BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Good morning, folks… I’m still recovering from my stint as “Iron Chef Merp!” at the annual Ethical Society Youth Group Dinner-Dance last night. So, please enjoy this “re-leak” of a Brainpan Leakage Classic… I will return to my regularly scheduled blogging on Wednesday, 3/9/2011.

When Porcelain Attacks – Originally posted September 19, 2010

Even without my glasses I could see that one of the bulbs in the fluorescent fixture overhead was burned out. Yes, it was sort of a blur, but I’m not entirely blind. Close, but not entirely.

So, even with the world being fuzzy around the edges, and even fuzzier in the middle, it was obvious that the bulb was not glowing as it should. In fact, it stared back at me, a dull gray-white tube with blackened ends. The companion bulb, clipped tightly into the contacts on the other side of the ballast cover, was flickering in a rapid staccato. An orange intensity was pulsing at one end, and the whole fixture hummed. A sure sign that it would soon go dark as well.

But I really wasn’t worried about that. Daylight was streaming into the high windows, and besides, this wasn’t the only light. There were several more. Not to mention, I had more important worries.

Now, I have to admit. The dead bulb in the ceiling fixture was not something I would have noticed right off. I don’t usually make a habit of staring at high ceilings for no apparent reason, but then at this particular moment I was lying on my back, which made a significant difference in my point of view. The cold, damp concrete was leeching any semblance of warmth from me, but I wasn’t in a big hurry to move. At least, not until I figured out what had just happened. So, until that answer was no longer eluding me, I decided staring at the ceiling was the appropriate thing to do.

An inventory of my senses was enough to tell me that I wasn’t severely injured. Either that, or I was dealing with a concussion and was misinterpreting the various simple aches and pains.

Just for the hell of it, I groaned.

I heard myself groan. In fact, I even heard it echo off the cinder block walls.

Apparently my ears were still working. That was a good sign.

I continued to stare at the hazy light fixture above me as it winked through its death throes, and wondered if I maybe was doing the same. Life imitating machinery and all that jazz. I decided I probably wasn’t, because I simply didn’t have time for it right now. Besides, my pajama britches were down around my ankles, and while I don’t have a very big shoe size, what endowment I did have was pretty much on display. I really wasn’t good with dying in such a state.

I muttered, “Fuck me…” in a long, drawn out breath. Then I said it again, just for good measure. Then it dawned on me that I could be inviting disaster if I wasn’t alone in here.

Fortunately, it turned out that I was. Alone, that is.

Closing my eyes I tried to remember just how it was I came to be sprawled out on the wet, concrete floor of a combination bathroom – shower house in rural, coastal Virginia.

The sharp smell of pine cleaner was carving its initials inside my nasal passages, and in a very real sense I was grateful for that. The odor combined with the dampness of the floor told me it had been mopped very recently. Given that this was a bathroom there were much worse things I could be laying in. I also happened to know from experience that the lady who cleaned the shower house was unbelievably thorough. In fact, everyone called her the Bathroom Nazi.

What seemed like a good quarter of an hour had passed by now. In reality it had been more like a quarter of a minute. Seriously. It’s utterly amazing how time slows down when you are in a bizarre situation.

I decided to go ahead and carefully push myself up, then rise to my feet. My glasses were around here somewhere, and the last thing I needed to do was crush them. The rolling about and finding footing was quite a task with my britches around my ankles, but I managed to do it without hearing the sickly crunch of $600 no-line bi-focals turning into $600 trash. I straightened and then untangled my pajamas and pulled them up. At least now that particular issue was addressed. Or, should I simply say dressed? Either way, Wee Willy Winkie and the twins were back where they belonged.

With a sigh, I turned, then reached out and pulled open the spring loaded door to the toilet stall in front of me. A familiar looking blur on the floor immediately in front of me caught my eye, so I stooped and picked up my glasses. They didn’t appear to be any worse for wear, so I slid them onto my face. Now the world came into focus.

Before me was a gleaming white porcelain throne. It had been scrubbed within an inch of its life, as had the floor. The ultra-sanitary condition of the stool was a good thing, because floating in it were my shaving kit, and a rolled wad of fabric that constituted my fresh change of clothes. My towel was dangling precipitously from the tank.

I stepped in and rescued the towel, then fished my clothing and shaving kit out. Fortunately, I had more clothing back in my camper, and the shaving kit was safely ensconced in a sealed Ziploc bag – all part of my anal retentive packing routine after having a bottle of shampoo leak all over the inside of my suitcase.

It was as I steadied myself against the tank while retrieving my soaked belongings that all of the pieces fell into place. You see, the moment I put even the slightest amount of weight against the toilet tank, it rocked backwards. Now, when I say it rocked backwards, I mean it rocked several inches backwards. The proverbial light went off over my head – no, not the actual fluorescent one, I’m talking about the figurative one. I finished pulling my things from the bowl, then pressed lightly on the seat. As it had done when I touched the tank, it rocked, but this time it rocked forward. In fact, it rocked forward twice as many inches as it had rocked backward. A second or two later it began to right itself, seeking some sort of center.

I turned in place and looked at the gap beneath the door.

Mathematical calculations rushed through my sluggish brain, trajectories drew themselves against imagined graphs, and I had my elusive answer. Upon entering I had headed for a stall to execute my daily business prior to my shower. It just happened to be stall number 2. I don’t know why… Maybe it was because I had to do number 2. But maybe not. Because I also had to do number 1, so I probably should have gone to stall number 3. But, if I had, I probably wouldn’t have this story to tell.

Anyway, upon entering the stall I had placed my folded towel, then my rolled up clothing, and then my shower kit securely and solidly upon the top of the large tank. I noticed when I did so that the toilet had a bit of a slant toward the back wall, but it wasn’t like I was going to spend much time there, so I thought nothing of it. Besides, with a backward slant, all of my stuff would be sliding AWAY from danger, not toward it, if you know what I mean.

In keeping with standard convention, I dropped my drawers, what with that being the easiest way to go about doing one’s business. I lowered myself onto the stool and felt it pitch rapidly forward like a mechanical bull in a roadhouse. Seriously.

The next thing I knew I saw the bottom of the stall door flash past my eyes as it headed in a northerly direction, or so I thought. As it turns out, it was me doing the traveling, and I was heading south. After that, the world was pretty much a blur. Well, all except for the burned out light fixture on the ceiling, and as I said, it was pretty fuzzy too.

That wasn’t the last time I appeared as an author/guest speaker at that event. It was, however, the last time I used the second stall in the men’s shower room.

More to come…

Murv

There is a stretch of highway in Saint Louis county known as I-170. Sometimes it is called the “Innerbelt”, although these days that term is not as prevalent as it was once upon a time. A time, incidentally, that I am actually old enough to remember.

You see, way back when, in the days of dinosaurs and mammoths, I-170 was designated as 725. These days I-170 stretches from the Highway 40 interchange in the southern portion of the county, up to the I-270 interchange in the north. But, back when it was called 725 – or, as we teens at the time called it, Seven And A Quarter – the Innerbelt ran from Eager Road in the south and unceremoniously ended with a barricade and a single must take exit at Page Avenue, smack in the middle of Northwest County. Back then it was the quickest way – and ostensibly, still is – to get to Clayton. You may have heard of Clayton – and no, I’m not talking about Clayton Moore aka The Lone Ranger. Clayton, Missouri is where you find the county courthouse.

But, as usual, I’m not actually writing this blog to talk about Clayton. I’m writing it to talk about construction.

Road construction to be precise.

Many years ago, as the dinosaurs were dying out and mammals were becoming the dominant species (i.e. my early, early 20’s) our short little stretch of tarmac, so lovingly known as Seven And A Quarter became I-170 and was expanded, lengthened, what have you. Well, as urban sprawl continues to… well… sprawl, traffic changes and what seemed like a good idea at the time no longer meets the needs of the unforeseen future. So, things get torn up, rebuilt, expanded, stretched, widened, and otherwise completely re-invented.

Such was the case with I-170. At some point during my late, late 30’s the powers that be realized that the person who had originally designed the interchange at I-170 and I-270 had probably been smoking crack while drawing up the plans. It was probably one of the wort, most congested, and literally dangerous interchanges known to man. So, in a bid to correct the mistake, they redesigned it, tore it all up, and made a bigger and better interchange between the thoroughfares.

Then, traffic increased on I-170 because the I-270 terminus was no longer a clusterf*ck. What did that mean? Well, simple. It made the rest of I-170 a cluster. What was once a lonely stretch of road connecting two parts of the county was becoming a parking lot every morning and evening throughout the week. So, what did the powers that be do? Well, the only thing they could. They found someone else who wasn’t on crack, redesigned the Innerbelt, tore it up, and made it better than it was.

Better, stronger, faster…

Let me tell you, it cost more than 6 million bucks too. It even cost more than 7 million (the pricetag on the Bionic Woman… ya’know, inflation and all…)

But, in the end, congestion was alleviated and I-170, while not returned to its original quietude as 725, became much easier and faster to travel. In many ways this is good. In others, maybe not so much. You see, living where we do, I-170 is pretty much a main thoroughfare for us. It is  close by, easily accessible, and an artery that will take us most anywhere we need or want to go – even if it is simply getting us to a different highway in order to reach our final destination. Therefore, E K and I travel it often.

Such was the case just the other day.

As we cruised along in the northbound lanes, wind whistling past the Evil-Mobile, (at the time the cloaking device was on and switched to Soccer Mom Van mode), and traveling somewhere near 987 miles per hour, (E K may be a petite bundle of mean, but her foot weighs 12 metric tonnes whenever it comes into contact with a gas pedal), we were watching the landscape flashing in the windows. Bare patches of flattened land were evident where grassy berms and stands of trees once lined the thoroughfare. Nearing our exit I happened to glance to the left and noticed the carcass of a rather large groundhog, sprawled lifeless in the center emergency lane against the better than 3 foot high concrete dividers.

I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the creature, and vocalized my theory about its demise.

“Poor bastard was probably just trying to cross the road and got stuck there because of the dividers and traffic,” I lamented.

EK  clucked her tongue and said, “Maybe it ran into traffic on purpose.”

I furrowed my brow and grunted, “Whaddaya mean?”

“I mean maybe it finally had enough of us tearing up its home and it just ran into traffic to commit suicide.”

You know, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if E K was right about that. And, what’s worse – If I were a groundhog trying to escape the utter insanity of human urban sprawl, I might just do the same…

More to come…

Murv