We Can't Have Fun Or Else We Might Die
Topics explored in this issue include: Rape whistles as Christmas gifts, falling up the stairs, and the unsanitary nature of bowling balls
Last year, Mom bought the women in our family a high-pitched keychain alarm for Christmas. She saw them mentioned on that year’s list of Oprah’s favorite things, and thought, What better exemplifies the spirit of Christmas than a rape whistle? She called me on the phone a few weeks before, to ask if I thought my wife would be grateful or confused.
“I’m not sure she’s necessarily in the market for a rape whistle,” I said.
“Nobody’s in the market for a rape whistle, David. It’s about being prepared.”
“She did mention that she liked a black sweater from Everlane,” I said.
“Mmm,” Mom said like she couldn’t see how cashmere could help a woman who was cornered in a dark alley at night. “Well, I already ordered it,” she said. “And I got one for your sister, too. I went outside to try it in the backyard with Dad, and oh my God! It nearly blew out his eardrums.”
When my wife unwrapped the present on Christmas morning, Mom could barely contain her excitement. “It’s a rape whistle!” she cried.
“Oh,” Sam said, because what else can one say?
“I thought it was an ingenious design,” Mom said. There was hesitation in her voice, a little buyer’s remorse but not enough for her to admit that she’d made a mistake. “You just attach it to your keychain, and if you’re ever in danger, you tug on the end and the alarm goes off.”
“Isn’t there danger in accidentally setting it off if it’s on your keychain?” I asked.
Mom sneered at me like I’m the sort of guy these devices are built for. “There are bigger dangers out there, David, than false alarms.”
“Well, I love it!” my sister said, taking it out of the box.
“Don’t try it in here,” Dad said, “or the dog's ears will bleed.”
When my sister and I were little, Dad’s preoccupation with house fires grew so intense he eventually made us run practice drills at home. I remember coming home from school one day to find two large boxes waiting for us on our beds.
“We got you guys a surprise,” he said excitedly and opened one of the boxes to reveal an aluminum escape ladder inside.
Mom stood beside him, apprehensive but supportive, like maybe this strange activity could be a gateway to other, less stressful family functions.
“Did you know that over 4000 Americans die every year in house fires?” Dad asked.
My sister and I did not know this. We were six and eleven, respectively, but I do remember hearing facts and figures over the years about the dangers of space heaters and Christmas tree lights from both parents. Polyester Pajamas were notoriously flammable, and every time mine sparked in the dark with static I worried I’d spontaneously burst into flames.
“Now, what I thought could be fun,” Dad continued, “is if we timed you guys to see who can set up their ladder the fastest.”
My sister and I looked at each other. There were cartoons to be watched, trees to be climbed outside, friends to be called on phones. “This is so unfair,” Lauren whined.
“You know what’s unfair?” Dad said. “Skin grafts.”
He pulled out a stopwatch and set it to zero. “OK. Ready? Set? Go!”
Lauren, being five years older than me, made quick haste to untangle the metal chains. She hooked her ladder over the windowsill, and secured it, while I stood there, staring dumbly at the picture on the front of the box. It was a photograph of a white house, much like our own, surrounded by firetrucks and engulfed in flames. “Three minutes and forty-three seconds,” Dad said. “Not bad. David? You’d be a carbon cracker.”
He suggested we try again, and when we did, my sister shaved off a good minute from her best time. She was like the Usain Bolt of fire-preparedness while I was woefully inept at a talent I didn’t know I wanted to have.
Mom must’ve gotten into the spirit of things because at one point she posited that we had an unfair advantage. “Wouldn’t it be more realistic,” she said, “and therefore more beneficial to the kids, if the fire happened at night when the children were sleeping?”
Dad looked at her with what I thought at the time was exhilaration, but what I know now is closer to romantic longing. I don’t remember him taking her up on the offer, but I do remember practicing until I got it right.
In the final drill, I dove valiantly under my bed and tore open the box, and hooked the ladder around my windowsill. As I started to climb out, Dad shouted after me, “What are you doing? Get back inside! Do you know how dangerous it is to climb out a second-story window?”
Sometimes I look back and think that my parents’ fears inhibited them from experiencing all that life has to offer. One winter, while riding in the backseat of their car, my sister and I brainstormed a fun activity we could do as a family. We somehow landed on ice skating of all things, and, somehow, to our astonishment, our parents agreed to join us. Sure, they hadn’t ice-skated in over thirty years, but how hard could it be, and wasn’t it a lot like riding a bike?
“Except the last time you rode a bike,” Mom said to Dad, “a dog jumped out in front of you, and you shattered your left elbow.”
“Me?” Dad laughed. “Let’s talk about the time you slipped on that black ice and bruised your tailbone.”
“How about last week when you tripped on that bump in the rug?”
“Says the only woman in the world who manages to fall up a set of stairs,” Dad said, referring to the time Mom broke her ankle at a Barnes and Noble in Manhattan and was rushed to the hospital.
“You’d probably tear all the tendons in your body just looking at a pair of ice skates,” Mom said, referring to the time Dad lunged for a tennis ball and ruptured his Achilles heel.
“I’ll bet ten minutes on that ice, and we’d all be sitting in the ER.”
My sister wondered out loud if bowling wasn’t more our speed.
“I’m not wearing somebody else’s dirty shoes,” Dad said.
“And those balls,” Mom added. “I saw a dateline report where they shined a black light in the holes of bowling balls, and do you know what they found? Poop.”
Dad said there was no way in hell he was bowling with poop balls. “Why don’t we just go home and watch that Ken Burns documentary.”
Lauren said that if they made a documentary about Mom and Dad it should be called, “We can’t have fun or else we might die.”
When I ask Dad these days how he’s doing, he’ll say, “Okaaay,” like the question is loaded. Then there will be a long pause as he tries to fill the silence. “Except for the whole Israel/Palestinian thing. And Russia and Ukraine. And the end of Democracy.”
Talking to him sometimes feels like stepping off of a tilt-a-whirl. Or riding a bullet train through the seven stages of somebody else’s grief. You come out the other end with your bangs blown back, and your eyebrows singed, wondering where you were going in the first place
A latchkey kid? The dangers must’ve been everywhere!
I'm beginning to think I'm lucky to have grown up as a free-range child during the '60s.