expects to hear from the only adult in the household, "it's probably a tumor. Now say goodbye to Salamore and get to bed, it's past your bedtime." Isn't that touching?

Meanwhile, I've gotten a bunch of emails from my publisher with phone numbers of people to call who want to interview me. Once the kids are in bed I send out another mass email announcing all the dates. Hopefully, all these people getting this mail aren't completely sick of me yet.

Friday, June 11

As soon as my wife climbs into bed in the morning, after a long night at work and a request to not be woken or spoken to for the remainder of the morning, I let her know that Salamore is near death. She reacts somewhat differently to this information than did, running downstairs to make her own first-hand examination, cleaning the cage, and calling a paramedic.

Deb and I feel somewhat differently about the animal kingdom. I personally don't get very attached to any pet that is small enough to be held in one hand and euthanized by squeezing, while Deb will leave a book open so a paper mite can make it across the page.

I get a phone call later in the day from Deb, who has brought Salamore to the animal hospital. (I bet you think I'm kidding.) After seeing a couple of specialists, no clear conclusion could be reached regarding the source of Salamore's injury. A tumor was theorized, but another possibility was blunt force trauma because of Timmy's occasional efforts to dribble him. The gerbil received a shot of some sort of substance that was supposed to help him recover from a significant loss of blood (an I.V. was evidently not possible, although I would have found it much more entertaining.) He was also given medication to be administered twice daily and we were instructed to feed him lots of fresh fruit.

I'm not even going to tell you how much this cost.

Saturday, June 12

A rare event in my life: I get to go to a party.

I'd gotten the invitation by way of phone call more than a week earlier, but I was fairly certain I'd be unable to go. My joy and surprise came when Deb asked me later if I'd returned the message yet regarding the party. She even offered to sit alone on a Saturday night to watch the kids so I could go.

It was a thirtieth birthday party for a friend of mine named Julie, who I'd known since high school. Inevitably, it was going to be an occasion in which more than a couple of the people there also went to the same high school, and it's a very rare thing indeed to see a collection of my fellow high school graduates in the same place.

I've mentioned this before, but since not all of you were paying attention, let's run through it again. As I mentioned earlier in this column, my former high school-- Northfield Mount Hermon is its name-- is a two hour drive from Boston. I did not make this commute daily, as you can imagine; it's a boarding school. Most of the time, when this comes up in conversation I get surprised looks, because the typical image of your typical boarding school includes uniforms, paramilitary organizations, and a noticeable lack of girls. That was not the case with Northfield. We did not have to wear uniforms, there were no formally recognized paramilitary organizations on either campus outside of the football team, and the place was pratically infested with girls, being, as it is, a co-ed school.

I spend the bulk of the evening at Julie's party talking to fellow Northfield escapees about our lives there. This is something non-graduates really can't appreciate. I think the friends one makes in a boarding high school are different from any other kind of friend simply because angst is the emotion of choice during those years. The people I knew there were family, and the family gets forcibly dissolved at graduation, which can be somewhat jarring. The vast majority of people I knew back then who I considered very close friends I don't even speak to anymore. This is not really a matter of choice, it's just that we all come from different parts of the world. But we also don't have a lot left in common. When IN the school, we had the school in common, and that was enough. Removed from that environment, we really aren't left with much to talk about. So the few friends I have left are that much more significant for their continued involvement in my life.

Anyhow, we must have come off as fairly dull to anyone who overheard our conversations. Northfield is currently embroiled in controversy because evidently two students took time out from their studies there a month or so ago to carve the word "homo" on the back of another student. As extra-curricular activities go, this one ranks right up there with some of the other stories that I and many of my fellow escapees knew of when we attended, and these tales are what take up the bulk of my evening.

Sunday, June 13

I wake up just enough to turn my clock radio on to the right station to hear myself being interviewed. One thing I notice immediately is that the producer forgot to edit out the false start. At the very beginning of the interview the DJ begins by reading a portion of my press release, but he misreads the word "horror" as "humor." He immediately stops and (although one cannot see this when listening) signals the producer to restart. He almost messes up the line a second time, too, but nails it enough for us to continue.

I'm pretty happy with the results, overall. He never got the list of sample questions since he was working only off of my own press release and the copy of the book I handed him ten minutes before we began. What's interesting is that I remember thinking of all the wry witticisms I had hoped to use, that I'd run through in my head while making the long drive out to Haverhill. I didn't use a single one on the air.

On the plus side, I sound pretty good on the radio. My publisher had said after speaking to me on the phone that I had a "good radio voice." I really don't know what this entails, but I evidently have it.

This is the last day of freedom I have before the hard core interviews begin. I'm glad I had a chance to go out to a party the night before, and even gladder that I didn't wake up with a hangover of any significance. In an ideal world I'd spend this day relaxing contentedly, and that's certainly what I had intended. My only chore was to get the kids to a birthday party.

And so, relaxed, content, somewhat happy, I ask my children to bring me the invitation to this party just to make sure I know the time and location and all that fun stuff. This is when I discover the party is in Gloucester.

Gloucester is a long ways away. I don't really know how far it is, because, like Haverhill, it's one of those towns I'd heard of, but never actually encountered in person. I call the parents of the birthday girl and am persuaded that Gloucester is not all that far, really, just leave an hour beforehand. Just about the only good news is that this is technically a family picnic and it lasts for six hours. I'm informed that I need only take exit 14 off of Rte. 128 and follow the signs to the public park.

This is so simple I really have no choice but to screw it up. See, here's the problem. I'm pretty sure Gloucester is in the north, and so I hop onto Rte. 128 and head north. Then I notice that the exit numbers are going up, not down, and I started at exit 29. Logically, my only solution is to turn around. I don't really realize something has gone horribly wrong until I'm about two exits away from 14. One thing I'm fully aware of is that Gloucester is on the coast, and in the direction I'm currently heading I'm going to discover the West Coast far sooner than I encounter the East Coast. My suspicions are confirmed when I reach exit 14 and discover nothing remotely resembling a coastline there. We've now been on the road for more than an hour.

A quick call to my father (who is old enough to own a map of the state without having it threaten his manhood) confirms that I have gone in completely the wrong direction. It turns out that the dreaded marriage of Rte. 128 and Rte. 95 actually annuls somewhere north of the city, at which point they go their separate ways and the exit numbers on Rte. 128 start all over again.

We do eventually get to the party. Getting there was definitely the most stressful part of the journey. We have a minor disaster when Becky announces that she wants to go home because she doesn't have her bathing suit with her, and her friend, who came properly equipped, does. (It simply didn't occur to us to pack bathing suits, because East Coast ocean water in June is cold enough to store meat in.) There is, naturally, no way in hell I'm going to turn right around and go home after having spent two hours examining every pothole on both sides of Rte. 128 on my way up to Gloucester. So Becky opts to sulk for a while.

Tim, on the other hand, is a package of unbridled joy. He has always taken free-spiritedness a couple of notches too high, to somewhere above foolhardy, but on this day, it's refreshing. I follow him down to the beach, which, in this case, is really an isolated cove (this is not the only beach in the park, just the closest to where we are.) It's low tide, so every slimy piece of sea snot and green gunk is fully exposed and must be walked over in order to reach the actual water. Both sides of the cove consist of rocks of varying size, quality, and overall barnacles-per-square-foot. Tim, somehow, finds this all magnificent. He even takes great pleasure in finding a broken beer bottle (which I immediately take from him) and loves the fact that when he wades in up to his ankles he soon loses all feeling in his feet.

Eventually, the party comes to an end and we drag our tired selves back home, at which point I resolve to go to sleep as soon as I possibly can. The interviews start the next morning. EARLY the next morning. I am an agnostic when it comes to mornings; I think it's possible they exist, but I can think of no way to prove it. Being awake for them is certainly not an option.

It's going to be a long week.

To be continued

© 2000, Gene Doucette