Missed Diagnoses

During the recent influenza outbreak, news broadcasters switched into hilarious panic mode. Night after night they talked excitedly in the manner of newscasters in classic Japanese monster movies.

“Swine flu has been sighted outside your town and is headed your way! It will destroy you and your family! You must evacuate at once!”

From the sound of it, we should have been running in panic down the streets while a sixty-foot virus stomped our homes into rubble. The only thing missing was a scientist in a white lab coat and black plastic glasses telling us his secret invention was the key to defeating Swine Flu, but that he couldn’t use it because it was too powerful for mankind to possess.

Space Invaders

Right after our honeymoon, my wife moved into my apartment. In theory I was in favor of living under the same roof with my new bride; in practice dividing up the living space required extensive negotiations that continue to this day. Part of the problem was the apartment itself.

In terms of roominess, it compared well to a BMW sedan, but lacked the amenities or maneuverability. The bathroom offered a toilet, sink, and tub which had been designed for the munchkins of Oz. The bedroom offered space for a bed or dresser, but not both. The living/dining/entry room had the benefit of being so small it made our thirteen-inch television look like an IMAX screen. The kitchen was adequate so long as you were content to cook a one-pot, one-course meal.

Still, I’d managed to settle in and had found places for my few possessions. Then my beloved moved in … along with all of her stuff. Things I didn’t recognize started turning up in places I didn’t expect.

Routine Housework

As a bachelor, I subscribed to the belief that cleaning house was like going to war; it was to be conducted with forethought and seriousness of purpose, and only when no other alternative could be found. Cleaning with any kind of regularity would have interfered with vital activities like re-watching old movies on VHS, arguing the relative merits of Marvel vs. DC superheroes, and thinking up creative new excuses for the mess in my apartment. After a while, the layer of empty pizza boxes and moldering socks was so thick in places that it exerted a gravitational influence on the tides. If I had gotten close enough to clean, I’d have been dragged down past the pizza event horizon and trapped forever.

Once I was married, my wife explained that house cleaning was less an event and more a regular occurrence. In her view, the entire house needed a good cleaning at least once a week and parts of it required daily attention. I tried to negotiate a longer, more reasonable schedule — something resembling a Congressional session or the length of an Ingmar Bergen film — but she stood firm.

So now I spend more time cleaning each week than I do reading the morning paper. I may not be well-informed, but at least I live in a tidy house.

Twenty (Thousand) Questions

Having children is like signing up for an eighteen-year stint on a quiz show. Day in and day out you’ll be peppered with rapid-fire questions the way shooting gallery ducks are pelted with BBs. Even before your children can speak, you know that they’re storing up questions so that their first complete sentence will be a noodle-scratcher like “Why is the speed of light considered a universal constant?”

Actually, no child asks that. Which is a real pity because at least you could look up the answer in any conveniently handy book on quantum physics. Instead, your children will test the limits of your understanding with seemingly innocent questions.

When my oldest was three, I introduced him to the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty. We’d just gotten to the part where Malificent crashes the party. As an adult, it was easy to see why she hadn’t been invited; She was bad mannered and about as much fun as dermatologist at a tanning center. My son asked, “Why is she being a bad guy?”

Please Follow All Instructions Carefully

This past weekend my wife and I decided to replace our counter-top microwave with an over-the-stove model. We had three good reasons; 1) the old microwave no longer worked, 2) we wanted to reclaim our counter space, and 3) we were idiots.

When we bought the microwave at the local Buy More, the polo-shirted sales guy offered to sell us an installation contract as well. I shrugged him off. The box said it had installation instructions. How hard could it be? The sales guy just gave me a look that said, “You’ll be back. They all come crawling back.”

He might have been on to something. The instructions were written in a language which resembled English, but somewhere along the line the manual had been shaken violently and all of the words had changed places. For example, I had to puzzle out the meaning of this complex sentence; “If the cabinets are not plumb, adjust the mounting plates to the cabinets.” To my way of thinking, some of the words had been lost in shipping and I was left feeling unfulfilled and anxious, like at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. What if I couldn’t adjust the plates? What if the cabinet was plumb? Would Han Solo be rescued?