Have You No Shame? And Other Regrettable Stories

City on the Edge of Whenever: Part 2

Of all the self-affirming inanities that turn up on needlepoint pillows and decorative plaques in hospital gift shops, the most popular are variations of “Live Life to the Fullest” or, in its more specific and depressing form, “Live Every Day Like It’s Your Last.” 

The exceeding stupidity of this kind of sentiment is inescapable.  If I should live every day like it’s my last, why am I having this root canal?  Why go to the grocery store, or wait at home for the plumber, or for that matter, waste precious minutes of our beautiful lives waiting in line for the ladies’ room?   Let us live life to fullest.  Let us quit our jobs, go in our pants, and jet off to Tahiti, although let us not fly an airline I will refer to as N----west, unless we and our adult diapers wish to live our best lives while stranded in the Detroit airport with no flight information or food vouchers.  And let us ignore, for the moment, the likely reality of our last grim day on Earth, when we will be semi-conscious and surrounded by machinery as our children and grandchildren, nostrils wrinkling at the stench of us, gather around to say goodbye and fret about whether the supplemental insurance will cover the special automatic air-circulating bed they told the nurses to let us have, back when the grief was fresher and they thought we might live.

            I don’t think my parents are too into maxims, but if they were they would be something like “Fun never paid the cable bill” or my mother’s personal favorite, “Don’t fuck this up.”  Caution, responsibility, and moderation: these are their watchwords.   My father pretends not to understand the punch lines to dirty jokes.  My mother looks askance at those who hedonistically enjoy a glass or two of wine with a meal; for example, the country of France.  But for one week every summer, my father and mother would throw off the duty bound shackles of the Cornhusker state and give themselves over the glory of our family vacation; a chance to spread their wings, let their hair down, get drunk. 

Not drunk on alcohol, of course.  My father fears its calories and my mother, as I believe I have made clear, views the imbibing of it as an indication of some kind of larger emotional problem such as Being a Goy.  They get drunk on Culture; inebriated by Knowledge.  They run wild at the sudden abundance of vegetarian restaurants. Euphoric with the dizzying idea that for one splendid week, they might be once again Actual City People in an Actual City.  A city where people are not comfortably willing to wait 45 minutes for a table at the Olive Garden, that does not gauge its worth on which major retailer has recently condescended to bestow it with a franchise.  A city with a light-rail system and more than one museum and a slate of decently funded Democratic candidates for office.

            A city like where they were supposed to live.  Where they did live, all those years ago, before politics and the economy and the biological urge to procreate fucked everything up for them.  A city where they could feel normal. 

            “Where would you like to go on vacation this year?” my mother asks my sister and I over dinner one night. 

            “Disney World!” sings my sister.  I roll my eyes.  At nine, I was far too worldly for such corporate inanity; still, for just a moment, deep inside, I hope. 

            “Oh come on,” my father sneers.  “Let’s aim a little higher than that.”

            She deliberates, her little legs dangling thoughtfully from the dining room chair.  “Um….Japan Disney!”

            My mother, like many of her race, is gifted with a sigh of supreme eloquence.  My father turns to me. 
            “Rachy? How about you?”

            I had recently read and re-read a Babysitters Club Super-Special in which all the Babysitters, due to some kind of babysitting emergency, had gone on a Caribbean cruise.  Three of them had found exciting Caribbean love (not, obviously, with native Caribbeans) two had solved an exciting Caribbean mystery, and all had enjoyed what sounded like some pretty exciting Caribbean shopping.